Category Archives: crafty creations

You are my sunshine

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We decided the bathroom would be gray and yellow with oil-rubbed bronze hardware.  I had my mind set that I wanted some flowers and sun something in the bathroom.  When the girls were little, I used to sing them “You are my sunshine” a lot.  It was also on a CD we wore out, so the saying means something to the girls.  I decided to make signs for the bathroom.

I used some scrap wood we had in the back of the house and made 2 signs.

I taped off a sun, and then painted.

Then came the words.

Sealed and the final product:

 

Record Bowls

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For Mother’s Day this year, I had the girls in my Girl Scout troop make record bowls. These were some VERY old Reader’s Digest records that were going in the trash, so I snagged them. The girls each had to design the front and back of the record.

Then I put it in the oven at 200F for about 3 minutes on a small bowl. The sides will slowly melt down and just before they touch the bottom, I grab them out of the oven. The records are pretty warm, but not hot enough to need oven mitts, I just use my hands. If you wait to take it out, they will get VERY HOT and you will need mitts.

I center the record up on a larger bowl and push it down to make the form. You can actually use any shape and even shape it with your hands.

The final product. The moms loved them…not to mention kind of a unique gift.

Mother’s Day 2012

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This year for mother’s day I wanted to give my mom something she could not buy anywhere else.  I found this awesome sign on Pinterest from House of Hempworths and I just had to make it!  I wish I could say that I bought the template she offers and cut the vinyl out with my Silhouette Cameo…but I have yet to get a Cameo for my birthday, or Mother’s Day, or Christmas.  Someday.  {{{sigh}}}

I had to improvise with what I have.  I used the projector that is in the art room to throw up the image onto a large piece of butcher paper and I traced it.  Then it took me an HOUR to cut it all out.  My template was ready so then I started on the sign.

I bought some cheap fencing slats from HD and cut them to the desired length. I screwed on some support boards on the back. If I had more time I would have let this sit in the sun for several weeks to flatten out and weather a bit, but I was doing this at the last minute (no surprise there) so I did not have time to get the warping out.

Since I did not have vinyl to paint over, I decided to paint the lettering onto the wood. First, I gave it a rough coat of some light grey that we had in the garage. I did not make it perfect and left several areas with the wood showing through.

Next came the tracing around the letters. (I am telling you I was complaining the whole time that I could not just print this out!)

And then came the black paint.

Once the black paint was dry, I used a #0 steel pad to sand away some of the paint.

The finished product.

Not quite a Pinterest project but deserves to be one

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One of the first things I did on my new job since I would be traveling was invest in a better carry-on bag.  I did not opt for Samsonite, TravelPro, Hartmann or some other several-hundred-dollar bag, but got a Swiss bag at Target.

I have learned that I am not the only one with that bag.

And the Swiss emblem fell off.

So I got out the puff paints this morning and this is what I came up with.

Pinterest Project FAIL

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This was my very first “sorta” Pinterest project. My mom sent me a picture of a canvas she wanted me to make. Ok…cool. I can do that! It was a square canvas with a saying about peace on it. After doing some searching online for transferring, I found a “recipe” to make your own transfer paper.

I started by painting the canvas purple.

The directions I found said to spray a clear transparency sheet with spray gel and let it dry. Then using an inkjet printer, mirror the image and print on the dried gel. So far, so good.

Next, lay the transfer paper down and using a spoon (I used my bone folder), scrape the image onto the surface.

FAIL!!!

Nothing came off of the transparency. I did it like 3 times, washing the gel off, adding more, trying a thin layer of hairspray to coat it (which by the way just makes the ink run!). Finally realizing that it was the texture in the canvas, I gave up.

I repainted the canvas a light blue. Using a clean transparency, I ran it through my printer (just plain with nothing on it), and pressed the wet ink directly on the canvas. This worked the best and I was able to get enough off to go over it with marker.

Sharpies…right??? WRONG! The sharpies just bled into the cracks of the canvas. I found a fine black paintpen and went over the smudged sharpie which really cleaned it up. In a last ditch effort to make it look nice, I covered it with modpodge. ANOTHER FAIL!!!! It made the sharpies under the paintpen run with each stroke of the paint brush.

UGH!

 

That was how I gave it to my mom. I did not even take a picture of it I was so mad. I gave up.