Love to the Moon

My Squirt is now 9, much to my disbelief. She shares a bedroom with her 5 year old step-sister, albeit only part time. I've been trying to revamp things now that she's getting a little bit older but still keep them okey-dokey for a younger child too. Which means the pink and yellow flag bunting we've had up since Squirt was 3 is now coming down. For years it's been all pink all the time, and while pink is still the color of choice for them both, I'm trying to incorporate other colors and make the overall feel a little older. The project of the moment is an art collage wall.

When I saw this on Pinterest (no link attached, the photo was uploaded by user), I knew it was my first endeavor.

 

See, Squirt and I say this all the time. Only we say it in a one-upping kind of way. She'll often say "I love you to PLUTO and back!" 

As usual, I wanted to re-create the idea but use only supplies on hand. I had purchased a three pack of flat 11x14 canvasses at Walmart for somewhere around 6.98 or so and decided to go that route instead of wood. 

To start with, I painted the canvas black and used the Elmer's glue crackle paint technique circulating Pinterest (tutorial here). The only glue I had on hand was Galaxy Glue - which is more of a gel glue filled with glitter. I smeared that all over the black canvas without diluting it. Then, once the glue was tacky (which was almost right away for the gel glue) I brushed a slightly thinned bright blue Art Deco paint over the whole surface. 

I had no idea if it would work but it did! And the best part? The glitter is totally visible and adds the perfect subtle but amazingly awesome amount of bling. LOVE how that turned out and I completely recommend trying it. 

I played around a graphics program to figure out the size of lettering I wanted and printed out the text outline on cardstock, cut it out with an Xacto knife to create a stencil, and then used my favorite craft tool: the Sharpie. Tracing and coloring the letters went really quick. I had toyed with painting it and then lightly sanding the surface (even on the canvas) but decided I didn't want to mar the glitteriness and crackles. Sharpie was fast and perfect for what I was after. 

Which leaves us with this:

At first I lined the stencils up so the spacing between lines was identical and it bugged me. So I moved them to emphasize the "I Love You" a little more. Time will tell if I think that was a good decision since I'm usually anal about spacing :) 

This project was crazy easy (you can tell I did half of it while babysitting!) and I absolutely love how it turned out. Project art wall is well underway!

Button bracelets

My Squirt is not feeling well and doesn't want to eat or do anything. It's so hard when little people are sick. Especially when nothing really seems wrong but they just aren't themselves. Like me, she is an early riser and likes to be doing something first thing in the morning. Today however, she stayed in bed until 1:00p.m., only moving to the couch after I promised a movie.

To pass the time, we I made button bracelets with How to Train Your Dragon playing in the background. The process is simple, and there are about a million tutorials out there for how to do this. This is the way I approached it.

Cut a long piece of beading wire, I started with about 12-14 inches. Standard bracelets are 7 or 7.5 inches depending on thickness, but if you cut the wire too short to start with there will be guaranteed cursing while things fall off and fly around the living room.

Using a crimp ring, pass one end of your beading wire through the end loop in a 1-1.5 inch section of chain. This is a good place to use up bits and pieces left over from other projects or clearance sale costume jewelry. Pass the wire back through the crimp ring, pull it as tight as can be, and squeeze the crimp ring with your pliers.

Thread buttons on one or two at a time until you've got an inch or two strung. Take the loose end of the beading wire and slip it through the buttons until it's completely hidden. Keep adding buttons until you've reached the desired length.

Thread on another crimp ring and either a soldered jump ring or the end of the clasp (I did one with a link and one with just the clasp). Pulling as tight as you can to get the ring/clasp as close as you can to the buttons then squeeze the crimp ring with your pliers. Trim the wire tail to about 1 inch long and feed the tail back through the buttons. If you used a spring ring on the end of the bracelet, add the clasp now.

 I wanted something neutral but Squirt wears a lot of bright pink and other colors so we did one of each. Surprisingly after measuring around our wrists they turned out almost exactly the same length, which means we are finally to a place where we can share some things! I would worry about that but I buy nicer things for her than for myself so honestly I think I'm the one who benefits most from this :)

Button bracelets are fast, easy, cheap, and quite customizable. Plus, if you ever tire of them just snip the wire and use the buttons for something else. This would be a great activity for an older child's birthday party or rainy day activity.

Button and Feather Clips

I saw this link on Pinterest that I flipped over right away. I pinned it at bedtime, and by 9:00 the next morning it had been repinned 22 times, which means that by now this is definitely not a unique idea. It also means that a fire was lit under my bum to get on it and make some quickly before the trend passes. Since I don't wear bobby pins with great success I decided to make some on clips instead. I've come up with three different approaches to this look and can't decide which ones I like the best.

These have been so much fun I'm thinking of using this as a craft for my daughter's upcoming birthday party.

This first style uses metal clips that I found in the ribbon section at Walmart, though I hate to admit to shopping there. They are intended for making bridal accessories, but they are cheap and I am frugal when it comes to my crafting. The big difference with this one is that the button is at the tip of the clip rather than the hinge. It feels backwards, but I've found that we wear this style more than the others. Perhaps because of the awesome black and white bling one in the middle. (Click the pic to see it larger and read the instructions).

On style 2 I put the bottons on the hinged end of the barrette. It feels more "logical" this way, yet I just don't like it quite as well. We've also found that the feathers curling up are fun in my daughter's hair, but for my hair I prefer the feathers curling down. Who'd have thought? 

The third style is the bobby pin style just like what I pinned and the original source can be found here. I found it easier to glue the feathers to the button first rather than the piece of felt.

Side by side the three styles of feather clips. I really didn't expect to love the white feathers but they are so much fun! The red buttons are for my daughters for Valentine's Day. Do you think they will like them? If you make some leave me a message and link so I can see. I'd love to see yours!

BeYOUtiful

Last night I got the best compliment in the world. A couple friends told me that I am the most creative person they know. Are you kidding? ME???? Holy cow. Granted, every time they come over my kitchen table is buried deep beneath a pile of project-ness so I can see how the perspective has evolved. I happen to know many people FAR and AWAY more creative than myself. Even still, I jumped up and down, squealed, and told the hubs they just made my entire day.

This blog has been rather lame. Well, lame AND neglected. I couldn't decide what I wanted it to be and in not deciding it became nothing. I've thrown the blog-post-of-the-day topics away and will be documenting my projects instead. That way I don't have to clutter my family blog with all the junk half our family doesn't care about.


You have probably seen ideas around pinterest that use wooden letters on a canvas and then are painted over. I liked that idea. Then you've probably seen the "BeYOUtiful" graphics floating around. I liked that idea too. Add the two together, use only supplies on hand and here's what emerges: new art for my bathroom.

I pulled out some scrap wood and a few packs of Thickers from American Crafts. I liked the shape and the natural feel of the plain chipboard. The black ones were there for brainstorming but I ended up not using them.

The board was already painted and sanded down for a previous project that fell into the "epic fail" department.

See? This is what you see if you look at the back. A lesson in properly sealing the edge of a stencil being painted onto a porous surface.

But back to the project at hand...to make it easy to line up the letter I placed a line of painters tape across the bottom of the board where I wanted the words to be.

Which worked famously, if I do say so myself.

Then a coat of ModPodge (which I actually regret), some drying time, and Voila!

A ten minute project made on my living room bench to artsify my bathroom just a touch.

Ok, now for the regrets: ModPodge tends to pool up around the edges of the letters. I kept brushing it away to keep it thinner but worried that if I kept doing that I'd end up leaving nasty brush strokes in the stuff. I let it dry and now some of the letters have gobs of ModPodge hanging around the edges. I may try to cut out the excess with an exacto knife, or I may just try to convince myself to not be anal. If I were to do it again, I'd use tacky glue on the back of the letters (the adhesive they have just doesn't stick to wood very well) and then spray the whole thing with clear coat when it was dry. Lesson learned.

Either way, I love it, and in it's own way it is beYOUtiful too! :)