Nailed It - 'Hand Stamped Jewelry'

Okay, I have to admit, this is kind of my obsession lately. However, being somewhat of a perfectionist, I have only made three items, two of which I am going to be brave and show you. And yes, I know that hand made essentially means 'imperfect' it's what makes the items unique, but I am what I am ("I'm Popeye the Sailor Man" - sorry, my mind works in mysterious ways), and there's no changing that.

I fell in love with hand stamped jewelry last year when I discovered Etsy and all the wonderful hand made goodies out there. It's enough to make a girl swoon. I would see things all over the place and my heart would skip a beat.


But the $63 price tag made me gag a little (I'm not undermining her skills, it's just not something I could justify spending $60 odd dollars on). 

But then I found out that wonderfully crafty woman I know who also happened to stamp jewelry (not naming any names.... 'Sierra'). Huzzah!! 

So, after a few quick lessons, and a little bit of snooping around on the world wide web, I tried my hand at it. Admittedly the first time was a little, well imperfect. But after practicing on some scrap pieces and doing a little more research, I finally got a little more confident and decided to try again. But what to make?

I loved this idea:

( from The Pink Monogram)

But there's a lot going on, and I didn't have anything on hand other than letter stamps and a few images, so I'll leave that one for another day when my skills are a little more developed.

And I thought this was pretty cool:

(from PureRoxinPrint, an Etsy seller who no longer carries them)

But I didn't have sterling silver bars on hand (and wasn't going to order them online as I'm kind of an 'instant gratification' girl when it comes to crafts).

Then I saw this and inspiration struck:

And since it was just an image on Pinterest, with no link to any store, I figured I would wing it and make it my own.

This is the end version (it does need some polishing, but you get the general idea):

And the best part, it was essentially free, since I already had everything on hand from other jewelry crafts I had been trying. So, as you can see, it has four tags with each of our initials and the the ever popular '<3'. And since it came out rather well, I made a necklace as well, taking a little inspiration from the 'Mr & Mrs' pendant above.

Of course, after I had done it, I realized I had done the 'S' upside down, but hey, it's hand made.

So, all in all, not a bad way to spend an afternoon while Little P slept. 

And what says you? Did I 'nail them'?

K

Nailed It - Butterfly Shadow Box

I had intended to include two crafts in this post. Partly because I felt bad that I hadn't posted yesterday and partly because the first one was just so quick and easy. However, after writing about the first one, I decided that my 'verbal diarrhea' had gotten the best of me, and figured I would leave it at just the one. 

So, without further ado - Butterfly Shadow Box.

This is something I had seen quite some time ago on Pinterest - thought it looked simple enough (which was important as this was just as I was discovering my 'inner Martha Stewart'). I saw this:

                                                        (credit - Ali Edwards)

and after reading how she got inspired to do this and how simple it was, I figured, what the hey, I could so totally do this and that it would make for cute artwork in Little P's room.

So off to Michaels I went, with my trusty printout of said craft, and proceeded to locate a butterfly punch and some scrap book paper. It was then, that I realized just how expensive some of the scrap booking stuff is - it's crazy. And then I did a mental calculation of some of the items friends of mine have and I'm thinking 'Holy crap - they spent that much?!' Anyway, armed with a coupon for 40% off, I buy my punch and some funky paper (none of this girly stuff for me) and head on home (I already had a shadow box on hand from a previous debacle of a craft - which I may or may not tell you about one day).

While Little P was sleeping, I punched out the butterflies from my scrap paper, and then I read further down on the tutorial and realized that she used pages out of magazines. Brilliant! Thought I, and headed off to get my rather large collection of magazines that I just happen to have lying around the house (in hindsight, I could have saved myself some $ and just used the magazines, but oh well).

Once I had enough punched out, I chose the background paper (I didn't want to do plain white) and started to lay out the butterflies. This bit took the longest, as I moved them around to get the positioning that I liked. Then it was time to glue them. I folded them in half, so they were somewhat raised from the paper, and with a glob of glue on a plate, I slid the folded edge in the glue and then gently placed them on the background.

I then left them to dry overnight - I wanted to make sure that they adhered to the paper properly before closing the frame and putting it on display. Once it was all done, this is what I had:

The picture doesn't really do it justice (yes, I know M, we have a perfectly good camera and mini photo studio to take pictures of these things. What can I say? I'm an 'instant gratification' kind of gal. I promise, for the next one, I will use these). But I like it, and I kind of love how it looks like a butterfly display case. I was a little concerned that I should have used a larger shadow box (this is an 8 x 10) but I don't think a larger one would have worked in Little P's room.

It's now one of my favorite pieces in her room.

If I was to do it again (and I am seriously thinking of doing one for Fall, with pumpkins), I would change a couple of things:

1) I would use a larger frame, as it would be on display in the house, not in a room, and I 
    really think a 10 x 12 would be better suited.
2) Use a white shadow box. I think it provides a 'cleaner' look. If I had of had white spray 
    paint on hand, I probably would have painted it.
3) I would use nothing but punch outs of magazine pages. The one's with text on them are 
    my favorites.
4) Use sticky dots instead of glue. Would give more of a 3D look I think.

So, what says you oh wonderful readers? Did I 'nail it'?

Till next time....keep on punching.

K

Mommy-ism #72: There is something to be said for having your little one covered in paint (and glitter, and googly eyes….). While your first thought might be ‘Oh lord, how am I going to get this all off of you’, the moment you see just how delighted your little one is playing with all of it and making their ‘art’, you almost want to get down in there with them. Almost.

Nailed It - Personalized Canvas

I'm always looking for unique and totally cool ways to update the walls in our house (although M would say we don't need to), and while 'trolling' around on Pinterest one night, I found this: 

      

                                                                                    credit - Not On The High Street

But for $335 it was totally not gonna happen. So I thought, 'hey, I could do that'. All you need is a canvas, some white paint and some wooden letters.

So, my first effort cost me a grand total of $1.50. Yup. That's it. I already had a small 8 x 10 canvas on hand that I wasn't using for anything, I had white paint, so all I needed was some letters (chipboard - I got some scrap booking ones from Michaels for $1.50), so all I needed was a saying. Both M and I are huge 'Princess Bride' fans, so 'As you wish' just seemed appropriate. Less than an hour later, I had this (and forgive the photography - it was done on my phone and I couldn't get the lighting right - *sigh*):

Granted, the letters are textured (which I kind of like, actually), and I just glued them onto the canvas, but for $1.50 I think it turned out okay.

But I gave it another shot anyway. I had a 12 x 12 canvas on hand, some white spray paint (that I had used for a previous craft) and I found a tub of wooden letters at Walmart (200 of them) for a whopping $4! Bonus. I decided I also wanted to make it a little more '3D' so I used sticky dots (also on hand from a previous craft) that I got from Michaels ages ago. And again, after less than an hour, I had this:

Not bad huh?

So, if I were to do this again:

- I would measure out the letters and spacing (instead of just going 'gun-ho') so I wouldn't  

   have the 'hanging off the edge of the canvas' situation again, 

- I would really like to maybe do it all in lower case

- And maybe even make some of the key words (or just letters) a different color.

So, considering they aren't as 'fancy pants' as the $300 version, I think for around $6 they ain't too shabby.

So, what do you think? Did I nail it or what?

K

Nailed It... Melted Crayon Art

Let me prefix this by stating that this one, while cool, took a whole lot more time than I thought it would. And it wasn't very 'little hands' friendly. But other than that, it was fun and I think the end result was worth the amount of time it took to melt the crayons.

Anyone who has been on Pinterest has seen images like this:

credit - Artistic Life

Cool, huh? I had seen other ones, that were just essentially the rainbow of colors melted, but I liked the textured feel of this one and thought 'hey, we could make "Little P's Garden"'. Which is what we did.

I had Little P pick out the colors (granted, I had already sorted them out and had them in easy-to-reach piles for her) and the ones she didn't immediately stick in her mouth and take a huge bite of, went onto the canvas.

A word to the wise - 'those who do not respect the hot glue gun are destined to get burned by it.' Yup, not paying attention to the buildup of glue that was accumulating on the end of the gun resulted in me getting a lovely little blister on the end of my thumb from grabbing it in the wrong place. Oh, well. Live and learn.

Once the crayons had been glued onto the canvas, I placed it somewhere out of the reach of little hands and let it dry completely for two full days. Most tutorials for this say you only have to wait overnight, but with the rare humidity in Vegas while I was doing this, I decided to play it safe. Then, one evening while M was at work, we put the canvas in the bathroom, on top of piles of newspaper, on an angle and set to melting the crayons with my hair dryer. 

Little P helped for a while, holding the hair dryer, but for the most part, she just supervised, checking in on me every few moments or so to make sure I was still going. It took a good 20 minutes to get them melted and looking the way I wanted - if I had done this in the Summer time, it might have been easier to leave them outside in the 100 degree plus day for a few hours.

Once the wax had dried, I hot glued some pretty paper flowers on to it and 'ta-da', "Little P's Garden" was done.

(created March, 2012)

Not too bad an effort, if I do say so myself. 

Couple of things I would do differently, if I were to do it again.
            -  Use cheaper crayons, they apparently melt easier (although, with all the Back to  
                School sales on, you can't get much cheaper than Crayola at the moment)
            -  Use a smaller canvas. I had 12 x 12's on hand so that's what I used. In the future, I 
                would probably go with a 10 x 10 or maybe a 9 x 12.
            -  Add support to the back of the canvas. This would make sure that all of the 
                crayons have an even coating of glue and are all secured to the canvas (I had to 
                re-glue a couple after the melting process).

So, there you have it - my version of 'Melted Crayon Art'. Me thinks I totally 'Nailed It'.

Till next time, let the colors of life always bloom in your heart.

K