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Showing posts from 2010

Princess and the Pea

I finally got all my princess and the pea play sets finished just in time for Christmas.  Here is what one looks like all finished.  The pillows would be a great project for a little one to sew, but I would leave the princess to somebody a little little older to try to make, even though she isn't too difficult to make.

3 Little Princesses

I am slowly working on these 3 little cuties.  It has taken me so much longer then I thought with the grandparents in town and thanksgiving festivities.  I am making them for my nieces (each one altered to look like them).  I got the tutorial for them here .  I just love how simple they look.  They totally remind me of Veggie Tales.   =)  I hope I can alter the design and make more uncommon fairy tale play sets.

One Very Hungry Caterpillar

I made my first Halloween costume ever this year for my little girl.  I was going to make a tutorial on how I made the hungry caterpillar, but I don't really know how to sew.  I'm sure if anyone who does know how to sew saw how I made this, they might be horrified!  Plus, this is the first time I have ever put in a zipper and I don't think I did it right...lol.  Oh well, at least the zipper works. One day this caterpillar will be a beautiful butterfly! This picture is a little dark, but it was late at night and the only full body shot (well almost full body) that isn't all blurry (my hungry caterpillar is also a very wiggly one!).

Halloween Luminaries

I had a major lack of Halloween decorations, so I started to make these cute luminaries.  I have seen lots of variations on these guys, most are done with tissue paper, but I made mine using glitter on the inside. So what you need is a glass jar (I like pickle jars), some mod podge, black craft paint, a paint brush, and some glitter. So all you need to do is clean your glass jar and coat it in some mod podge.  I suggest kind of speckling it on instead of coating up and down in strokes so you avoid a streaky look.  Then just sprinkle lots of glitter on the inside and let it dry over night.  You can see the orange one is almost dry and the purple one is just starting to dry. Once dry, you can paint some spooky faces on the outside.  I just free handed them, but you could always cut them out of black paper and glue them on too. Then add some lights on the inside and you are ready to go! Now I just need to finish the last jar of pickles to make a ghost one.

Birthday Cards

It's my niece's 3rd birthday and nephew's 7th birthday this month, so I made these cards for them. The ice cream cone card is for my niece...three scoops for turning three! I had to make them real fast since my little girl is keeping me so busy, so the cards are really simple.

Finished Quilt

I just realized that I never put a picture up of my finished quilt...ops.  It is way big for my little girl now, but someday it will be just the right size for her.  =)

Tissue Paper

A few years ago I had received something that came in this really nice sparkly pink tissue paper.  I saved the paper because it looked cool and I knew I would use it for something.  Well, a few years have gone by and now I finally am using it.  I got this nice frame for a picture of my baby girl that lets the picture look like it is floating, but the walls in my apartment are so bland in color so I had to do something.  Then I remembered the tissue paper and thought I would try placing it between the layers of glass and I really like its crinkly look.  I might just have to get more frames like this and try to find some more cool tissue paper.

My New Baby Girl

I had my baby girl on 8-11-10.  Isn't she just cute with my juggling clubs.  Have to start her out early!  She was way bigger then I thought she was going to be...9lbs and 2oz and 22 inches long.  She doesn't even fit into some of the cute newborn outfits that I got. Now that I'm getting used to her being here, I hopefully will be able to get back to my crafts!

Dear Baby...

Tomorrow I will be induced and I'm so nervous!  My little girl just doesn't want to come out, so I took the time today to write a little letter to our baby today and I'll put it in her scrapbook.  It's a little sad to know that she isn't going to be in my belly anymore, but I got to have her in there a lot longer then a lot of mommies get to have them in their bellies.  I also feel a little empty because I'm not feeling the last part of this pregnancy like I imagined it to be.  I haven't experienced the contractions, the water breaking, and the excited rush to the hospital like I thought I would. I really hope everything will go really smoothly!

Making your own eggs

As much as I love to make my clay eggs, I hate blowing out real eggs so I thought I would try making paper eggs.  I started out with plastic Easter eggs.  My first layer was mostly just water and paper with just a little glue so it wouldn't stick too much to the inside.  Then once it dried I made a second layer with less water and more glue.  I did more and more layers until I got the thickness I liked.  I had tried covering the outside of the egg instead of the inside, but I couldn't get it as smooth as I wanted. Once it is all dried it really is very easy to pop them out. You can see that they aren't super smooth, but when you cover them with clay, you can't really tell. I joined the halves together with some paper and lots of glue. I covered the whole egg with a layer of glue, let it dry, and then it was ready to cover with clay.  When I baked it, I kept my eye on it, but never had any fires.  Benefits over blown out eggs: 1. It is much easier to get an eye hook into

Clay Eggs

One thing I always loved to make are clay eggs.  I think it is because they are so easy to make, even when you are nine months pregnant.  =) So you want to start off with a hollowed out egg.  If you never have blown out an egg before it is easy.  Just take a needle and poke it on one end then poke a larger hold on the other end.  Then blown in the smaller hole really hard and the yoke should come out.  You can make a paper egg and it will work too (I'll put up how to do that later).  Once you have your egg and it is dry, then you cut think slices from your can and gently press onto the egg.  If you press to hard your egg might break....this happened to me on my purple one.  =(   *sniffles* Cover your egg and try to get the slices as close to each other as possible.  This will let them distort less later.  The smaller the cane the easier it is to do this, though I like the look of the bigger ones better.  If you have gaps, fill them in with clay. Then you want to roll it around in y

Clay Pens

So a few posts back I showed how to make some canes and now it is time to put them to use.  One of the easiest things is to make pens. I like to use the basic Bic pens.(that don't have any grips on them.  Start by taking out the ink so you just have the shell.  Then you will cut your can into nice thin slices and start to press them onto the pen gently. Cover the entire pen! I like to start at the end and work towards the pen tip. You might have to trim the extra off at the end. Once it it all covered I like to gently roll it back and forth to make it smooth.  The canes will distort a little bit.  I recommend (if using sculpty or premo) to bake at 250 for 15 minutes.  It is better to go a little cooler so your pen doesn't melt!  Once it is done and cooled, you can sand it a little bit to make it a tad smoother.  I like to use wet/dry sand paper at the highest I can find (usually that is 600).  Once sanded, I use a glaze and cover the entire pen.  It makes it nice and shiny and

4th of July

Happy 4th of July! My mini fruit pizza wannabes

Simple Clay Canes

So now that you know how to make that nice clay blend, it is time to get some canes going. If you just take the blend and roll it up, you will get a cane that looks like this and it is cool, but we can make it cooler! What you want to do is take a solid color and make it the same size as your blend or just a little longer. I like to put the blend on top of the solid and then roll it up. It is going to look like this.  It is called a jelly roll cane.  Then you are going to reduce it. The end might start to look a little deformed and that is ok. When you cut the end off it should look like these and now they are ready for a project!

Skinner Blend

I've recently gotten back into my clay and I thought I would put up how to make a skinner blend (mostly because my hubby wanted to know how I did it). So first take your two colors of clay (roll them into flat sheets or go through your pasta machine) and make them into triangles and joing them like this. Once again blogger has decided to rotate my picture on me...gerrrr. Once it is through the pasta machine fold it one time.  The blue edge went up to the long white edge. This is what it looks like once it has gone through a 2-3 times.  Make sure you keep folding it in the right direction. Now it has gone through a dozen or so times just keep folding and putting it through till you get the blend you want. Now you are ready to create your project!

Fun Summer Popcan Bracelet

Got to love recyclable crafts.  I've been saving up a bunch of those pop can top tab things for a while because there is a lot you can do with them like make this cool bracelet and here is how. What you need is 22 of these things and some elastic string and optional spray paint if you want more than just the silver look.  Spray paint both sides and I suggest also a sealer of some kind so that they paint doesn't wear away so fast.  I'm going to show you without spray paint. Line up the tabs like this so that you will not have any sharp parts on your skin. They are going to be lined up like this.  11 on the top and 11 on the bottom.  If making for a kid, you might only need 9 or 10. The tricky part is getting the weaving right.  I start with the bottom and then do the top the same way. The string will come back up through the top tab, but this picture show midway of the step. It should look like this, but not so blurry.  =) Then just keep going all around. You can see better