Craft like and Egyptian!

Girl Scouts Thinking Day is coming up in a couple of weeks and it is pretty cool. Each troop picks a country and then gives a presentation about it. Also they make swaps to trade with the other girls they meet. My daughters’ troop is doing Egypt so I came up with this easy (and practically FREE) craft for them to make and swap:

These cute hieroglyphic pendants are made from discontinued formica samples from the local hardware store. I got a few hundred of them last year! I love that I am upcycling something that had no use to anyone. You can snag these sample for free off the rack at any hardware store but I beg you to ask for discontinued ones so we can keep them out of the landfill!

Here is what you need to make these cool necklaces:

Formica Samples, acrylic paint in earth tones, paper to make the stencils with, natural sponges or kitchen sponges cut up into irregular shapes, stencil brushes or make-up wedges for stenciling, cording for the necklace-I used Incredible ribbon yarn (cheaper than ribbon and soft), metallic pony beads and a gold marker, stamps & ink, rhinestones. the last three items are optional but fun to add, feel free to substitute any of the item to use what you have on hand.

Here are the prep steps you need to do BEFORE the girls arrive:

1. Lay out large sheets of waxed paper to protect your work surface. Wet your sponge and ring out the water. Squeeze dabs of light earth tone paint (I used a sage green, dusty rose and cream) on a piece of waxed paper and dip the sponge in the colors and dab on the back of your formica samples, let dry.
2. Use a thick paper such as old file folders to cut simple stencils with an x-acto knife. Keep the inside piece too because you might want to use the inside as a mask, see the photo below, the tile with the person in it uses the stencil part and the other one uses a mask:

Here is where I will get the girls involved!

1. Give each girl a sheet of waxed paper and 5 tiles and a few stencils. Squirt out a wee bit of black and brown paint on the waxed paper. Load a make up wedge or stencil brush with brown and pounce it on the wax paper to remove excess paint. Place the stencil over the prepared tile and pounce the brush up and down in the center of the stencil. Pick up some black paint and pounce it around the edge of the stencil for depth. repeat for each formica tile. Let dry.
2. Use small letter stamps or postage style stamps to stamp “Egypt” on the tile.
3. Add details with gold marker. This is optional but looks really great! Also you can brush on some metallic eyeshadow, glitter and add a rhinestone if desired!
4. Cut a 30″ length of ribbon and thread it through the hole and slide on a pony bead (A Q-tip with the fluff removed can help push the ribbon through the hole in the bead) and tie the ends together. Viola! You have made a fabulous necklace!

Variations: This craft can be adapted for cross curriculum projects in the classrooms. You can imitate the Native American Art and French cave paintings or even Hawaiian art. The applications for geography, history and social studies classes are endless!

If you have any questions just leave a comment and I will answer you the best I can. Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Can you make a scrapbook page without a photo? YES!

We don’t always have a camera handy to capture a memory and sometimes we come across little mementos that need to be preserved even though there are no pictures to go with them. I was cleaning out my 9-year-old’s backpack he other day when I found this typing assignment.

It was called the ABC’s of ME and the kids got a prompt in computer class and had to type a response. I smiled at some of the responses he gave and was confused by others (favorite childhood memory: Falling and knocking his tooth out?!? He was 1, I don’t think he remembers that except in me telling the story and trust me, he was not happy!…I think he must have thought it was first childhood memory maybe?) Anyway, it was funny to see a snapshot of him at nine.  I could have used his current school picture or any current photo of him but I think the page is complete without it, don’t you?

Take a second look when you are cleaning out your kids schoolwork, you might just find a scrapworthy gem in there and no, it does not have to have a photo to go with it. 😀 Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

A great deal on SVG sets!

Howdy folks, just a quick post to let you know about a great bundle of SVG/Cut It sets at Lettering Delights. All of the cut is sets contain these formats: ai, dxf, eps, gsd, jpg, pdf and svg so you are sure to find one that fits your die cutting machine. They are offering their SVG sets that are normally priced from $4-$6 a set (still way cheaper than Cricut Cartridges) in a bundle of 100 sets for $100! That is $1 a set or pennies an image! so if you have been waiting to snag some of these grab the bundle now, I really like the rolled roses and canning jar sets, so pretty! Oh, I even found a coupon code for 20% off that expires 2/28/12 for 20% off a purchase over $20: BundleBuyBundle so that would save you $20 on the bundle of 100 sets!

This bundle is only available at this price until Wednesday so if you want to save hundreds of dollars (about 400 bucks actually) head over to Letting Delights and grab this bundle today! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Pastel Colors+Kraft=Yummy Color Combo!

I love kraft cardstock, it is like the little black dress of your craft stash, it goes with everything!

 

I made this card for a very dear friend after neglecting to send the card I planned to give her on her birthday (I’m such a boob!) but better late than never right?

 

I used paper from my Hugs & Kisses digital paper pack for the background. I simply printed them from the Windows Picture & Fax viewer (how easy is that!) and it automatically scaled them to a quarter sheet. If you want step by step instructions for that please see this post.

 

Well, that is all I have time to write today, the kids have been on break all week and running this momma ragged! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

It’s Finally Here!

Last summer I designed a stamp set for Pink Persimmon and it is finally available to buy! Being mainly a digital designer I get the instant gratification of designing a set one day and listing it that evening but designing physical product is a whole new ball of wax but oh, it sure is sweet pressing that stamp to paper! Here are some ideas using my new Cupcake Party Stamps I designed for Pink Persimmon:

For the full instruction on making this party set please see the March 2012 issue of Scrap & Stamp Arts!

I was also able to use the new Cupcake party stamps along with other fabulous stamps from Pink Persimmon to design a party set for Scrap & Stamp Arts Magazine. It is the Stamp-A-Party article in the March 2012 issue on newsstands now, check it out!

It was really fun to design a set I know would be stamped, rather than printed. You can see the stamps below, you simply stamp a cupcake wrapper section four times next to each other and you get a perfectly sized wrapper! You can use whatever color you like and mix and match the patterns if you want. You can also use the wrapper for stamp kissing since you get a sizable swatch of pattern on each stamp. It is such a fun set!

Thanks for stopping by and sharing my excitement! Til next time happy crafting!

WOYWW {a messy start}

So this morning my daughters asked if they could help me in the studio. “Yes!” I said as it just so happened I needed some guinea pigs to try out the project I was planning to do with the brownies this week, here is what my desk looked like when we left it (halfway through the project}…

 

I had a whole sleeve or Formica samples that were discontinued from a lumbar yard and decided it was time to put them to use again. You can see what I did with another batch of Formica samples here.  We are making swaps for Girl Scouts Thinking Day and our country is Egypt so I designed stone looking pendants that we are going to stencil hieroglyphics on so they look like ancient Egyptian art. Then they will be put on earthy ribbon with a few shiny beads and we will have the coolest swaps around;) I like to gauge how a craft will go by having my kids do it first…I’m definatly going to make sure I tell the moms to have their kids wear old clothes because the paint was everywhere!

That is as far as we got because we needed to go roller skating, you know how that is right?

Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting! Oh, PS to all the other WOYWWers out there, when I comment on your desks I’ll be using my google account incase you are wondering who that “Lindsay” chick is commenting on your blog 😀

Limited Supply Layouts

Last Friday I showed you a video of how I pack for a crop.  By limiting my supplies I have less to pick from therefore I can scrap quicker. Limiting your choices should not limit your creativity tho. Here is a layout I made with two sheets of the same pattern paper, one sheet for the background and the other sheet I used as embellishments. I admit these layouts are a bit plain but they tell the story and are in my album and that is good enough for me 😀

 

I did not have time to properly pull papers to go with my photos due to a kid home sick with a stomach bug so before I headed out to the crop I grabbed my newest paper stack: The Fresh Floral Stack from DCWV and my binder of scrabooking stamps. You can see my video on stamp organization here. I was fun to build a layout with paper and stamps. for an extra touch I used a fine tipped Bic Marker and a ruler to draw a frame around my photo cluster. Remeber how populat the Making Memories foam stamps were a few years ago? I used the foam stamps for my title “divas”, they hold ink as well as rubber and give a grat impression. Go ahead, dig out those moldy-oldies!

On this two page layout I also used paper from the floral stack, did a bit of stamping and kept it simple. Also I dies my ribbon with the pink inkpad I stamped the journal block with. I almost didn’t scrap these photos then I asked myself “Would my kids want to look at these photos?” and the answer was “Yes!” so into the scrapbook they go. Face it, my kids do not care what paper, embellishments of techniques I use, they just want to see the pictures of fun times. That is why I urge people to print out your photos. You don’t need to spend 4 hours on a page or scrapbook them at all, put them in a simply album so your kids can see them. Just write the names and dates on the back of the photos (like mom used to do) ans put them in a photo album and rest assured that no one is thinking the less of you for it 🙂

 

That’s all for today! Don’t forget the $1 retirement sale is going on through tomorrow at MyGrafico. I know the site was down for a bit yesterday due to high traffic but it is OK now. Til next time happy crafting!

A St. Patty’s Day Free Craft & $1 Retirement Sale!

Happy President’s Day! I know many people are off work today and many kids are on school vacation so it is the perfect day to share the craft I plan to teach next month at my free craft class at the local library. This craft is fun! Feel free to teach it to your childs classroom, scouts or home school group, that is why I am sharing it 🙂 Although if you know me in real life you can just bring your kids to my free class 😉

 

The most fun thing about this project is the Magic Rainbow Paintbrush and you can make it your self. Just take a 1″ foam paintbrush (they are on sale for 5 cents each at ACmoore this week!) and squeeze yellow paint on the cent and red and blue at the sides as shown. This needs to be tube watercolor, gouache, or tempera paint, I tried liquid watercolor and it was a mess, the colors blended together too much. Now spritz the brush with water. Then you want to work the paint into the brush by painting the brush back and forth on a palette, don’t flip the brush, keep the color lined up. Now you should be able to make a lot of rainbows, just give the brush a spritz of water when it dries out. You can let the paint dry up in the brush and spritz it with water when you are ready to use it again! You can make these in other colors too, oh the possibilities!

 

You can download the instructions and template for free here. They are in PDF format so no need to worry about sizing.

Since you are going to my shop anyway please check out my retiring products on sale for $1! The sale ends on Wednesday the 22nd so Don’t Wait!

Phew, that’s a lot of $1 steals! Don’t wait tho, they are only availble at MyGrafico until Wednesday during the Semi Annual Retirement sale! Thanks for stopping b nd til next time happy crafting!

Simple Sunday Stamping!

Happy Sunday Folks! I had this stamped sock monkey left over from last weekends watercolor pencil tutorial and thought I should make a quick card with it.

We have given the watercolor pencils quite a workout this weekend at my house. I brought up my “kids” binder of stamps, a black waterproof inkpad and my Inktense pencils and the kids and I have been sitting in front of the fire and coloring all weekend!  Not a bad way to spend the day, eh?

Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!