Howdy folks! We went to my 4 year old nephews birthday party Sunday and had a great time! He had a bounce house and it looked fun, the kids were having a ball in there when my sister says to me “go ahead and try it, the guy from the rental place said that it is safe for adults!” Well, I had to try it! Somewhere between the toe-touches and the somersaults (I was having a grand old time!) I pulled something in my back because an hour later when I reached down to pick something off the floor I felt it. I’m gonna feel this tomorrow I think, better keep the Advil handy:) Before this nonsense I made a card and earring set using a Victorian style stamp from About Art Accents and I am giving this stamp away, just leave a comment and I will draw a name in a week! Well, that’s easier than a cartwheel in a bounce house, aint it?
I had to make a thick envelope-box to hold the card and tag so I used my envelobox creator by crafter’s companion, boy it is slick! The earrings I made (I stamped the image at the end of a paper strip, colored it and rolled it up before adding two coats of UTEE for shine) are about 3/4″ thick and 2″ high, they are lightweight but bulky!
I originally thought I would put the full stamped image on the card with an earring on each side for embellishments but it did not work well so I opted for simple and made the big image into a bookmark.
To get the vintage enamel look I coated the design with utee and let it cool then I bent the paper to crack the embossing. I rubbed it with a brown inkpad and wiped off the excess so the cracks would show. Oh, and The coloring was done with Gelatos. If you want a better look at the stamp you could win by simply leaving a comment (hint, hint) you can see it here. Good luck and til next time happy crafting!
Howdy folks! I had a great time shopping at Hobby Lobby with friends on Friday. There is something about that “new store smell” a 50% off sale and being in a giddy mood that makes me lose all sense of reason when shopping. More paper, really, yes apparently I needed more paper (like a hole in the head!) LOL! We did not even get through the whole store, it was huge! It had a little too much furniture and decor stuff than I thought a craft store should have but oh well, if it keeps them in business I’m all for it. We now have a Joann Fabrics, AC Moore and now Hobby Lobby all within a 1/2 mile of each other. I wonder if the economy can support it? Anyway, I needed to make a card (and decide if I am going to keep the $10 stack of 180 sheets of chevron paper) so I turned on the video camera and you can see how I make a card with no planning whatsoever. And yes, those are my jammies.
Well, that was something else huh? Here are some photos of the card.
I made a gift tag too with the scraps.
The party for my nephew (the kid this card is for) is later today! I hope he likes his Boom-Whackers! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!
Happy Saturday folks! I found a really cool website all about paper beadmaking this week and on it there was a paper bead designer page where you could pick the size and type of bead you want to make and print out the sheet of bead strips for free! Here is what I made with the rainbow texture:
Neat huh? It took a little getting used to. At first it would only print two strips then I changed the settings to make a bead 1 1/8″ wide and for bead type I chose “all over design” and I got nice rectangle bands of color. I cut the strips corner to corner to make a taper. Normally if you roll a strip like that you get a bell shape but you can get an even taper in the center if you trim the wide end of the paper so each of the side angles are equal or just compensate by centering the taper as you roll. No need to make it complicated! I used mod podge to glaze the beads and it worked very well. I was worried that my printer ink would smear (it is an ink jet) but the mod-podge was thick enough to keep the ink from running. I did notice a purple/gray tint to my brush once in a while so I wiped it on a paper towel and kept on podgein’!
I use paraffin wax coated toothpicks to glaze my beads on, the wax keeps the mod-podge from gluing the bead to the toothpick. I stick the pics in Styrofoam to keep the beads from touching anything as they dry. Last weekend I went on a paper bead binge, look I filled my bottle with beads! I was very proud of myself! 🙂
It was a small bottle but still, there is probably 400 beads in there! Now I have a lot of beads to varnish, that’s OK tho, It is a nice chill-out task I can do in front of the TV, much like making the beads, heck who needs relaxation medication? Let’s all make paper beads! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!
Hello friends! I spent the day cleaning the basement. Well, most of the basement, I didn’t bother with my craft area or my husbands workshop, they were OK but the rest of the cellar had gone to pot over the summer. Hmm, does anyone say “gone to pot” anymore? Maybe it’s a Maine thing, well anyway, it means trashed and neglected and if that did not sum up my basement perfectly I don’t know what would. Let me paint a picture for you (because I would be horrified to share an actual picture) Sidewalk chalk artwork on walls and floor, paper strips from a gum wrapper bracelet turned paper bead obsession, pearler beads which I think somehow multiply once spilled on the floor (there were spilled on the floor waiting to be ironed…the iron was lost in this mess!), totes of kids toys that are apparently way more interesting once you pack them up and put them in the basement, and then there was the kids craft area. Â This was really bothering me. I’m not a neat freak but I work in my basement everyday, in addition to being the fabulous frugalcrafter I also do custom framing and I need a large clean area (AKA the pool table) to lay out frames on, it was out of control.
Warning, I’m gonna talk about cleaning ad organizing for at least another paragraph so if you want to skip to the video you can. Still here? Well, what do you know, cool! The basement went downhill when we moved our love seat downstairs after buying a new living room set last fall, then we put our old TV downstairs too. This was a kid magnet, so instead of the kids sitting at their craft table to create they dragged their stuff over to the love seat and created there. Craft sprawl is the worst! Yarn! I forgot to mention the yarn LOL! I put a small table behind the love seat thinking I might want to bead there and it was taken over by the kids, they did not use their craft table anymore and honestly it was too small for more than one to use at once. So I decided to change the kids craft area to kids art supply storage. I thought about buying a big industrial shelf and getting rid of the 6″ table they had but then I realized (read: too cheap to buy a shelf and too lazy to go to the store) that I already had a storage shelf under the table and two plastic carts I could put on top so I made my own shelf like storage solution. then it was a matter of tossing junk like dried up bottles of glue, paint and play doh, old coloring books and stuff they would never use then sorting the rest into drawers. I had a full drawer of sharpies AND a full drawer of water based markers when I was done. Insanity I tell you! I had a drawer for clay, basic craft supplies, watercolor, stickers, basic school supplies, crayons & colored pencils, fabric crafting and a couple more things. A milk crate for paper, homemade magazine boxes made from soymilk boxes for coloring books, notebooks and journals and a couple boxes for stamps. Under the table which was pretty well organized was jewelry making supplies, jumbo pads, pottery and a basket of ink pads. I was able to empty a fairly big storage unit by putting like items together and everything is accessible, will wonders ever cease? The I took masking tape and a sharpie and labeled every bin and drawer! Â go me! OK now, on to the video of an unrelated recycled bottle cap craft!
If you are in need of bottle caps ask any single friend you have to save them for you, you will get them in spades! So as a reward to all of my cleaning today (or yesterday as you are reading this) I am rewarding myself by checking out the brand new Hobby Lobby in Bangor Maine (I’ve never been in one before!) The grand opening is tomorrow (or by now I guess it’s today) so if you are there say howdy! I’m meeting friends there first thing before the Buffalo Wild Wing crazies grab all of the parking spaces LOL! I actually thought they were open last week but it was just the wingers. Well that’s it for tonight, I am extremely tired from the cleaning but happy with the results. I hope the kids can keep it that way. 🙂 Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!
Howdy folks! I just wanted to give you a heads up that everything at Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff is 30% off today!
You can choose from Learn to Paint kits, digital stamps, party printables, SVG die cutting template, printable templates clip art and more! Don’t miss this chance to stock up before the holidays at Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff and save 30%! Thank you for your support and as always happy crafting!
You get a pattern to trace, full step by step instructions with photos and a high resolution photo of the finished painting to print! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!
Here I have the start of a watercolor painting and a few practice studies of dew drops. I’ll share a video on painting the dew drops as well as the finished peony painting in a day or two. Â Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!
Evenin’ folks! It officially feels like fall ’round these parts. I watched my son compete in a cross country meet with 7 schools today and it was so chilly (I can’t imagine how all the shorts and tank-topped runners felt) that it must have taken all my energy to keep warm because I zonked out on the couch after dinner! I was chilly all day really, I brewed a pot of tea and put it on my coffee-cup warmer while I worked in my studio and drank cup after cup of raspberry zinger. It won’t be long until snow falls…anyway, I’m gonna keep it short tonight (yawn) and share another quick watercolor tutorial:
I love irises and I filmed a quick video to show you how to draw and paint them. Today we will use a new item, wax, in out painting, nothing fancy, just a hunk of wax like an old candle or white crayon. We will also use my most useful, yet least fancy tool: a piece of cut up credit card. Have a look.
I hope these quick free watercolor tutorials help you discover the fun in watercolor painting. I try to introduce a new technique each time so you can create beautiful paintings while adding to your bag of tricks. If you want to learn more about watercolor or try longer projects please consider one of my PDF printable Learn to Paint With Lindsay painting tutorials. the new Autumn stream tutorial uses the wax technique you learned today.
Well, I better mosey before I fall asleep at the keyboard. Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!
Hello friends! I love Sunday nights, the house is clean, backpacks are ready for school in the morning and so are the brand new band instruments my twins will be playing. There is nothing like the sweet sounds  of musicality coming from two enthusiastic children who have never had one lesson. Did you know how loud a saxophone is? Really, do you? In all honestly I cam very excited for them, my other daughter is playing flute and the teacher told her that her job over the weekend was to get it to make sound…well she scored an A+ on that task!  I played flute in 5th grade and I can see my mother’s curse came true, I have daughters who act just like me, twins even.
Tonight I wanted to share a simple way to make bails for your jewelry that are both decorative and inexpensive. For these sea glass embedded resin earrings I needed a way to attach them to ear wires without being gaudy. The glue on bails I like for opaque pendants showed through the resin in a bad way so I needed to make something that is pretty if it is seen. Â I took a 10″ piece of 20 gauge wire and made a spiral on one end to glue it to the bail and a simple loop on the other end to attach to an ear-wire. Â The earrings below also had beads in the resin and I used a wrapped loop…a poorly done wrapped loop…I’m showing you this because I really think a simple loop is the way to go LOL!
To help me make a decent spiral I inserted the end of the wire into the hole in one of my large wire jig pegs and pressed the peg to the jig white I wound the wire around. I saw this tutorial from beadaholique that explains it perfectly. I hope you have a lovely evening and til next time happy crafting!
The Frugal Crafter Blog 