Joy Frame

Friday the girls and I went to the local craft fair at the local high school.  It's one of the biggest craft shows in the area, and there is always a lot of great stuff at this show.  I always get new ideas to make things, find new ornaments or decorations for Christmas. 

My sister-in-law found a frame that she loved that was hung up by a ribbon, and just had the glass in it with the word "JOY" with no backing.  And she was about to purchase it when I remembered that one of my friends gave me a bunch of 8x10 frames. So I figured I could make these myself, and save her a little bit of money.

So today was the day I decided to try this out for myself.

 First I took the backing and the glass out from the frame.  Then Phil helped me to drill two holes in the top portion of the frame so we could tie a ribbon in it later. I then hand sanded the frame so the varnish would come off and so that the paint would adhere to it better.

 I put about 3 coats of paint on the frame, letting it dry for about a half an hour to an hour in between coats.  Then once dried, I took a sanding sponge and sanded the frame in spots so that it would have a worn look to it.  And then sealed it with varnish.

 I cut out the letters, "JOY" with my Cameo, and adhered it to the glass.  I used the wet method to apply the vinyl to the glass.  This is where you take some water with a tiny bit of liquid soap and spray it on the glass.  The guys at the company I used to work with taught me how to do this.  It helps to eliminate bubbles that you get in the vinyl.

I let the water solution dry and then lifted up the transfer tape, and it was done!  I like how this looks!  I have a few more frames that I think I will make into other crafty projects.  I am not so great at the ribbon part, and my SIL offered to do that part.  So hopefully I can get a picture of that when it is all done.

These will make great gifts!  I can see doing a family name on it, the possibilities are endless!

Crafting class samples

So I've created a little group of crafters in our park.  The Hillside Crafters.  And we're going to make a couple of projects next week.

 One is a Santa made from a 2" chip brush.  We saw this at a crafting fair in Minden last weekend.  There were a ton of cool things that people made, and I thought this would be easy enough for us to make.

Next is going to be a wood block snowman.  The instructions say to use a glove for a hat, but I like this hat I made from leftover fleece.  It just looks better.  I could have made the face a little  bigger, but I like it so far.  :)  Hope that it will be easy for the girls to make. 

Embroidered Towels

It is gifting season, so I've started embroidering towels for gifts.  They are one of my favorite gifts to give because many times people cannot find their names on anything personalized unless they have it specially made for them. 

I use the font Eleanor from Designs by Juju.  It is my favorite fonts to use for blankets and towels because of its classic look and the lines aren't too thin for bulky items.

I like to use poly thread instead of rayon because it seems to last longer for color.  I found this especially for items that will be worn in the sun a lot.

Wedding signs.

These are the signs I made for my niece's wedding, and how they used them for decor.  My sister arranged the flowers that they used with some of the signs.

 This is the instagram sign that they placed in the bar area where we all waited until the ceremony started.

The large sign is actually made from 2 smaller signs I bought from Michaels.  We nailed it together with a board in the back to hold it together.

This is the candy bar that they used for favors.  I made the little candy signs from cardstock and cut it using the Sizzix. 

And below you can see the chalkboard sign on one of the shelves.  I found the sign a few years ago at Target, and finally had a place to use the sign. 

Mini Prayer Flags

I've been in two swaps now for making mini prayer flags.  These are less than 2" and can be wearable if you put them on safety pins. You make them from the bits of scraps that you have from other leftover projects.  I've had a lot of scraps that I've been saving from different projects, and used denim and thicker canvas as a sturdier background.

These are the first ones that I made for a swap in one of my fabric crafting groups.  I also decided to make some heart-shaped ones because I love hearts.  You can also put bits of beads on them, sequins, whatever you like onto them.  I have a ton of beads and charms, so it was fun going through those.

 

 These four are from another swap in an art group. They were a little bigger than the safety pin ones. I liked working on a little bigger "canvas".  I could use bigger beads on them and charms. Using burlap and trim helped to give them a little different look.

They are a lot of fun to make, and really fast and easy too!

Painted Rocks

 So I've been sucked into the new craft of the moment, painting rocks.  What you do is paint up some rocks with acrylic paint, paint pens, sharpies, or whatever you have on hand, and then seal it with spray on acrylic sealer.  And after you do that, you hide them somewhere for someone to find.  I've actually hid two and gave away two.

This is the first one that I painted, the LOVE rock with hearts, and my sister-in-law liked it so I gave it to her.  :) 

This rock is a painting I've always wanted to do at one of those paint and sip places, but I just miniaturized it to fit on a rock.

I think I have to do a lot more practicing, and I have a lot more rocks to paint sitting in my livingroom.  Will post more when I paint more.

Ribbon Flag Class

The girls saw a USA flag made out of ribbons and wanted to make them. So I had a class at my home last month.  My two sister-in-laws, our neighbor, and one of our friends came over to make the flags.

 These are the supplies we used to make the flags.  It's pretty easy, just tie various ribbons and fabric on a dowel and then glue the blue part on part of the flag.  And sew or glue on buttons for the stars.

 Here is everyone working on their flags.

 And below are the finished products.  Everyone did such a great job!

Etched cups and paper tags

 We've been working on some etched metal cups.  My sister-in-law has a sand blaster, so we sand blasted a couple of cups for friends of ours.  They came out really nice!  I'll have to do that for me soon.  I like how there is a contrast in colors with these cups.

I've also been working on some tags for my daughter.  She is starting a business making succulent gardens.  And wanted some tags.  I found these cute dies from Spellbinders that are succulents.  So I made her these tags.  The tags I cut out with dies from Sizzix.  They came out pretty cute.

Dream Catchers

Last month I signed up for a Dream Catcher Swap in one of the groups I'm in.  We were assigned a partner, after we signed up, and we would send one dream catcher to the other person.  My partner was my friend Aileen.  We would tell them what colors or themes we liked, and they would create the rest. 

 

 I saw the colors Orange/Red/Yellow for her.  She is a very bright and happy person, and she loves colors.  So I made her the dream catcher that is above.  I'm not used to working in the warm color spectrum. A little out of my element.  But I think it came out ok, and she loved it!
 

The above dream catcher is what she sent to me.  I love the cool colors, and she did such a beautiful job!

The dream catcher below I made from the leftover supplies that I have.  My sister-in-law loved it, so I'm giving it to her.   She really likes it. 

Bubble Tube personalization, ie: Putting small vinyl letters on small tubes.

My niece is getting married next weekend, and I've been helping her with some of her decorations for her wedding. In previous posts, I posted signs and favor bags that I've made for her using my silhouette machine and other scrapbooking tools.  When they had the idea for the small tube bubbles instead of birdseed or sparklers, I thought, "OMG, I can SO personalize those for them".   Not remembering how not easy it is to weed small copy.

 Well, I cut out all the copy needed using my silhouette machine, and at that moment remembered how hard it was to weed out small copy.  And I'm thinking, OMG, a week is not enough time to do this!

So I started out by weeding out the inside portions of all the letters and numbers. Those inside parts of the "A" is really really tiny.  LOL

 

 Then I went and pulled off most of the black vinyl leaving just the copy.  And of course I began to lose some of the letters, and I would carefully use my weeding tool to put the letters and commas back onto the backing paper.  Then I'd put the transfer tape on top of that, and sometimes I'd lose some of the commas or letters there.

 Then I'd pull the transfer tape away from the backing sheet (sometimes losing a letter here or there) and then transfer the vinyl copy to the bubble tube.  Oh, I had to clean the bubble tubes first with alcohol because in a few places, we had bubble liquid on the tubes. And I'd sometimes lose a letter here or there too.

Well, somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered that you could actually transfer the whole piece of vinyl, before weeding, then weed off the parts you don't need.  I thought, "Well, it can't go any slower than the way I was doing it before." So I tried it, and OMG, doing it this way made life so much easier and faster!

 I still weed the center of the letters & numbers first.

 You then peel the backing paper from everything, being careful to make sure everything transferred to the transfer paper, then adhere it all to the bubble tube.

 Carefully pull off the transfer tape.

 And I mean carefully.  You still can pull off letters, but by using my weeding too, I could actually push the letter onto the bubble tube to help it to stick.

 Carefully weeding the copy.

 It's working!

And here is the final product!

I am thinking about sealing it with some mod podge, but I will need to test it first.

Adventures in wedding favor making....

I have been helping my niece with her wedding decorations.   And one thing that she wanted was this wedding favor bag.  They are going to do a candy bar, and she wanted bags for them to put candy in with this saying:

First thing that came to mind was, oh no, I can't print white on kraft bags through my ink-jet printer.  Next thought was to purchase a rubber stamp.  But all the rubber stamps for this type of thing are coming from China, and it took 4 weeks for me to get a Christmas gift that said it would take 10 days last year.  So, scratch that, plus the rubber stamps were running from $25-$60 not including shipping.  It would be ok if it would be reusable, but how many more times will they be stamping that?

So, what to do?  Next thought, I could silkscreen it onto the bag.  I could cut vinyl for a stencil and buy the whole silkscreen kit and go from there.  Ok, Cool!  That would work.  So I order the kit, which only came with black ink, crap!  Now I will have to order white ink, well, let's see if Michael's has it and I can use their coupon!  Yep!  Score! 40% off!

So I sit down and design the stencil, made sure to mirror it to make sure I didn't silk screen upside down.   And I cut out the stencil, and the letters are going to be too small and too thin to do that.  Ding dang it!  Now what to do?  Cut it all out in vinyl?  Nope, still have a bit of a problem weeding.

Let's try using Avery decals!  So I go to buy the decals, design everything on their website, print it out, and everything is off center.  GREAT. Try to move it so that it would print correctly...Nope.  Totally doesn't help.  Now I'm getting REALLY frustrated. Never had that problem with printing with their labels before.  What to do?

Make your own labels!  I found that I could take a solid sheet of sticker paper, print out what I want, and then using my handy dandy really large circle punch, I could punch the labels out to put on the bag!!  Did it work....  YES!  I know I could have cut them out with my silhouette if I use their cut and scan option, but since I had all the issues with the avery labels, I just thought the easiest way was to punch them out with my very large circle punch.

 

Above is the sheet of stickers and the large circle punch!

 You just turn the circle punch upside down to align it with the image you printed, and punch it out!  After cutting 3 circles out on one side, I'd take my paper cutter and trim off the section I punched.  

This worked out beautifully!

These are the finished bags, not exactly like the first sample that she wanted, but she loves how they turned out!  So very excited that she liked them!  So when things won't work out the first time, there are many other options!

Wedding decor, birthday gifts, and USA Rugby

My niece is getting married in a few months, and I've been helping her with some of her wedding decor and gifts.  Here are the bridal hangers that I made for her.  These are done with wooden hangers and gold vinyl. These were so much fun to make, and really easy. 

I've seen these on pinterest and on etsy.  And after figuring out what colors she wanted, I cut the vinyl out, placed them on the hangers, then sealed it with mod podge. 

 She also wanted a couple of signs made, here are two that I did so far.  I still have 2 more to make.  I bought the top wood sign from Michael's, then decorated it with vinyl.

 

 The above sign I got in the $1 section at Target, but it was $3.  LOL  Then decorated that with vinyl.

 

 She also wanted a little banner for her card box, so i created this from white burlap using the banner file from Big Dreams Embroidery.

 Since I had my Silhouette out, I decided to make some labels for my canisters.  Normally there's not a problem, until you need to figure out which one is flour and which one is bread flour.  LOL.

 Then I whipped out some coffee cup tags with my Sizzix and Tim Holtz's Fresh Brew Bigz die. 
These were really fun to make!  I love being able to make them the colors I need for gifts.  I think I might need to package some up to give as gifts.

Then I made a sign for my niece Kat.  She LOVES to read, and I thought this would be a cute sign for her to have around while she's reading.  Plus she sent the saying to my nephew as a meme, so I knew it would be perfect!!

 

 Next project I did was for my step-son, he wanted the USA Rugby logo for his megaphone.  So I made him some logos.  It was my second time to use multi-colors in a decal.

 This is him at the USA Sevens tournament last weekend.  LOL  And those are the decals on the megaphone.  Glad he's got the USA spirit in him!!