What's your sign? Canvas?

I don't know about you, but every time I'm in a craft store, I walk down the painting aisle (as well as every other aisle) and wish I had painting skills. I would love to just buy a canvas and free hand a masterpiece. 

Ok, back to reality Marissa. Feeling inspired, one day while in this tempting aisle, the canvas' were 50% off. How could I resist? I bought 4 of them. I've been wanting to make my own vintage looking signs for my apartment and this could be the start.

When I can't sleep at night, my mind wanders, which is the time ideas for crafts come to me, causing me to be so excited that I'm wide awake even longer! My brother's 6 year anniversary popped in my head. What could I do? Maybe I could make a sign for them on a canvas. Who doesn't like their name on something?? 

Unfortunately, I didn't take step by step pictures, but it's a very easy process that I will do my best to explain. 

Supplies: 

Canvas, whatever size you wish

Template for whatever you are writing on your sign (I typed in Word and printed)

Carbon Transfer paper Looks like this

Paint/Brushes

Thumbtacks 

Coffee/Tea (if you decide to antique it)

First, I'd suggest to create the wording part of the design on your computer and print it out. This way the font will be flawless. 

Paint your canvas with whatever the background color is going to be, I used antique white and then painted several layers of coffee over the white for a more antique look. 

Once the paint is dry, layer your canvas with transfer paper on top followed by your printed design. Then simply trace the letters, the carbon paper will transfer this onto the canvas. Don't worry about the pen marks, you are painting over it! 

Once the image is transferred, get your paint and brush (recommend a fine brush), take your time and trace over your outlined letters, then fill in. 

I must admit, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the canvas once the letters were done, I'd figure that out later. As I was painting, I realized this looked like a wine label. What did it need? Their own logo! Since it was a canvas for my brother's anniversary, I decided to do a bride and groom silhouette for their wine logo. This step was done the same way the letters were. 

I knew this canvas needed a little bling, so decided to put a few thumbtacks in the corners. 

Here is the finished product:

Make Up Makeover

So, yes, it's been a while since any entries, I was in a craft dry spell, but I am happy to share that I am back and inspired!!

For those of you that do not know what pinterest is, it's basically a visual favorite places page that you can categorize yourself, share with others and "follow" others. You can see my site here. I have a folder called "create" of things I would like to create, clever, right? So I decided to choose one of my inspirations and make a magnetic make up board. 

Everyone has their own way of organizing make up whether it's bags, boxes, caboodles or whatever. I wanted to be able to see everything in front of me so that I could make good use of all the eye shadows I buy. It's easily accessible so it will promote use of all, equally. 

Here's the materials you need:

A frame, whatever size you want

Piece of wood, cut to size of frame

Magnetic metal sheet (not aluminum, it's not magnetic!)

Metal snips

Glue

Spray Adhesive

Hot Glue/Gun

Fabric

Magnets

I recently had a friend over that owns her own frame store, she had a "mess up" frame and thought I'd like to have it. Of course I'd like to have it!! Especially if it's free, not to mention, it was a gorgeous frame. This would be my frame for this project. I went to home depot for a piece of wood and brought the frame along so that it could be perfectly cut to size. Now, time for the metal, there were a few different kinds of metal sheets, located in the building materials section. I had to buy 2 sheets to fit my frame and cut to size. This was my first time using metal snips, which was actually very easy, although I'd suggest wearing gloves, because I did cut myself a few times!

Basically what you want to do is cut wood to fit the frame, cut the metal to fit the frame. Find a good adhesive, I used the same glue I used for my 3 tier cake stand that I had left over, and glue metal to wood. My cut metal piece curled up so I had to place books on it overnight

Now it's time for the fun part, the fabric! Get your spray adhesive and spray all of the metal surface. Wait about a minute so that it gets really tacky and go ahead and put the fabric on. Wrap the extra around the back and spray down. Then all you have to do is put it in your frame! 

Part 2 of the project is next. You will now need your glue gun with glue, magnets and your makeup. 

Glue your magnets to the back of your make up. Using hot glue works well because it will easily come off once your eyeshadow etc runs out and you can take the magnet off and glue on a new one!

Hang in your choice of locations and voila! The one thing I'd like to add is a cup or something for my brushes/eyeliner. I'll probably cover a can in the extra fabric. 

Easy and fast craft with a big bang. Let me know if you make one, I'd love to see how it turns out. 

3 Tier Cake Stand

Now that I'm caught up on previous entries, I can blog about my most recent and most favorite craft yet!

MY 3 TIERED CAKE STAND!

I've been wanting to make a cake stand for quite a while, but have always put it on the back burner. Since my niece's birthday was coming up, and I make her a cake every year, this was the perfect opportunity to pull the cake stand idea off of the back burner. Originally, I was going to just make one tier, but I liked the idea of doing cupcakes for her and making 3 tiers. Again, another very easy project. 

My first step was to find plates and glasses/vases. I would use the vases/glasses as the stand/base.  The patterns on the plates and the glasses didn't matter, I was just interested in the size, shape and details because I was going to spray paint them. I went to the local thrift store and had endless choices! I honestly could make about 20 of these with the plates that I fell in love with there. I made it out of the thrift store spending less than $10 and got all this..

Now that I had the goods, I needed to pick out a color of paint and buy a sealant which could be epoxy, clear caulk, or some other heavy duty sealant. I used a tube of clear caulk. I've never spray painted ceramic or glass before so I was a little worried about the end result, but was pleasantly surprised. It was SO easy, with no problems at all. I went with a light purple spray paint from Walmart. The only thing you have to make sure is that the particular paint is ok for glass and ceramic. It took 2 coats and I didn't even need to do a clear coat over it because it was a very smooth finish. 

After the spray paint has dried (I waited overnight to be sure), it's time to stack the plates and seal them on. Once I knew which way I wanted the glasses to be, upright or upside down, I was ready for the final step. I put a line of the clear caulking on the rim of the glass and centered it on the plate. There was a little extra ooze, which was cleared away with a Q-Tip, but can also be removed with some alcohol once dry. You have to work pretty quickly with the caulking because it dries fast, although it does need to set overnight. Using a heavy duty sealer makes the cake stand incredibly sturdy. I am SO happy with the finished product and know that I will be using this all the time. 

This is a picture of the first use of my cake stand, for my niece's fairy themed birthday party.

As you can see the pictures above this one show the glasses reversed, before the gluing process, then I changed my mind. 

Honestly, if anyone wants one, I'd be happy to do this craft again and make it for you, it was a lot of fun!

Argyle Love Silhouette

Going back to an old favorite, the silhouettes! These never get old to me. There are so many variations that can be done, it's endless!

A friend of mine wanted a silhouette done for the anniversary of her and her boyfriend. I thought it was a great idea, and now we had to get the perfect picture. The picture was taken during the summer at a BBQ/Beach Day that I had planned for a group of my friends. We had an idea of a pose she wanted in mind, but couldn't make it obvious. Fortunately, it's never weird for me to have a camera in my hand or not far from reach at all times during get togethers, so, this worked out well.

Following the directions I posted on a previous post from 8/25/10, "Not Your Grandmother's Silhouettes," I had my template. The couple is a very artsy and open-minded duo, so I didn't want to just go for any old frame. I wanted to find something different...

I liked the roughness of the wood which would be filled with a soft and loving picture. I spray painted the box brown, mounted the silhouette onto a solid background, green, and added in a shooting star, as I know that the star is very symbolistic of this particular couple. (Through good old girl talk). 

I thought the frame was missing something and I wanted to make it a little more personal. After thinking about the dude in the relationship, something jumped out at me. I know the male of the couple is an avid fan of argyle since every pair of socks he owns is argyle, I would help match the socks during some girl talk/folding laundry sessions. I wanted to paint the outside argyle pattern. 

The gift was a hit and I hope they will continue to keep this as a piece of work in their home.

Tea for Two...The Frog and the Toad.

For Christmas, I like to make gifts, surprise surprise. I tend to buy a present, and make something for the same person. So when it came to my sister-in-law, Rachel, I had something specific in mind. Rachel and my brother, Joe, have a little one, Drew (he's almost 2, and we still call him Baby Drew, which he will always be known as), and I knew that Rachel's all time favorite children's book was the Frog and the Toad. I had never even heard of these books before Rachel mentioned them a long time ago while she was pregnant and we were grazing the children's section of a bookstore in downtown Newburyport. For some reason, I always remembered that little "golden" tidbit. , my goal was to tie in her favorite children's book, with something they could use to decorate their new house with, and have it relate to being a mom as well, something that she can pass on to Baby Drew.

I had it! A framed picture of a page from one of the books.

I went to the local library to find a couple of the Frog and the Toad books, I then sat on a comfy couch in the children's section and started to read. What was I looking for? Just a page in one of the books that jumped out at me. I had a few favorites, and I proceeded to the copy machine to make photocopies of my choice pages. Those of you that know me know that I cannot make a single decision to save my life, so I copied quite a few to be thought over and decided upon. Luckily, it was only 5 cents/page.

Then, the fun begins. I ripped the edges of some of the pages and burned the edges of the others because I wasn't sure which I exactly wanted. 

Next, crumble them up into little paper balls. 

Open the paper balls back up and time to tea dye. If you've never done this before, it's easier than making a cup of tea! Get a bucket, a pot or anything else you have, boil some water, and put tea bags in your container. Let it steep for 5-10 minutes. The darker you want the dye to be, the more tea bags you use. Once the tea is steeped, take the bags out, and put the paper in. 

There's not really a science to it, I just kept the papers in and took them out when I liked the color, which was about 20 minutes. Take them out, and let them dry. Be careful at this point, as the paper is easily torn. 

Once the paper is dry, it's then time to start the watercolor fun. I used my niece's set of watercolor paints to put some color into the book page. I didn't want too much, just a hint here and there. Having several pages actually worked to my advantage at this point because I could play around with color and not have to worry about ruining it. It's actually really easy to do and it looks so good! The only thing you don't want to do here is worry about too much detail in your painting because it runs very easily. 

Unfortunately, due to holiday rushing around, I didn't take a picture of the final product, the framed, tea-dyed, watercolor page. This is a gift anyone can do, and it's extremely affordable, but at the same time has a lot of sentiment. I even got tears when she opened it, there's nothing better than that! 

Not Your Grandmother's Silhouettes

I have a large blank wall in the hallway of my apartment which I wanted to dedicate to family pictures. Instead of doing the over-done collage pictures I decided to make silhouettes. These wouldn't be ordinary black and white silhouettes, but with different patterns and colors.

First, I took side profile pictures of my family members against a blank white wall. Be sure to turn the flash off, otherwise you'll get a shadow that will be hard to follow for tracing purposes. Get prints of the pictures or just print them off on regular computer paper as all you will be doing is tracing them. Also, have several choices of patterned and solid paper, fabric, wrapping paper, whatever you want to use. Don't use construction paper as it frays very easily.

I then went to second hand stores and thrift stores to find some wooden frames of all different shapes and sizes. These can be found for just a few dollars! The color did not matter as I would be spray painting them. I even found an old tray to use as a frame.

Next, I lined the frames up on the floor and chose who was going where. The family consists of 4 boys (including the dog) and 4 girls, so I went with a boy girl boy girl theme. I also decided what paper would be used for each person. Even though they were all different, I made sure mismatched colors didn't go next to each other, all the backgrounds were patterned and all the silhouettes were solid.

Now onto spray painting. I picked an olive green spray paint for the frames. Green is one of my favorite colors, so usually whatever else I pick matches along with it.

This was a very fast process as the spray paint takes just 10 minutes to dry. I did 2 coats of the green and one coat of a clear flat finish.

After the frames were all set, it was time to trace the pictures onto tracing paper that can be found at any craft store.

Carefully cut the tracing out, you might want to use small cuticle scissors as well as large scissors for certain areas.

If you do not want a template to keep for future projects, skip this step. I traced the tracing paper cut outs onto a thicker paper, such as poster board and cut those out. Use small pieces of tape to secure the tracing in place.

After cutting out your permanent template, go on and trace them onto the silhouette paper. What I did was use the back of the silhouette paper and turned my template backwards, so that there would be no pencil marks on the side I would use and the face would be facing the correct way.

Be sure to cut your background paper to fit the specific frame.

Once the silhouettes were cut out, I used a spray adhesive to ensure they would stick properly without the corners peeling up.

Once the pictures were in their frames, I grabbed my staple gun and stapled ribbon to the back of the frames for hanging. (Purple for the girls, blue for the boys).

Final Impression: 
This was one of the most fun crafts I've ever done. I will be doing a lot more silhouette projects in the future. Definitely a project you can work on and come back to when you have a few minutes.

Kids Bureau

A few years ago my mother bought an old bureau from a yard sale for $20 thinking it could be a good project for me. We brain-stormed and thought it would be cute to make it for my niece with a Madeline theme. Madeline is a very popular book in my family, so passing it down to hear meant a lot.

To be completely honest, I wasn't prepared at all with tools and proper paint, so I just used what we had and also borrowed some paint from my neighbor who just painted a home office for themselves.

Off to start priming with plain old white paint!



After the priming was done and dry, it was time to make Madeline's house. I painted the bureau an tan-ish color while making the top a terra-cotta thanks to my neighbor! I knew from memory "in an old house in Paris that was covered in vines.." was the basis of this house. I also found a small picture of the actual house online and printed out as a guideline. After the tan base was dry, I then made some windows with balconies, dipped a paper towel into some dark brown paint, dabbed it all around the house, made the vines, and of course, Madeline and her dog Genevieve.





I thought the top needed one more finishing touch:

Final Impression: 
The Madeline bureau was so much fun to make. I knew it could be a complete disaster since I wasn't prepared, but what did I have to lose, $20? So I went for it. I'm really glad with the way it came out, and now can not just pass the book on, but the bureau as well.