Mother's Day Photo collages

I wanted to do something special for the Mom's and Grandma's this year for mothers day. I saw this idea hanging up at our local Craft Warehouse (my most favorite store in the world) and it looked easy enough. Here is an example of what we are going to make today...sorta.

SUPPLIES

1. Canvas. Any size. Just make sure its big enough to fit all your minis onto it
2. Mini Canvas. I used 2 different sizes:  3x3 and  4x4
3. Paint and brushes
4. scrapbook paper (optional)
5. Scissors
6. Good strong glue. I used E-600
7. vinyl lettering, a poem, or a picture
8. Family photos
9. embellishments (optional)





INSTRUCTIONS

Paint and let dry completley.

Mixed yellow and white to make a pale yellow

This is silver. I had to use multiple coats for this color

Cut your craft or scrapbook paper to size
















Glue the scrapbook paper and embellishments onto the canvas

Cut photos to size and glue onto the mini canvas

Arrange mini canvas onto the larger canvas and glue into place

Follow the directions on the packaging for the vinyl lettering to transfer it to your canvas

AND THATS IT!

Here are a few others I made:

Update: Busy Crafting Week

This past week has been super busy with crafty things. Ive made Mother's Day gifts for my mom and grandma, and my fiances mom and grandma. The post for this is already created. I'm just waiting until after Sunday to hit "publish" so I don't ruin their surprise. On top of that I made a gift for a bridal shower coming up in the next few weeks and hand painted some glasses.

I may or may not have tested my glasses out already
with a wine cocktail...or two

Miss Priss and Lil E have both been challenging this past week mainly because we all have crazy stupid allergies. Miss Priss has been quietly (mostly...between the sniffles and nose blowing) playing her computer games this week and Lil E has been taking lots of naps, giving this mama some much needed time to get these little projects done. I thought this week would be much worse then it has been due to Fiance being out of town on business but honestly, the allergy season ripping through our household has been a blessing. Am I a bad mom for being glad the kids are drowsy and drugged up on allergy medicine?

I'm hoping everyone gets better before Sunday because this will be the first time (ever) we will host a holidy at our house. Mother's Day BBQ with 20 people in our little, cozy home.
It should be interesting to say the least.

DIY Painted Glassware

So last weekend I decided I wanted to do an art project.
Then I remembered I'm not very creative so I scoured the internet looking for ideas. I wanted to do something that seemed easy and was cheap as I didnt want to spend a ton of money on a complete failure of a project. I found a TON of websites about handpainting wine glasses. I thought to myself, "I'm artistic I can do this!" and "I oil paint on canvus, how much more difficult could this possibly be!?"
*SIGH*
I realized with my first brush stroke that I have unusually shakey hands and cannot draw a striaght line for the life of me. This is very bad for detail work and fine lines. The following is my not so handy work:

SUPPLIES:

I taped my picture to the inside of the glass and (tried to) trace the picture with the enamel paint. After cussing numorous times and wiping it clean to start over twice I finally (sort of) got to right. Once it dried I followed the directions on the paint bottle which was to put the glass in a COLD oven and heat to 350 degrees. Bake for 30 min and then let the glass cool off in the oven. These are now dishwasher safe :)







THE FINISHED PRODUCTS:

They are Flip Flops...Not my best artwork for sure

Things that make me happy

I've been feeling a bit yuck lately so I thought I'd make a list of the things that made me happy this week.

1. Smiles and laughter of my kids



2. Bob Ross and the Joy of Painting
3. a good book. Like This and this
4. The smell of rain
5. Lilacs
6. The way my Fiance can always make me laugh










7. My girl getting her first hit at her softball game













8. Chai Tea
9. BBQing and Sitting on the patio on a warm spring day
10. Oreo Blizzards

DIY Upcycled old toy rack

This is my first DIY project of the season. It was a beautiful 80 degrees outside today and I was not about to waste this gorgeous day by staying indoors all day listening to 90's on 9 (Srius XM Raido yo!). I've been wanting to do something special for the front porch for a while now and after scouring the garage for stuff we never use anymore that I could re purpose into a porch planter for flowers I found this:

This is a toy rack I bought for Miss Priss when she was 3yrs old. She doesn't use it anymore because shes 9 now and "Princesses are for babies."
This is what it is SUPPOSED to look like ~~~~~~~~~~~~>>
But naturally over the course of the past 6 years and moving multiple times most of the little buckets were lost and the rack itself has suffered more then a little wear and tear to the paint job.

Ok so first things first, the supply list.
*a drop cloth (if I get paint all over the garage floor or the driveway the fiance might kill me)
*Some sort of Primer paint. I used Grey Gesso. I was going to use white but 1) I didn't have enough on hand and 2) I wasn't confident it would cover up the existing picture without using 50 coats of paint. Now I suppose this part isn't ENTIRELY necessary if you're going to use a dark spray paint.
*Paint brush for primer
*Spray paint of your choice. I had Green, black, and Pink on hand
*Stencil (optional)

goodbye Disney

Ok so here we go....

Lil E was supervising the project

Paint over the picture with primer. It doesn't have to be perfect just try to get as much covered as possible. Let it dry.









Next I drug the whole thing out to the driveway because if I got spray paint on the car I'd never hear the end of it from the Fiance. Then I spray painted the crap outta it :) I hung a stencil on the sides to give  it a design. This step isn't necessary but I thought I needed to jazz it up a bit.

GREEN!

Pretty leaves

Don't do what I did and spray too close.
Spray paint drips :(

While that is Drying I worked on the few boxes that didn't get lost in the move(s)

finding 4 out of 9 isn't  too bad

First I peeled off as much of the stickers as possible then I spray painted them. I had black and pink on hand. The black turned out really well but I had to do 3 coats of the pink to get it to cover correctly. I should've primed them first.

The Finished product



Now I just need to add flowers

When I was finished (so proud of myself) I quickly showed the Fiance and he grimaced at the pink. *sigh* Details, Details. To make him happy I will probably go back and paint them white so they look better against the house and the white railing on the porch. Also I may have Mr. handy man drill a hole in the bottom of my new "flower pots" to give them proper drainage.
And that's it folks!


*UPDATE*

I did indeed re paint the pink buckets to make them white. Here is the end result:

crafty stuff for a non-crafty girl

The crafty things I'd like to do this Summer:
1. Gel Medium Transfers and photo transfers. This is another cool way of attaching a photo to canvas.
2. DVD Coloring case. This would be perfect for Miss Priss when we go on our long car rides. Everything is in a handy dandy little bundle.
3. State string art thingy. Id like to make one of Washington and one of Idaho with the heart around my hometown and the location of my fiances (ooohhhh...I like that word. Fiance!) family cabin.
4.Glitter Wine glasses
5. Play with chalkboard paint:  Chalkboard glasses, serving platter, pots for my plants except in pretty colors.
6. Upcycled photo album. Ive already made a couple similar to this. They are fun and super easy.
7. I'd like to explore the world of polymer clay jewelry
8. oh and I need to start painting again.

Priest Lake

Things I'd like to eventually paint:

Chimney Rock

Nature trail next to where I grew up

Priest Lake

stairs leading to Multnomah Falls

I'll keep you updated as to the progress (if any) of my projects :)

Hands

You can see part of my bandaid

 Its quiet. Very quiet. The only noise in the house is gently sucking, breathing, and cooing of the feeding newborn. It's the middle of the night and I'm doing what I do most nights at this time, answering to Lil E's feeding needs. As I sit in the nursery rocking back and forth in the glider holding my beautiful baby boy I tend to do a lot of thinking. There is no noise to drown out the thinking at this time of the night. Tonight I was thinking about my hands. Yes, Hands.
Today I decided it would be a good idea to try to open packaging with a knife instead of scissors. I'm clumsy so I should've known better. As I'm opening the packaging my wet hand (yes, yes, I know. I don’t need a lecture) slips and I stab the oh so sensitive spot between my thumb and pointer finger. I didn’t cut it...I stabbed it. It was such a beautifully clean stab that it took the pain a few seconds to reach my brain. But when it did, Oh GODS did it hurt! The throbbing in my hand has yet to cease. I didn’t realize how very useful certain parts of me were until I could no longer use them. Tonight it was my palm and my thumb on my left hand that I had no use of. Making a bottle and changing a dirty diaper in the middle of the night is extremely difficult with only 1 ½ hands...especially when the half I'm missing is the thumb.

*sigh*

As I'm thinking about the nagging, throbbing ache that is my left hand my mind turns to the history of my hands and all that they have done for me over the past twenty-something years.

Tiny baby hands

In the beginning my hands were carefree. They were for holding hands bigger then my own. They were for swinging on trees, making mud pies, throwing random objects at my sister, and squishing spaghetti between my little fingers. They were for dipping in finger paint, holding crayons, markers, chalk, and writing on walls.

Writing on walls soon turned into writing on paper. My hands became nimble and agile enough to write numbers, letters, words, sentences, and then paragraphs. They wrote math problems and stories. They painted pictures and made gluing art projects together a breeze.

Lil E's hands are so small

In more recent years my hands seem to have forgotten their carefree life. These are important hands with important jobs now. These hands of mine have a more noble duty. They are now used to hold bottles, binkies, burp rags, and babies. They chop, slice, dice, scoop, and stir countless family dinners. They fold laundry, do dishes, and scrub bathrooms. They pick up children when they fall down, brush off dirty little knees, and wipe away tears. My hands give loving caresses, pats of encouragement, and high fives for a job well done.

My hands have been bloodied and bruised, slammed and mangled, broken, misused and abused. Most of all my hands have been under-appreciated. But yesterday the amazing man in my life showed my hands they were appreciated and loved. Yesterday he recognized all the things these hands do for our family and in honor of that slipped a ring on this injured hand of mine.

It's so shiny!