Snarky Magnets

Another project from my never ending list of fabulous crafts to try was snarky magnets on tin can lids. I even bought a new can opener to get the smooth edges and I have been saving lids for months. When I saw this quote going around Facebook I knew it was time to dig out the supplies and craft up my own version.I cut out everything and lightly glued down the words. Using a fine tipped pen, I outlined each word and then used Mod Podge to glue my collage to the lid and seal the paper. Once that dried I topped it with a layer of Dimensional Magic (from Mod Podge) to make it shiny and smooth (like resin, but water-based and not stinky). And finally, I added a magnet to the back and done! This was a quick little project that was really fun and art-y, I might soon cover my entire refrigerator with new magnets!
BTW, it says: “I feel a spree coming on. It’s either a shopping one or a killing one. The choice is totally up to you.”
Have a super crafty weekend!!!

Keepsake Ornaments

I spent the weekend making our keepsake ornaments. Every year I like to make photo ornaments for myself and Grandma. At the last minute I found this great tutorial to make snowmen photo ornaments and since I was already planning to make the hand print snowmen I decided to make my Mom a set of a dozen new ornaments.Here’s my set, I just LOVE them! Now I need some fancy ribbon to tie on the loops.Here is my Mom’s set. I included some plain round glitter ornaments and some embellished cube glittered ornaments. I can’t wait for her to see them!
I loved making all these ornaments and the kids liked helping a little too. I have a ton of packages to wrap and a special surprise planned for this week, it’s going to be a busy week!!!

More Ghosts of Past Projects

Remember last year, before I had Little Man I had designed a silk screen to print my kitchen curtains?  And then you never heard anything about it again?  Ummm, yeah, well I found the screen while I was cleaning the craft room and was re-inspired to finish that project up. I worked on it all day yesterday and finished all the printing.  I could never have done this a year ago with all the piles of clutter, but today it was easy with my clean dining room table (note, I did not say the craft room was clean).I learned a lot with this project
1.  Do not expect perfection, drapery sheers, embroidery hoops, and Mod Pogde work well, but this is a low cost method, there will be imperfections.  I am a bit of a perfectionist and this was really hard for me, but even with the mistakes I really like the graphic print and once they are hanging up I don’t think the imperfections will be as noticeable/bothersome.
2.  Use a large hoop, make sure there is enough room around your design to easily get your squeegee to all parts of your design.  I really should have used a bigger hoop and given myself a little more room.  It was really hard to get the very top and very bottom to print good without going over it multiple times, which make the print blurry.
3.  Don’t be stingy.  Apply several layers of Mod Podge to your design to get a nice, sharp print.  Also be generous with the printing ink, the excess can be scraped off the screen and reused.
4.  Having a clean and organized work area makes the printing process go much faster and it a lot easier.  I really could have used a clothes line, but luckily the ink dried really fast. 5.  If you have a repeating pattern alternate your motifs so that you aren’t smearing wet designs.  Use registration marks to make your designs line up and look professional.6.  If you only need a few copies of you design it might be easier to stencil it with freezer paper.I am super excited to finish these up, I got too tired to finish sewing last night and I have a lot of stuff going on today.  I’m over half way done with the sewing and I expect to finish them tonight.  I can’t wait to hang them up!!!  I'm trying to decide if I'm going to leave them plain or if I should add some giant rick rack or some pompom fringe.
Also, my scarf fail from last week is being featured on CraftFail today, so pop on over there for a few laughs.  It’s always nice to see I’m not the only one who has weird, crafty mishaps.

Plastic Spool Toy Beads

I have an abundance of plastic spools and while doing some rearranging I found a huge container of them (head over to the Facebook page to see a photo) and decided that I needed to come up with some ways to use them or *gasp* get rid of them.  So here is the first project of what I hope will be many using plastic spools: 
You will need:

empty spools

scrapbook paper, wrapping paper, or fabric

Mod Podge (I used glossy, oooh shiny)

crochet yarn chain, shoe string, or cording

brushes, scissors/paper cutter, pencil, and ruler

Start by cleaning the labels off of the ends of the spools, most of my labels peeled right off, but you may need to soak them and use some goo gone to get rid of the sticky. Measure the height of the spool, just the flat area where the thread was, in this example 1 1/2” is the height.  Spool sizing is not standard, mine ended up being three different heights (this is the point where I sorted all my spools out by type).  Cut your paper into strips the proper height for your spools. I wrapped my papers around my spools and marked where they met.  Some of my spools were 4 1/8” around, I made all my strips 4” long so I could get three covers from a strip of 12” scrapbook paper.
After cutting all my papers I used the Mod Podge to glue them onto the spools.  Don’t be stingy, you want to put a nice coat of Mod Podge on the spools and then carefully smooth the paper down, pay special attention to the ends and make sure they are stuck down good.  Once all the bubbles are out coat the top of the paper with Mod Podge too, I went over the edges onto the spools to really seal it in.
I made a crochet chain for the string part, dip the ends of the yarn in Mod Podge while you have it out, it will seal them and keep them from fraying. Little Miss loves these beads, she wears them as a necklace, makes them into a snake, stacks them up and knocks them down, uses them as little dolly stools, and has a lot of great fun with them!
*Notes*
Obviously the string could be a choking hazard, if it were wrapped around the neck by itself.  If you are concerned about this the spools could be permanently attached to the string instead of leaving it loose for stringing.
I used black spools, but you could also paint them any color you want with the new plastic paint (I want to make some lime green ones next) before Mod Podging the paper on.
You can use fabric instead of paper.
A shoelace would also work great for stringing the beads.
Since is used leftover paper from my Holiday Photo Ornaments, I’m thinking about making this into some sort of garland to hang them on.  I know that sounds kind of lame, but really, it’s cool in my head (I’ll keep you posted if I decide to give it a try).
Have a super crafty weekend!

Pattern Weights: Adapting What's on Hand

Now that I am a more experienced seamstress I have decided that I need some pattern weights. What really happened is I saw this pattern weight tutorial and decided that they were cute and I needed some. But hold on a minute, I don’t have any hex-nuts (I DO have some washers) and I think I would rather use paper, so here’s my take on pattern weights:

Your will need large washers, I used a variety of similar sizes, they are very inexpensive and you can buy them individually at Ace Hardware stores, some fun scrapbooking papers (these papers are left over from my holiday photo ornaments), glossy Mod Podge, scissors, an exacto knife, and a pencil. Trace around the washers on the back of the scrapbook paper and carefully cut out each circle. Make sure to cut inside the lines. I used an exacto knife to cut out the centers for a smoother look. Coat one side of you washer with Mod Podge and apply your paper circle. Smooth the circle down with your fingers, getting out all the lumps, bump, and bubbles. Brush a coat of Mod Podge on top of the paper and allow it to dry. Use the exacto knife to trim any excess paper from the edges and inside circle of the washer. Apply paper to the back of the washer in the same way and trim when dry. Once I had everything all trimmed up I added another coat of Mod Podge to completely seal the edges. Once everything is dry your spiffy new pattern weights are finished!I need to make a holder, a wooden base with a dowel? I’ll have to think on it a bit. I’m off to get out some fabric and a pattern and start cutting, have a super crafty weekend!

Holiday Photo Ornaments

I have been giving my Mom a new ornament every year with a holiday picture of the kids, but with three kids it’s getting hard to fit them all on one tiny little store bought ornament. I can’t believe it never occurred to me that making the ornaments would be even better, duh, I’ll blame it on the crazy holiday season.

When I came across the Juice top photo ornaments on The Crafting Chicks I made a mental note to make them for next year. After taking this years holiday photos on the 23rd. I decided that I needed to make those ornaments for my Mom this year. I went to the craft store on Christmas Eve and I drank 6 quarts of juice and I have to say it was worth it!I love them sooooooo much, I have to drink some more juice so I can make my own set. We do drink a lot of juice here, but not the kind with the metal lids.

The little notes on the back are genius, they are going to be so much fun to read in about 10 years! I’m going to have to make something like this every year. BTW, I’ve already decided I’m using their block ornament for next year!

Now Testing Mod Podge Silk Screen

I said Monday I had been dreaming of Mod Podge and this was the project that I had been doing over and over in my mind while I slept.  The best tutorial I have found for using Mod Podge to silk screen is here, she also talks about how to make your design on the computer. I based my design on my silverware, after I finished the drawing I colored the design in to make sure I was going to like how it printed.  I made some modifications to the highlights when I traced it on to the fabric.   I traced the shape of the hoop on to the paper so I wouldn’t make my design too big.  I probably should have left more space at the top and bottom for the screening process.
Painting the Mod Podge on was easy, I used a fine brush for the details and then filled in the big areas with a larger brush and I let it dry overnight.  I only used one layer of Podge (more about that later). I put some ink on the screen, I splurged and bought Speedball fabric screen printing ink, I really want this to look professional and I was afraid that acrylic paint with textile medium wouldn’t give a smooth even look.  I think that I used to much ink, next round I will use less.  I drew a line and a center mark along the bottom of my design, I will use this to make printing the finished design easier.  I want them evenly spaced and in a straight line. I used an old plastic card to “squeegee” my ink through my screen.  I was happy with how it worked, but I think that I need to have something as wide as my design.  Next time I will be using cardboard. Not to bad, I can see some things that I want to fix on the original screen, but that is exactly why I did this test.  I am going to go back and widen the highlight and reshape the one on the fork a bit.  I also will be going over the background with another coat of Podge.  Using less ink will also make the finished print sharper. Those little red dots are where I didn’t get the fabric properly coated.  Next time I will do two layers of Podge to start off with, it really isn’t that bad, I’m just picky like that.
I am really excited about the results and this is a really frugal way to do some screen printing.  Embroidery hoops are easy to come by on yard sales and even if you purchase a one new it is less than $2.00.  I used drapery fabric, it’s easy to find in the remnant bin and inexpensive too.  The big expense was that screen printing ink, $8.99 at Hobby Lobby, no I did not shop around, I’m sure it could be found a bit cheaper, and don’t forget you 40% off coupon.  I will be trying this technique with acrylic paint and textile medium eventually and we’ll see how comparable the results are.I washed the screen up right away and the ink came out easily.  I’ll make the corrections once it’s dry and make up a couple more samples and then I should be good to go for the real project: new kitchen curtains!!!
What do you guys think?  Will this design be cute in my kitchen?  I’m going for a kitschy-retro-whimsical look.

The Letter of the Day is K

You may remember a while back when I made decoupaged storage jars like Alexa from The Swell Life.  The first time I followed her instructions using random letters and numbers I cut from various magazines.  When I finished I wondered how it would look if I only used one color.  For my second try I used only red numbers and letters.  After finishing the red jar I wondered how using just one letter would look, can you see where I’m going with this?

I have to confess that I cheated and printed out all my letters.  K is a difficult letter to find and I wanted to use some of the fancy fonts I got from dafont.com (Thanks Lisa).  I picked a large variety of fonts and sizes.  I cut everything out and sorted them out by size. I start by applying the large letters and filling in with the smaller ones.  Once I used up most of these I cut out my smaller letters, some of them were tiny.  I used them to fill in any tiny gaps or to break up space. I really like how it turned out.  This is definitely a great project with many options and uses, I’m sure I’ll be making more of these…oooooh how about a theme like Halloween or roses or eyes, just when I thought I was done exploring the options of this project I get another idea!

I Love Mod Podge

Is there anything that can’t be made better with mod podge?  I found these decoupage storage jars on The Swell Life and just had to make my own! I like how hers turned out, she had better letters.  I also think that I’m going to have to “take one for the team” and force myself to eat some marshmallow fluff, I like that shape of that jar!  I have a giant stack of magazines so I think I should just start saving random letters and then in a couple of months I’ll be able to cover a vase, I have a spare that I found for a dollar at a yard sale.  I was also thinking that using just one color of letters might be cool too!, all red would be awesome.