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Monday, April 21, 2014

Black and White Headband

Good morning

I hope everyone had a Happy Easter.  I will be busy taking down Easter cards at my stores and putting up the rest of Mother's Day and Graduation.  I'm not sure how much time I will have for crafting this week, so I thought I'd share a quick tutorial of a headband I made a while back.

I started out with a clear round stone
Found some black and white paper in my stash 
Glued the paper to the stone using my Diamond Glaze 
and attached that to a resin piece from my stash (one of my goals to use up what I have, but I seem to be adding more and more each time I caft because...)  When I am creating resin pieces I usually have too much mixed up and pour miscellaneous pieces.  This happened to be a piece I had created a LONG time ago and painted it black and white.  I sealed the piece with the Amazing Clear Cast Resin.  I then glued the piece to a headband using my E6000 and clamped it for about 24 hours. 
I added some black and white ribbon and a pearl to the resin piece and those same pearls to the other side of the head band to keep balance. 
I am loving this piece. 
My bear had to be my model since I didn't have anyone at home to model for me.  He didn't complain too much...hehehehehe 

I hope you enjoyed my headband today and as always, have a great day and God Bless.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Butterfly in Flight Easter Basket at ABAC Challenge #34

Happy Easter!

It's time again for Anything But a Card "Spring Forward" challenge.  Since today is Easter I thought I would share something I created for our Easter Table.  

I started with a mold that I created with my Amazing Mold Putty and dusted the outer edges with my Alumidust.  LOVE this stuff. 
Then I mixed my Amazing Casting Resin Part A with the Terri Sproul mixers in pink. 
Then I mixed Part B into Part A and stirred them together real well. 
While my molds were setting up, I cut three pieces of electrical wire (yes, I have a huge stash of these wires in all sorts of colors).  The best part of this wire is that it's kinda flimsy and this will give my butterflies "flight".  Then just before the resin was almost set up, I inserted the wire into the resin and let it harden the rest of the way. 
While that was setting up, I cut a piece of styrofoam that will fit nicely in my basket and
hot glued my wires into it. 
Blue and Pink butterfly 
Orange and Pink butterfly 
Purple and Pink butterfly 
All three butterflies 
And here is my finished basket.  I cut the "egg" basket using my cricut and scrap pieces of paper from my stash in this pretty butterfly paper.  I added a bit of green tinsel grass and now I have a cute centerpiece for our EASTER table. 
Another look 

I hope I've inspired you to create something and join us over at Anything But a Card for the challenge "Spring Forward". Remember, it can be Anything But a Card!

As always, have a great day and God Bless!


Saturday, April 12, 2014

Unscripted Sketches 252 - Hope You're Better Soon



Happy Saturday!

wow, I am so sorry I haven't been here all week, but it's been a crazy one.  Lots going on in our household right now and hopefully the worst is behind us.  Nothing too major but a lot of changes.  

So, with that let's move forward and I'm here today with another card for Unscripted Sketches.  I'm so thrilled I found this challenge blog, plus it's their 5 year Anniversary and there are PRIZES.  So of course I'm going to play along, but it's not only gotten me to start making cards again, but it's been helping declutter some of my stash.  Triple bonus!
Sketch252_blogiversaryApr12

I started out with finding my embellishment.  I created this flower piece a while back using my Amazing Mold Putty, Amazing Casting Resin and a nail polish dip and sealed it with Amazing Clear Cast.  I love how this flower turned out.  I should make a tutorial showing how to create this look.  I wish I knew how to take video and edit it.  It would be so much better to show how I created this!


So anyway, once I found my embellishment, I searched for paper scraps and a coordinating stamp.  I stamped my flower image and then using the Alumidust I "dry painted" the colors onto my flower.
Here you can see that I just randomly dusted the powders here and there.  Once I was done with that, I spritzed the dusted image with a little bit of water and heat set it.  
See how beautiful my flower shimmers? 
Then I created some colored embossing powder by adding a bit of the Dark Red Alumidust to some clear embossing powder.  I love how I can coordinate my colors using this technique.  I stamped my sentiment with the Perfect Medium and sprinkled my "homemade" colored embossing powder directly over it, shook the excess back into it's container and heat set.  Love it! 
Here is a closeup of the flowers 
Here is a closeup of the embossing 
and here is my finished card. 


I hope I've inspired you to head over to Unscripted Sketches and play along!  I'm sure I will be back next Saturday with another card or maybe sooner with some other crafty projects I have up my sleeve.  
As always, have a great day and God Bless.


Sunday, April 6, 2014

Frog Dog Studio Last Day

Good day crafters,

today I am coming full circle and showing you what I had created to the start of this week's projects .  All week long I've been showing you items I used from the April kit from Frog Dog Studios.

In your kit you would receive this:


The Frog Dog Studio April Mixed Media Kit includes:
(1) **Alumidust Powder - Red Plum; (1) StazOn Midi Ink pad - Claret; (1) StazOn Midi Ink pad - Blue Hawaii; (1) iZink Pigment Ink bottle - Gold; (1) Stampendous Mica Fragments Jar, Pearlized; (1) Dusty Attic Chipboard set - Birds; (1) Stampendous Mini Clipboard Canvas pack; (1) Set Canvas Mini's - Canvas Corp; (3) Sheets of Decopatch Tissue Paper; and (16) Tim Holtz Clear Fragments (random sizes/shapes). ** Alumidust is one of the many additives from the Alumilite Corporation. Valued at over $45.

And of course you would want to purchase the add-on kit! 


The Frog Dog Studio  April Add-On Kit includes:
(1) Amazing Clear Cast Resin – 16 Fluid Oz Box; (1) Amazing Mold Putty – 2/3 lb Box; (25) 1 oz Measuring Cups; and (50) Wooden Stir Sticks. Valued at over $47.

I love getting new fun things to play with.
LOVE this paper.  It's so thin, almost transparent and the colors are beautiful.  When I was growing up in Germany we had this sort of paper for gift wrapping.  I totally forgot all about it until I held this paper in my hands.  Oh the memories holding that paper just brought back.

So now I had to figure out what to make.  I knew I was going to mold that Bird of Paradise using my Amazing Mold Putty, but what was I going to do with her?  
You can find directions for proper mixing here by typing "how to make a mold" in the search bar on the top or you can watch a video here.
It only takes about 10 minutes tops to cure
Look how lovely she came out
Then I prepared my Amazing Casting Resin.  This product is incredible as it has no odor and sets up within minutes.  Just make sure you mix equal parts of A & B and stir until it isn't cloudy anymore.  Don't stir too long as it does set up within minutes.
Whenever I make a mold I try to fill all the voided spaces with other doodads.  In this month's kit you will receive some acrylic tags in various sizes, so I created a duplicate of those.  Also, when I mix my resin, I tend to make more than I need, so therefore I fill other molds to have on hand for future projects.
Once I've poured my mold, I actually take a paper towel and kinda run around the edges of the item to avoid extra resin around the edges.  This picture shows what the resin does shortly after pouring.  You can see how the resin is starting to set up in the small circular tag.
Almost completely set up, still a bit of clear milky color in the corners of the Bird of Paradise.
Completely cured, hard as a rock
Now when I demold things, I start from the outer edges.  The Amazing Mold Putty mold is flexible and therefore you can bend your items out instead of just trying to pull them up.  In demolding it this way you avoid pulling those fine or thin areas, like these feathers, off..
and there your have a duplicate of the chipboard Bird of Paradise.  
I used my exacto knife to clean a bit around the edges and this process from molding to pouring to cured to cleaning up edges took all about 15 minutes.
Now I had recently made a trip to my Dollar Store after getting my Frog Dog Studio kit, when I found this awesome mirror set.  Immediately I had an idea of how I could use some of the pieces from this kit to embellish this up.  I thought the color scheme was identical too.
I took the existing packaging and traced as close to the mirror as possible with a pencil.
Then I cut it out with a pair of scissors and
laid that transparency directly onto the gorgeous paper to find the exact area that I wanted to use.
Maybe you can see the edge here?
Then cut that out a bit larger than the original to fit my handheld mirror perfectly.
Now if you look at the mirror and the paper, you will see that it was not a perfect color fit.  The paper has more green and the mirror is more steel blue.  I wasn't sure how I was going to fix this, but where there is a will there is always a way!
I used Mod Podge to cover the backside of the mirror, going in one direction first and then crossways again.
Once I laid the paper onto the mirror I burnished the edge a little with my thumbnail to give it that extra seam.
See how nice that laid down?  You can even see a little bit of the pattern from the handheld mirror.
Now while that was drying I went back to my Bird of Paradise to finish her off.  I used the Claret Stazon ink that came with my kit and directly pounced it onto my bird.  So, remember me showing you that the color wasn't a perfect fit with the paper and the mirror.
Therefore I also added some of the Blue Hawaii Stazon, mixed in a bit of the Lt. Green Alumidust and golded the bird with the Pigment Izink (gold) all which came in my kit.  I think she turned out gorgeous.
I had 3 silk leaves in my over flowing stash of silk flowers and 
knew these would work perfectly to embellish my mirror.
I sponged the Claret Stazon directly onto the leaves also.  Even though this technique worked, it didn't give it enough color.  I pulled out my Deep Red Alumidust that came with the kit and mixed it up with some of Alene's PaperGlaze and painted the middle of those leaves.  I wasn't really being careful since no leaf is exact in coloring anyway (and I can't even paint by numbers).
Hot gluing the embellishments onto the mirror gave it that perfect touch.
I do believe my Bird of Paradise completed this mirror perfectly in color balance.

Wouldn't this make a beautiful gift for someone's dressing table?



I hope you've liked my one example of this beautiful kit from Frog Dog Studio 
and all the projects I've showed you this week.  If you have missed any, just head back through my blog and you will see the entire week of Frog Dog Studio inspiration. 

As always, have a great day and God Bless.