Elephant Mosaic

Welcome to our Stencil Girl's Bloghop.  I'm super excited to share a fun project with you today, but first a little backstory about myself before we get into the tutorial.  My name is Brenda and I've been with Amazing Casting Products since the beginning and I've enjoyed every minute of it.  My blog is Creativity is a State of Mind because I believe each one of us has a different view on artistic talent.  I've definitely come a long way since working with this Amazing team.  Also working with these products has taught me so much and I've enjoyed learning new techniques.  Therefore, whenever we can partner up with another designer or design team, I look forward to expanding my horizons.  

Since I've been on the design team for so long, I've accumulated ALOT of pieces.

Anytime I'm making a project I wind up with more and more resin pieces.  Some finished, some not.  And this is how my project was born ...

I started out with a foam core piece that I cut to 10 x 10 and I painted green with acrylic paint.  Next I took my Stencil Girl Elephant Parade (which by the way is my obsession)

 

and traced the elephant with a pencil after the paint was dry.

It doesn't have to be perfect because I'm only using it as a guide.

Next I got out my box of resin pieces and began laying them inside the elephant outline.  It was kinda like putting a puzzle together.  Absolutely every one of these pieces has a story for me.

Here are a few pictures of some of the pieces I used with their molds.  (I've made ALOT of molds :)  The Amazing Mold Putty is still by far my favorite product.  I love duplicating little charms and such that I find while antiquing or junking because I don't want to use the original piece.  Especially in a project like this one.

Some butterfly charms

A Fleur De Lis I found in a box I bought at an antique shop.

The Fleur de Lis that I embedded into an 

Amazing Clear Cast Resin bezel.

Some leaves that were molded from a broach that I got

in a jewelry lot at an auction.

Branches that were hair barrettes to start out.

I just have tons and tons of molds...

After I had all my pieces laid out the way I like it, I glued them down.  After they were all securely adhered I took the piece outside and spray painted it black.

I didn't let it dry completely though.  

In fact, I took a hairdryer and gave it a 3 minute blast on the cool setting.

Stencil Girl's Ornamental Compass Screen was my next addition to this piece.  

I dry-brushed it with purple metallic acrylic paint around the edges of the corners.

While that was drying I also used the same acrylic paint and dry-brushed the 

elephant mosaic-ed pieces to give them some dimension also.

In my box of pieces I also found some roses I made a long time ago with the Amazing Clear Cast Resin.  I absolutely love how they looked like glass, but I did  want to give them a bit of dimension also.  I dry-brushed a bit of black and the purple metallic around the edges.  Just enough so that you can still see their clearness, but also some definition.  

After everything dried a little, I  saturated the entire piece with the Amazing Clear Cast Resin.  Not only does this give it a nice GLASS touch when it's cured, but it will also keep everything  in place.  But now here comes the magic.

I took a toothpick and ran it around the edges of the elephant outline while the clear cast resin was still wet and also within the stenciled area to "scrape off" some of the black and purple to expose some of the green base.  It gave is just enough color to make it pop.

After letting it cure for 24 hours I was able to display it in my elephant collection.  Now, the best part of this is it's weight.  If you would have used this many heavy trinkets, your piece would have been very heavy.  The Amazing Casting Resin is so super lightweight. 

This by far is one of my favorite projects up til now.

I totally love how this turned out and I hope you have found my tutorial useful.

Now for the bonus fun stuff.  There is a giveaway involved...

One lucky winner will receive both a $25 Gift Certificate to StencilGirl Products

AND a $25 Gift Certificate to Amazing Casting Products!

Visit the fabulous designers from both teams and comment for your

chance to win!

The more blogs you comment on, the more chances you have to WIN!

(One comment per blog please.)

You have until Sunday, April 23rd at 11:59PM Central Time to leave your comments.

Winner will be announced on

StencilGirl's Facebook page and Amazing Casting Products’s Facebook page

on Monday, April 24th.

So thank you for coming and hopping along with us today and be sure to leave a comment so you get entered in the giveaway.  Until next time, happy crafting.

Butterfly keys dancing with Amazing Casting Products

Good morning friends

I love perusing Pintrest and sometimes I find something that I want to make immediately.  Sometimes I have what I need on hand and sometimes I have to punt.  This is one of those times.

This is what I found on Pinterest:

And this is what I made:

I started with my molds of keys that I made using my Amazing Casting Products.  I love keys!!!

Using my Amazing Casting Resin and Black Alumilite Dye 

I made my very lightweight keys.

Then I hot glued my butterfly wings to the keys

all different shapes ...

... and sizes

I tied fishing line to the keys and 

to an old embroidery hoop

I even glued some of the butterflies around the embroidery hoop

I love Pinterest, but I don't always make what I find 

exactly the way I saw it!  I like putting a spin on my project.

I hope you've enjoyed my version of the butterfly keys.

Thanks for looking and I hope you leave me a comment.

As always, have a great day and God Bless.

  

Lucky Horseshoe #Reclaimedbarnwood

Happy Sunday to you all!

Today I wanted to show you something I am super proud of.  I've been creating a lot of reclaimed barnwood signs as of late.  I'm hoping to show some of my signs off in the upcoming weeks.  But today I wanted to share this one with you. Remember when I made my horseshoe wreath of sorts?

You can view that post HERE

Well I wanted to use the horseshoe mold again for this project.

I haven't used this mold for about 8 months, but it's still as pliable as the day I created it.

Love the Amazing Mold Putty!

First I "painted" the mold with the Alumilite powders.

Just dip your dry paintbrush in the powder and dust the mold.

I also used my Amazing Casting Resin mixed with the 

Alumilite Silver Metalic Powders for the base of the horseshoe

I made it look old and rusty.

The resin piece is super lightweight and it was easy to screw into my board.

I also painted the screws over so that they didn't look "new".

You can hardly even see them! 

I just love how grungy this looks.

And here is my L U CKY sign, painted and ready for it's forever home.  

Now had I used a real horseshoe this sign would also have been very heavy.

I hope you've enjoyed this quick and simple tutorial and would love if you left me a comment.

As always, have a great day and God Bless.

Keychain with Amazing Casting Products

Good day

I was gifted this lovely key chain a couple days ago and while I absolutely love it it's a bit heavy to put on my keyring.  You do know that too many things on your key ring is not good for your ignition right?  When your keys are heavy it weighs down on the ignition.  I really wanted to use this key chain, but don't want to wreck my ignition, so of course what do I do?  Yup Amazing Casting Products to the rescue because the resin piece will be super light weight!

First I mixed up equal parts of the Amazing Mold Putty and you can view mixing instructions HERE

After my mold was set which took less than 10 minutes

I mixed up equal parts of the Amazing Casting Resin with some 

Silver Alumilite Metalic Powder and you can view 

the preparations for mixing HERE.

That set up within 10 minutes also.

I did run a little bit of Rub n Buff over the resin and

added some rhinestones. 

I love how this turned out and now I can proudly hang my 

car keys on it and not worry about wrecking my ignition.

Simply Create Too Challenge #104 - Green Only

Good day friends and crafters.  Today is another challenge over at Simply Create Too and I'm so excited to show you a project I made that came about from a fail. This week's challenge is ALL GREEN.  I love to experiment and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

It all started with a butterfly cutout I had. I really wanted to turn this beautiful butterfly into a stamp. I mixed up some Amazing Mold Putty and you can see mixing instructions HERE. I pressed my butterfly cutout into the mold putty and waited for about 10 minutes.

When I pulled the butterfly out I realized it didn't look perfect, so I cut around it anyway using regular scissors. There were definitely some imperfections and when I stamped it, it didn't give me a clean look (sorry no picture of the stamped image). I really didn't want to waste all that mold putty and so I thought and thought about what I could do with it.

I remembered a tutorial I made for this Valentine's day pendant.
You can go and view it HERE!

I used the same concept again. This time however, since the Amazing Mold Putty had already set up, I couldn't get my heart clay cutter to go through the putty. I could get a bit of an indentation of the shape and then I just used my scissors to cut the hearts out. Since the putty was so thin, it was very easy.

Here are my hearts and I even used an edge of the butterfly to create the stem for my shamrock. You can see that it had even been stained with the ink.

Now, the hoarder I am... I had these cute little ceramic

coasters that I purchased eons ago at a thrift store.

I tried hot gluing the putty pieces down, but they just popped right off. I sprayed some Krylon Spray Adhesive to the pieces and glued them onto the ceramic coaster. That worked like a charm!

Then I mixed up some Amazing Casting Resin and poured it into the dish, just enough to fill around the shamrock shape. There is a video HERE you can view on mixing instructions.

That set up to cure for about 10 minutes and then I gently pulled the pieces out.

Pretty cool huh?

 

Then I mixed up some more Amazing Casting Resin with the Fluorescent "FLO" Green Dye and filled in the open areas. That also set up in a matter of minutes.

And here you have an Amazing Shamrock ring dish!
You can view more projects by the design team over at Amazing Casting Products HERE

I am so excited about my (failed) fabulous Shamrock ring dish!

Have you had a failed project

that you turned into a masterpiece?

I hope you will head over to Simply Create Too and join our challenge.

Until next time, have a Lucky Day!