Steampunk addiction?

Good day friends...

As you all know I am one of the designers over at ABAC and love it.  One of the reasons I so love designing over there is our fearless leader, Susan, challenges me!  This month is Steampunktember and if you read my blog you will know I am NOT a Steampunker.  This month was the very first time I tried anything Steampunk and with that being said, I created some more things because I am so in love with this new genre for me!

My first piece was supposed to be a necklace, but it got too big so I decided I would turn it into a Christmas ornament.  Of course I used my Amazing Crafting Products, some beads, flock, inks, rub n buff and ribbon.

My second piece is definitely a necklace.  Again using the same products I mentioned above with a slight variation adding a rhinestone.

I hope you enjoyed my pieces and if you have a chance hop on over to ABAC and enter your Steampunk project.  You still have a couple of days to join us.

As always, have a great day and God Bless.

St. Patty/Pink Ladies Parade 2014

Top of the morning to you!

hahaha, I couldn't resist that since this post is all about St. Patty's Day.  Oh yeah, and of course Pink Ladies and Amazing Crafting Products.  Let me give you a little background of why this is so special to me.  I have been participating in a dart league designed especially as a fund raiser for Breast Cancer.  A bunch of ladies and MEN got together and formed a league where all our proceeds go to help out local people with expenses and such in fighting breast cancer.  We've raised a lot of money in the year that we've been doing this and again, all the money we raise stays local.  I love that!

Last year the league formed shortly before St. Patty's day and we participated in the St. Patty's Day Parade.  I was on the Sakura and Creative Paperclay design team at the time and I created "Pink Ribbon dart pins".  You can see the original post here.  They were a huge hit.  I sold over 25 of them and still have people asking me about them to this day.  I donated 75% of all the money to our benefit at the end of the dart season.  It felt really good to hand a check over knowing it was going to a great cause and staying LOCAL.  This year again I will be participating in the St. Patty's Day parade and wanted to make something different.  I did not go overboard and make a lot of these as they are kinda just meant for the one day, but you never know.  Some of the ladies might want one...
Here are a couple of pictures of us last year.


This is the banner of the bar that I threw out of last year and our motto "Stick it to Cancer".  The bar owner and I were a team.

This is Jane and I at her bar after one of the matches.            

A picture of our float as we are getting ready to head out to the parade route.  We even had a dartboard on our float.  It was so much fun to participate in such a great event.

This year I am throwing out of a different bar and I am also throwing with my daughter.  This will be the first time we have been on the same team.  I'm pretty excited about that.

SO back to my original post.  Again, I decided to do something different and this is how it went.

I started out with one of the Creative Paperclay ribbons I had made and created a mold of it with my Amazing Mold Putty.

then I used the  Rose Pearl Terri Sproul Mixers with the Amazing Casting Resin and made sure I mixed them up very well.  Always put your color with your Part A and mix that up well before adding your Part B

then I poured my mold(s)

I always seem to make too much so therefore I keep molds on hand that I might need to pour :)

Once the mold cured  it came out like this

Love the color!

I also added a bail while the mold was curing and it seeped to the bottom, but no doubt I could fix this  

Then I used my Martha Stewart alphabets to stamp onto my ribbon which works so very well with StazOn

I used a plastic clover charm (which I no doubt bought last year on clearance after St. Patty's day) to figure out my placement and stamped away.  Not perfect but I'm very happy with how it came out. 

I glued the clovers to the center and added a rhinestone and a pink dart over the top where the bail showed through attached them to some beads and there you have it.  My homemade St. Patty's Pink Ladies beads for my daughter and myself.  I do believe I am ready for the 2nd Annual St. Patty's Day Pink Ladies parade!

What do you think?  

I hope you've enjoyed my tutorial today and as always have a great day and God Bless!

Hair Jewelry

Good morning,

I've got a quick tutorial for you today about hair jewelry, ie barrettes.  I've had short hair for quite a while and I've been letting it grow again.  Hubby likes long hair, (like most men), but I hate the upkeep.  My hair is naturally curly and very thick so it takes a lot to keep it tame.  Actually when my hair is really long I have to get a perm just to keep it tame, otherwise it's all over the place.  It's also very coarse, so I use A LOT of product in my hair.  I usually keep it in a ponytail or braid it when it's long, which in my eyes, defeats the purpose of having long hair because it's always up.  Oh well...hubby likes it long and sometimes I just have to please him.

I also like to wear barrettes and combs and other hair things so I decided to make some barrettes myself. I actually saw this tutorial somewhere while ago and I cannot for the life of me remember where, so if you've seen it or know who's tutorial this is, please let me know so I can give her credit.  She did an amazing job with the making of the pieces, I just added them to the bobbi pins to make barrettes.

So this is how you get started.  First you will need a hotglue gun, bobbipins, loose beads, stringed beads, a circle punch (a bit smaller than your finished piece) and some cardstock (you could use felt too) 

First glue your loose beads together with your hotglue gun in a circle 

I anchored my first bead directly on my mat and hotglued the rest of the beads around it 

to form this.  It lifted off of my mat easily. 

Then I cut the stringed beads (you can get these in the 

wedding aisle of your craft store) in 5 bead length. 

and hot glued them between the beads. 

see, easy, very easy. 

Then I hotglued an accent bead to the middle of the entire piece.

Next punch two circles from your cardstock or cut 2 smaller circles from felt. 

I hotglued one circle to the backside of the piece.

(No, my fingers aren't dirty, they are stained from a previous project.  

Cannot get the stain off for nothing)

Then I placed the second circle between the bobbipin and hotglued it to the finished piece. 

I've had these in my hair about a dozen times now and they've held up very well.

Love the look... 

I even made some black, white and red ones.

I hope you enjoyed my quick Hair Jewelry tutorial and hope to see you back here soon.

As always, have a great day and God Bless.

Robin's Nest DT Call

Good morning and welcome to another day filled with surprises.

Today I am showing you what you can make with so little, but make it so beautiful.  As most of you know I am a thrift store junky.  I love rummaging and finding old things to make new again.  A long time ago, (remember I am also a hoarder) I was at a thrift store and saw this cute little house like frame thingy.  It was 25 cents (I know this because I left the tag on it).  I can't resist a bargain, plus I knew I could make something of it.  Well, in my hoarding state, I tucked it away to be forgotten about.  Not long ago I was going through some of my stuff, because I have waaayyyy too much, (Just ask my hubby) and decided I was going to start purging a little, a little!  Shortly before that I had gone to my friend, Terri Sprouls "Live Stream for the Robin's Nest".  I have looked at their papers and such but never had to opportunity to play with any. While watching the "live stream", I won a paper pack from the Robin's Nest...yeah for me!  I didn't know which paper pack I'd be receiving, but knew I was going to create something for the DT Call that Terri mentioned.  As I like to dabble in a lot of different crafty things, I decided to submit this for the Altered Arts team.  I love to upcycle, recycle and unicycle...lol, not really.  So, here we go...

This is the paperpack I won.  It's filled with glitzy snowy paper, alphabet stickers and dew drops.  I've made my own dew drops before, but I am in LOVE with these.  They are so much better than my homemade ones.  There were white, silver, clear and pearl ones.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them.  There were also some snowflakes in the packet and I knew exactly what I was going to do with this packet.

I used the white paper with the glitzy snowflakes and cut "snow" with  my cricut and SCAL 3.  I tried to cut where the most of the "glitz" was.

Here is the frame, and I spray painted it blue.  I think "blue" when I think winter, not sure why.  I wanted to have a blue house to go with the papers.  I glued the "snow" to the frame of the house and some onto the chimney.  Then I used some fishing line and attached that to the snowflakes.  I used 4 glue dots and adhered them to the top of the "heart" cut outs and attached the snowflake-fishing line to them.  You can hardly notice that and it looks as if it were snowing.  I used the alphabet stickers to say "Let it Snow" and added some of the dew drops as accents and this is what you get.

Really honestly these pictures do it no justice at all.  I wish you could see how glitzy the "snow" look.  I absolutely love how it turned out and can't wait to give it to my mom,  but by the time you read this, I will have done so already.  I'm sure she will love it...  So, see what you can do with a little?

Now, I also love to make jewelry...beads are a blast.  When I got the paper from the Robin's Nest, I fell in love with the blues and wanted to create something that I can have around all the time.  So I thought and thought and came up with this idea...I used my Creative Paperclay® and cut a circle with a cookie cutter.

Then I cut a piece of the paper slightly larger than the dried piece of clay. 

See where it had fit in?  I glued the paper onto the dried paperclay with 3D Crystal Lacquer.   I also made this fleur de lis out of paperclay and painted everything silvery to go with the paper.  I got the idea of using the fleur de lis from the paper itself. 

I then sealed the entire piece with 3D Crystal Lacquer so that it would sparkle a bit also. 

I wish this picture were better 

but here is the finished piece.  I cannot wait to wear it.  The beads were a perfect match to the paper.

I hope you've enjoyed my little projects and keep your fingers crossed for me...I may soon get to be on the Robin's Nest DT.

Quick tip making an embellishment

Good morning to you all...

I am so glad to be back on the DT for Creative Paperclay®.   I so love this product and cannot wait to get into full swing.  

Today's post will be a quick tip post.  Next time I will show you what I did with the finished things.  Now, sometimes we just don't have a way of making a mold, unlike the Amazing Mold Putty, which, by the way, I love just as much as the paperclay.  So improvise...On a recent shopping trip I found these adorable metal embellishments from Tim Holtz and...they were super cheap, regular $7.99 and I got them for $2.99.

When I took them out of the package to put away, I noticed the nice indentation of the packaging.  With my frugal mindset, I knew I could do something with it.  I hardly EVER throw anything away. 

So I pressed some of the paperclay into the indentations.... 

and added some beads to one of them and then pressed the paperclay ontop of that and let it dry...

now, just because you don't have any molds, use what you have.  There are endless possibilities.  Please come back in 2 weeks to see the finished project.  I know you will love it.

Thanks so much for stopping by today and I hope I've inspired you  to use your imagination.