Wood Transfer Anything But a Card Challenge "Friendship"

Good morning peeps,

today is the last week of our challenge over at Anything but a Card which is all about "Friendship" this month.  I love this challenge because I am so blessed to have 3 wonderful friends that I hang out with each week.  We throw darts together once a week on a Thursday night.  We do some tournaments together and we have been doing this on and off for about 10 years.  I just so love my dart girls!  Back in January we threw our annual Sno-Throw tournament and took 2nd place, two years in a row now!  We have a great time throwing together and always seem to be just a shy out of first place.  We started our tournament on Friday and ended up being done on Sunday afternoon.  It takes a lot out of you at times, but we continue to go at it hard and heavy each time.  Taking 2nd place got us a plaque for our bar that sponsors us and cash!

 First place gets you the same thing, only you also get individual plaques and a jacket!  Now I cannot sew worth a darn so I can't make us jackets, but I can make individual plaques and here's how I did it:

I started out with our picture that was taken by the tournament director.  I printed it out 4 times in mirror image.  Why you ask?  Because I am going to transfer these pictures onto pieces of wood and there is writing on the picture.  See ...

I purchased some Liquitex from Hobby Lobby.  It costs about $15 dollars but with my Hobby Lobby 40% off coupon I saved about $6 and it will last a long, long time.

Spread your Liquitex evenly onto your piece of wood.  Not too thick and not too thin.  I got these pieces of wood in a pack also at Hobby Lobby.  They measure 4 x 4 and are perfect for this project.

Make sure you use a brayer and evenly spread your image face down onto the piece of wood.  

Making sure to get any air bubbles out and no visible creases.

Now I let that sit overnight because I wanted to make absolute sure it transferred perfectly.

The next day I took a damp sponge with a soft side and a scrubby side and rubbed the paper backing off very carefully.  Make sure to damped the area real good at first and take the scrubby side and carefully rub over the image.  This takes a bit of time and trial and error, do NOT rub too hard as you will rub off the image also.  Then take the soft side and go over it until you do not see anymore "white" from the paper.  I did rub a bit too hard on the first one thus I am giving myself the "too hard" rubbed plaque.  

You may need to experiment with how hard to rub.

I also stamped the 2015 onto the image before I painted the edges with black acrylic paint and also a bit around the edges.  Then I sealed them with Mod Podge and let that also sit overnight.  I probably didn't need to wait that long, but I wanted to make sure!

Then I glued a pop top to the back of the wooden plaque (always reuse if you don't recycle).

And there we have our own individual plaques.  I kinda like ours better since our picture commemorates our achievement and not just a plaque itself!  LOL

I'm so in love with this technique and cannot wait to try something else.

I hope you've enjoyed my tutorial today and if you want to join us over at ABAC for our "Friendship" challenge, head on over HERE to link up.  

Remember you can link up any project as long as it:

ISN'T a CARD

Has something to do with "FRIENDSHIP"

and

YOU are having FUN doing it!

Until next time, have a great day and God Bless!

Evolution

Good Day Friends,

today is a special day as it is my youngest son's 15th birthday.  I cannot believe how fast time goes by.  He has grown into such a special young man.

Many of you guys know he's an avid golfer.  He's come so far in the last couple of years.  As a freshman he qualified for the Varsity golf team.  He did quite well in a lot of the tournaments last summer!  Because of where we live he's taking indoor lessons over the winter months to keep his game sharp.  It's kinda hard to golf in 20 degree snowy weather.  His coach praises him quite a bit!  He's gained a lot of strength and that should help his swing even more this summer.  I couldn't be prouder of him.

Anyway, I wanted to make him something for his birthday golf related...I know, I do that quite a bit.  I get enjoyment out of creating for him and he actually seems to love what I do!

I had seen a plaque a while ago and put it into my "to do" file.  I actually had forgotten all about it until I was going through some pictures looking for something in a particular.  Needless to say, I didn't find what I was originally looking for, but I did find a picture of the plaque that I wanted to recreate.  This is the picture of the plaque I saw, but I did want to change it up a bit and

here is how I made it:

I searched "evolution" in google and found this image

and added it to my SCAL2 program.

I searched "golfer" in google and found this image

and added it to the first image in my SCAL2 program.

I wrote out the word Evolution ... and added that to my image

 in SCAL2 and grouped everything together.

I searched "fairway" in google and found this image

and printed it out at home.

so from this

to this 

Cutting everything with my cricut and SCAL2 in black vinyl all at once

I added it to the front of the glass of a simple picture frame and together I created this.

I just love how this turned out.  

I hope you've enjoyed my quick and easy peasy birthday gift for my son.

As always, have a great day and God Bless!

Amazing Ice Storm Commemorative Plaque

Good day all, I am here again with an Amazing photo plaque. Last April we had an ice storm that lasted 6 days. We were without power, heat and water for 4 of those days and it was COLD. We lost quite a few limbs from a lot of our trees and we even lost half of one tree. The entire town looked like a war zone. During the storm though there was some beauty to it as you will see in a moment. I took a bunch of pictures of all the stages of the storm and found this one to be a beautiful shot.

Somehow I wanted to remember this in a way that the picture just doesn't wind up in a photo album. Eventually I will add it to my scrapbook, but for now I wanted a reminder of how "cold" it was.  Not really, but it sounded good.  LOL

As I said before, we lost a bunch of limbs and when most of the ice was gone, hubby started to cut up those limbs and we will use them for firewood eventually. While he was sawing his heart out, an idea popped into my head and asked if he would please cut up a few "slabs" of the limbs. 

So let's get started:

I "painted" a mixture of the Amazing Casting Resin onto the slab of wood to seal it and to add a bit of "white". After that dried which only took about 5 minutes I "painted" another layer of the Amazing Clear Cast Resin over the top of that. 

I have a pair of "twig" barrettes that I knew I could use to make a mold with the Amazing Mold Putty. Hubby suggested I use real ones from the tree, but these worked just fine. 

I printed out the picture tore the edges and sealed it to my plaque with Amazing Clear Cast Resin. In my stash of "stuff" as I like to call it - I found these crystal like looking things and sprinkled them over the Amazing Clear Cast Resin and let it dry completely about 24 hours. Believe me, I have it all, just ask hubby. He recently told me we needed to add onto the house just to accommodate my crafting obsession - okay by me :)

Once that dried (another 24 hours) I dabbed a bit of Metallic White Acrylic paint over the "crystals" and added the twigs that I had bent slightly and added another layer of Amazing Clear Cast Resin.

This now has 3 layers of Amazing Clear Cast Resin. 

I add some "snow" with my white puffy paint around the edges and on the twig and here is my finished masterpiece.

All I need to do now is add a picture hanger to the back,

and I will hang it next to the window facing this lovely tree. 

  

What event and items would you use to make

a commemorative plaque with Amazing Crafting Products?