Christmas in July smoothfoam wreath

Good morning

Today I wanted to show you a quick wreath I made last night getting ready for Christmas in July!

About a year ago I won a contest sponsored by Smoothfoam crafts! I received six different smooth foam wreaths in various sizes! What I absolutely love about the smoothfoam wreaths is that they are sectioned so you can see exactly where you want to place your ribbon or any other embellishments and no measuring is needed!

In searching through my stash I also found some white foam stars.

I  started with my wreathform and cut some denim strips about an inch wide and the length of the pant leg! Then tied those denim strips on to three sections of the of the wreath form.

I also wrapped the rest of the form with red and white Christmas ribbon and added some bows and hot glued them on with those white stars to give it more dimension.

I did the same thing to the denim section.

By adding some of the strip of denim from the seam I created the hanger and here it is in all it's glory!

I hope you like my quick tutorial using the smooth foam wreath form.

 Thanks for coming and I hope to see you again soon - Brenda

Celestial Challenge #42 Week 3, Anything But a Card

Good morning and happy Sunday to you all.  It's that time again when I am showing you something I created for Anything But a Card.  If you haven't heard of us, you guessed it ... it's a challenge blog and we make ANYTHING but a CARD.  So come follow me through my tutorial for this month's theme "Celestial"  There were so many different ideas I kept coming up with until one evening while Christmas shopping with hubby I came across this.  We were at Target and I found this Luminary in the "Dollar" section.  Well, it wasn't $1, but $3 wasn't bad either.

but it was rather plain ... so ...

to the trusty Cricut we go and cut a Star Border out from the Scrapping Table.  You can find her here on Facebook.  I have been a loyal fan of Michelle's for a very long time and I do believe I own every one of her Svg files.  She went off the grid for awhile but I do see she is back and has even re-released some of her older files.  They are all FREE!  If you are looking for any svg files, she has plenty and make sure to tell her I sent you.  I do believe she will also be putting out some NEW files in 2015.

So anyway, I cut that out on some silver vinyl and attached it to my luminary.

I needed some bling, so in shopping my stash I found ALL of these awesome stars.  Huh, who knew?  I make my own glue dots, because I'm very frugal that way.  Just purchase some Alene's Tack It Over and Over glue, use some backing from used up vinyl projects or in this case, my backing from my ATG tape.  You need to let the glue dots set up for a couple of hours for sure.  I usually make about 5 sheets at a time.  Press your stars onto the glue dots and press them on your project ... that simple! 

And now I have a Starry Night Light sitting on my headboard.  

Love it!

I hope I've inspired you to create something for our challenge over at Anything But a Card and hope to see you link up with us.  Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think of my Starry Night Light and hope to see you again soon.

As always, have a great day and God Bless!

Unscripted Sketches 251 Congratulations

Good Morning and happy Saturday again,

I think Saturday mornings have turned into my favorite day of the week and let me tell you why.  When I woke up this morning, after making coffee, I opened my twitter feed and there was a tweet from Susan over at Unscripted Sketches talking about the new Sketch #251 for this week.  Of course I had to check it out since I played along last week and had a great time doing it.  I saw the new sketch and was inspired by a card Billie made.

You will have to go over there to see which one I'm talking about.  Anyway, it gave me an idea, so off to my embellishment stash of resin and paperclay items I've made (since my goal is to use them up first before making anything new) and I found exactly what I was looking for.

I had made this star last year using my Creative Paperclay.  It's an airdry clay and so easy to work with.

I painted it with red, white and blue acrylic paints and then sanded it with some 

sandpaper to weather it.  I loved how it turned out.  

Actually I had make about a dozen of them and have most of them in my stash.  

Why you ask?  Because I can never just make one of anything, LOL.  Since I work backwards, I had to find some paper to go with the star and found the perfect paper in my scrap drawer.  No need to cut up any new sheets (another goal of mine, use up what I have for scraps first).

One of the newest products over at Amazing Crafting Products is Alumidust.  It comes in many colors and I just happen to have a container of the Deep Red.  As you know I am on the Amazing Mold Putty design team and am fortunate to have been given some of the Alumidusts, but  I really didn't know much about them.  So after doing some research I came up with this: take some of your CLEAR embossing powder and a tiny scoop of the Alumidust and mix.  Then just stamp your image, sprinkle your mixed embossing powder over your image, shake off and heat with your heat gun.  You just made your own colored embossing powder.  LOVE IT!  Now I did use a black inkpad, but you can really see the shimmer the deep red alumidust gives it and combined with the black ink it matches the striped paper perfectly! 

Isn't that just gorgeous?  I've seen colored embossing powders at Michaels and such, but they are kinda spendy (for me anyway).  Now I can color my own with the clear embossing powder I already have and alumidust (which comes in soooo many colors) and make just enough for what I need it for instead of purchasing a full container of a color I may never use again??? 

And here is my finished card for the challenge at Unscripted Sketches #251.  Literally this card took me 5 minutes to make but I love it and I know I can always use a Congrats card!

Oh by the way, I also made Top 3 last week over at Unscripted Sketches.  I was thrilled when I read that.  

That's another reason I am thrilled for this Saturday morning!

If you missed my card last week, click here and it will take you to the post.

Now I hope I've inspired you to head over to Unscripted Sketches and try your hand at the challenge.

By the way, if you are here for my Day 3 of Frog Dog Studios post, click here or scroll down.

As always, have a great day and God Bless!

SS Transparent challenge

Good evening,

I'm back entering another challenge over at Simon Says Stamp Blog.  I have to say since I've started paper crafting more and more I can't believe I took such a long break.  I'm so glad that I got back into the swing of things.

This week's challenge is called "I can see clearly now" and the take is anything transparent, vellum etc.  I knew right away that I wanted to create something to fit this theme.  Now remember, I save EVERYTHING.  Seriously, it's baaaddd, but clearly I have exactly what I needed for this challenge.  I started with

the packaging from a cricut cartridge and cut it down to size 

then I embossed it with my cuttlebug Stars folder 

Perfect embossing. 

I did want some of the stars to pop, so I masked them off 

and using my Stazon ink I inked direct from pad to star. 

I cut out a star with my cricut and inked around it and the saying 

"You are a Star" 

I laid the "transparency" on to the card and created a pleated ribbon to make it look like a curtain. 

Easy, easy, easy and oh so much fun!

I hope you've enjoyed my quick card and hope to see you again real soon.  

Remember, if you are looking for a challenge, the Simon Says Stamp Blog is a great blog to participate in.

As always, have a great day and God Bless!

Krylon Paint and old table

Here is a relook at the table I made using my Krylon Dual Paint and Primer and something new so make sure you read on if you've already seen this post.

I have been so busy creating lately.  I have loved all my projects, but this one I am most proud of as of right now.  I was approached by Infarrantly Creative and Krylon to see if I would be interested in doing a project for them using a new product, Paint and Primer in one can.  Well, duh, of course.  Hahaha  I will try ALMOST anything.  I was allowed to pick two colors of this new Paint and Primer spray paint.  I chose red and blue of course. 

I started with this table.  When we bought our house 10 years ago, my inlaws bought us this table and chair set for our downstairs patio.  It was gorgeous when we first got it and I love wood so this was a perfect fit for us.  As you can see, 10 years of outdoor living has taken it's toll on this poor set, but I didn't want to get rid of it either.  I knew, someday I could do something with it. 

and wound up with this:

Isn't it just gorgeous:
This is how I did it:
I first disassembled the table by unscrewing all the slats from the metal legs.  The wood was a bit rotted in places, so when I painted it the red paint really soaked into the wood.

 I had to use 2 coats to get a proper coverage of the paint, but it is well worth it.

Then I painted the bottom rung and the metal legs.  I only needed 1 coat for each of these items.  The metal took very well and the wooden rung covered nicely also. 

After I let it dry for 25 minutes I sprayed a white spray paint also made by Krylon (had some left over from a previous project).  I let that also dry for about 20 minutes.

 Then I cut a star out of some vinyl and when I was sure the paint was really good and dry I placed the cut ontop of the white and used a strip to avoid spraying onto the red.  I placed the slats as far apart as they would be when the table is reassembled.

 I then used the blue spray paint to paint over the vinyl cut star.

 I let that dry for about 20 minutes also.

 I reassembled the table

 and this is it.  I am so in love with my new table.  I can't wait to do my chairs now also.  I used 1 can of each color and still have about half of a can of the blue left over.  The red is almost used up, but I think it's a very affortable project and the color really look great.  All in all this project probably took me about 2 hours.  Cool huh?

Now, we all know you can never have too many light sets right?  I know I can't, but they can get pretty costly and I love to make things so I made my own 4th of July light set.

First I cut stars out of some cleaned soda cans and some plastic containers.

I forgot to take pictures of the soda can stars, but I used the same method as I did for the plastic
You can cut them very easily with tin snips or even kitchen scissors (that's what I used)
I also spray painted the plate here and that's another project in itself so stay tuned...

Then I ran them both through my cuddlebug and embossed them with the "stars" cuddlebug folder.

Then I spray painted both sides of the stars.  Litterally in 20 minutes I was able to flip them over and paint the other side.  This paint dries so fast and it only took one coat each side.  Both the soda cans and the plastic took very well to the paint.

These are the soda can stars

Soda can stars

Plastic Stars

Plastic Stars

After the stars were completely dried, I sanded a bit of the paint off the soda cans to give it a bit of an aged look.  The plastic stars I kept as they were; no sanding.

These turned out awesome

I punched a hole in each star with my Crop-a-Dile II right in the center and put them on a string of lights.  Don't they look fantastic?  I even tried some clear ones and they are ok, but I do love the painted ones

Soda can stars

Plastic Star

 Plastic clear star

 Soda can star

Combination of soda can stars and plastic stars.  

Just think of the possibilities for Christmas (trees), Halloween (pumpkins), Valentines Day (Hearts), and the list goes on and on.  Wow, I can't wait for the next holiday to come along.

Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think and tell me which ones you like the best:  

Soda Can, Plastic or clear plastic.