Animal crackers to toy fun

Good morning friends,

I totally forgot about this project I made this last fall.  I was watching my grand kids a lot and while they were here often, they were getting bored with their toys.  I always tried to find new things to entertain them but I was running out of ideas until one day while we were playing tea party.  The kids had some animal crackers and we were using them to play with while eating them.  Ooops... now they were all gone and they wanted to play more.  Well, Amazing Crafting Products to the rescue.

I "found" a couple more animal crackers since I don't ever completely run out of them and made a mold using my Amazing Mold Putty.  I added some Orange Alumidust to the Amazing Casting Resin and let them set up for about 10 minutes.

Now I just needed to sand the edges so that they weren't too sharp for the kiddos and now they have animal crackers for their tea parties that will NEVER run out.

I hope you've enjoyed this simple tutorial, but do tell me what you 

would mold if you wanted your kiddos or grand babies to have some unlimited fun playing!

As always, 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!

Dandelion Etched Wine Glasses

Good morning friends,

My soon to be DIL loves dandelions and I wanted to give her a special gift for Christmas.  I'm in love with using Armour Etching Cream and thought I could make her some personalized wine glasses.

I cut a dandelion pattern using my cricut.  I had to cut it in half because it was too big for the wine glasses.

I adhered the first piece to the glass.  I had to make some relief cuts but that's okay, especially with a pattern like this.  Just make sure that you have not openings anywhere in your pattern.

Then I added the second layer to the glass.

I added the etching cream all over the pattern and let it sit up for 10 minutes.

I also etched the stems.  

Now, I do not like to waste anything so I actually scrape the etching cream

 off the glass and put it right back into the bottle.  

I love the look of these

And even the stems look awesome.

She really loved her glasses and wants 4 more to make a set of 6.  Oh yeah!

I hope you've enjoyed my simple glass etching tutorial today and

 would love to hear what personalized item you would make.

As always, have a Great Day and God Bless.

Hot Glue voided Hair Barrette

Good morning crafties,

Today I want to revisit a barrette I made using a new technique.

A while back I made this awesome barrette for my post over at Anything But a Card.  I just loved the way it turned out and wear it often.  I did get a lot of compliments and therefore I wanted to make another using a different approach.

I started out with the same mold, but this time I added some

 hot glue in a pattern before adding my Amazing Casting Resin.

I mixed up my Amazing Casting Resin with the Alumilite Black Dye and poured my mold.

After about 10 minutes it was set up and I pulled it from my mold.  You can see where the hotglue is.

Then I gently picked the hotglue out from the resin piece.  Pretty cool huh?

I added some Alumilite Pearlescent Powder 

Punched two holes on either side of the resin piece and added a chopstick and there you have another version of my barrette.  I just love the look of this.

I hope you've enjoyed my tutorial today and would love to hear

 what you would create with some hotglue as a void.

As always, have a great day and God Bless.

Pink Ladies Tree

Good morning Crafties,

I totally forgot to post this tree I made right before Christmas.  I made a similar tree a couple of years ago and you can view the entire tutorial HERE.

Here's a quick recap of what we do:

We are a group of Ladies and Gents that get together every Sunday to throw darts and raise money for cancer.  We donate $500, a blanket (that is handmade by one of our Pink Ladies) and sometimes a plant or flowers each time to a "local person" with cancer primarily to help with everyday expenses.  That could be anything from personal items, groceries or gas to get to and from doctor appointments.  It's their money and they can do whatever they want with it.  We occasionally also hold fundraisers to obtain funds that we then give away.

We had our Christmas party and I made this tree for our table as a centerpiece.  I printed the ribbons onto pink cardstock and cut the "Snowflake" using my cricut.

Now the pictures really do not do this tree justice, but it did turn out pretty cool.

Now while Christmas has been long over, this tree is still up at the bar.  Troy, our bar owner and sponsor of the Pink Ladies says it represents the Pink Ladies all year long, not just at Christmas time!  It just thrills me when I know people like my creations.

As always, have a great day and God Bless.

Adding Non Crafting Products for Pendant making

Good Morning friends

Today I want to show you a simple way to embellish a pendant after creating it with the Amazing Mold Rubber and Amazing Casting Products.

I started out with this pendant I had received a while back.  I recreated it with my Amazing Mold Rubber and you can see HERE how you mix that up.  I also used my Amazing Casting Resin with the Flo Green Dye to create the pendant and HERE are the instructions for mixing that up.

I purchased these fingernail decals at my Dollar Tree for crafting.  I just loved the design and knew I could use them for some sort of crafting project.  2 full sheets for a dollar, oh yeah!  I created a template and cut out the decal and placed it inside the middle of the pendant.

I also wanted to add some bling to the pendant.  I pop dotted a few silver rhinestones to some vinyl backing and colored them with a black sharpie.  I glued them to the front of the pendant with some E6000.

I knew I needed a finding for the back of the pendant, but didn't have any on hand.  

I did however have these beauties and with some pliers ... 

I was able to straighten and flatten them.

Using some E6000 I glued the finding to the back of the pendant.

I also added some Amazing Clear Cast resin to the inside of the pendant keeping the

 nail decal in place and here you have an awesome pendant.

I hope you enjoyed my pendant today.  I love comments, so please let me know what you think and do tell me what non crafting product you use in your crafts.

As always, have a great day and God Bless!

New Beginnings at Anything But a Card

Good morning and welcome to another Anything But a Card post.  This month's challenge is "New Beginnings" which means it's basically up to you on how you want to interpret that.  I thought long and hard on what I wanted to do and decided for my New Year's resolution I would "upcycle" more and with that said, I will give something a "New Beginning"!  So here goes ...

I am a part-time bookkeeper at a bar which is an awesome gig.  Not only for doing the books there but all the goodies I can hoard, er, I mean collect.  Right before Christmas my boss gave me an awesome bottle.  She knows how much I love to create things and she thought I might  be able to do something with it.  Well, of course I can and did.  In fact, I gave it right back to her after I did this :

I started with some left over vinyl that I cut with my Cricut to spell out Jane's bar and used my Armour Etch. 

The bottle on the left is during the day, the bottle on the right at night.

I love how this lights up and makes for a great bar accent.

I added some purple and gold Christmas light in the bottle (yes, she is also a Vikings Fan)

 and now she has a cool accent to put up on her bar.

I think this is a rather cool idea for a "New Beginning" for an old empty booze bottle.

I hope you've enjoyed my post today and please make sure to link up with us over at Anything But a Card.  There are three simple rules

1.Create ANYTHING BUT A CARD

2. Make sure you do something to represent the Challenge "NEW BEGINNINGS"

3. Have FUN!

Paper Punch to Resin Steampunk Necklace

Good day friends

Today I have a tutorial for you showing what imagination can create.

I started out with a punch that I borrowed and wanted to use over and over again.  I started by punching silver duct tape.  You can buy this at any hardware store.  It's sturdy and has sticky tape on the back.  I punched it once the right side and then the wrong side, thus having two pieces with sticky on opposite sides.  Then I punched some chipboard, actually a cereal box.  I then taped the three pieces together giving me close to a dime thickness.

Now here comes the preserving of this punched element.  

I used my Remelt from Amazing Crafting Products. 

I tacked the punched piece down with some repositional tack into a glass butter dish.  

Make sure you spray your item with some sort of release agent.  I used the UMR Mold Release also available from Amazing Crafting Products.

I have no use for this mold anymore so I decided to REMELT it.  

That's what I love about this product, no wasting the mold!   

I cut it into for sizable chunks and using my Amazing Mold Putty "cup" 

I remelted it in the microwave for about 20 seconds ...

and poured my mold. 

and here is the finished piece.  I carefully peeled it out of the mold and was pretty happy with the outcome.  Some of the pieces didn't have enough depth to create the "holes" the punched produced, but I can always make the original punched piece thicker and REMELT and try again.  

But for now I knew I could still use the piece for something ... 

Here is the piece after it was molded with the Amazing Clear Cast Resin and Alumilite Metallic Powder.  You can see that the punched out pieces are not defined enough,  

but rest assured, I will do this again just a bit thicker!

I received this mold as a gift and decided I was going to create a steampunk necklace.  Totally in love with the idea.  I used my Amazing Casting Resin and the Alumilite Metal Metallic Powder to create my gears, key holes and keys. 

I layed my gears onto the molded punched piece 

(you can see that those gears fit almost perfectly onto it)

to find the proper placement, added some chains and gluing 

everything down with E6000 I came up with this!
I also added some red flatback rhinestones with E6000 to glitz it up a bit!

What do you think? 

I love this necklace and cannot wait to find a reason to wear it!

Now remember, just because the original idea didn't work, doesn't mean you can't recreate it using the Remelt production or you can just go with what you have and go into a total different direction!

I'm glad you stopped by and please leave a comment and let me know what you think of my tutorial today.

As always, have a great day and God Bless!

Cracked Glass Bobbles

Good morning,

Here is a quick tutorial for creating personalized glass bobbles.  I have a friend who has cancer and she wanted purple cracked marbles for herself, her mother and her girls to wear while she is going through her treatments.  She had found this awesome tutorial on pintrest and asked me if I could do this.  "Well, even if I can't I'm going to give it a college" try I said.  I looked high and low for purple marbles and couldn't find any.  But I did have those flat back glass gems you can buy at the Dollar Tree in all sizes.  I grabbed 4 of them, put them each in a muffin tin and backed them at 320 degrees for 20 minutes.  As soon as you take them out of the oven throw them into a bowl of ice water and they CRACK, but not all the way through.  So awesome.  Then I mod podged some purple tissue paper to the back of them and let that dry for a couple of hours.  I used my E6000 glue and attached a finding to the back of each gem and now we just need to add a jump ring and a chain and she has her Cracked Glass Bobbles.

Isn't this lovely?

Here are the four I made.  So simple and yet so beautiful.

I hope you enjoyed today's quick post and hope to see you real soon.  

Please leave a comment cuz I love comments and tell me what you think of today's project.

As always, have a great day and God Bless.

$12,500 donated in 2014

Good morning friends,

Today I wanted to share a quick post on a Glass Etching Project I made for our Pink Ladies Dart Team!  If you don't already know what the Pink Ladies are all about, let me give you a quick background.  We are a group of Ladies and Gents that get together every Sunday to throw darts and raise money for cancer.  We donate $500, a blanket (that is handmade by one of our Pink Ladies) and sometimes a plant or flowers each time to a "local person" with cancer primarily to help with everyday expenses.  That could be anything from personal items, groceries or gas to get to and from doctor appointments.  It's their money and they can do whatever they want with it.  We occasionally also hold fundraisers to obtain funds that we then give away.

We started this in April of 2014 and by New Years Eve 2014 we gave away $12,500.  

Can you say WOW!!!!

I wanted to give our bar owner who does a tremendous job something to hang in the bar 

to commemorate the accomplishment and let's see what I did:

This is our logo and I cut it using my cricut from some scrap pink vinyl I had left over 

from making all the window decals that we also sold to raise money.  

I laid that on a piece of glass from a frame.

Using the Armour Etch (ing) cream, I slathered a generous amount 

over the vinyl and let it sit for about 10 minutes.

I wanted to commemorate the amount and the date we did that in so I cut that all out 

also on my cricut from Dollar Tree contact paper.  Do NOT waste your precious vinyl.

again slathering a generous amount over the top ...

I do scrape the excessive off with a brush or used credit card and put it right back into my bottle.

NO WASTE!

I then laid the glass over the top of some metallic scrapbook paper and there you have it!

I hope you liked my post today and  if you are at all inclined to donate you can do so by going HERE.

You can find the Bottom's Up Pink Ladies facebook page HERE and we are on Twitter @BUPINKLADIES!

As always, have a great day and God Bless!