You are Beautiful - Jewelry Holder

Good day crafters,

Today I want to show you a project I've been meaning to make for a while now.  I took inspiration from a plaque I made my son a couple of years ago and tweaked it a bit.  This is a very heavy picture post so let's get started ...

My first idea was that I wanted to use up some of my never ending resin pieces.  Every time I create a piece using my Amazing Casting Products that I've molded I seem to mix more Amazing Casting resin than is necessary and thus I create more and more pieces. So I have an abundance of pieces in a 12 x 12 container just waiting to be used up.

I started out with a board that measures 6 x 18, perfect size for my project (or so I thought).  We will get to that later.  I gessoed it and then washed it with blue acrylic paint to give it an old feel.  My bathroom is blue and thus I wanted it to match the decor.

I had purchased a silver oval mirror a the Dollar Tree for whatever reason and decided to use it for this project.  I wish I had taken a picture of it without the painters tape, but I think you get the idea.  Using my Alumilite powders in Copper and Gold I dusted the entire mirror and sprayed it with hairspray and then heat set it.  This may or may not be necessary, but I don't like leaving anything to chance.  Love the new look.

Then I also wanted to etch "You are beautiful" so out comes my Dollar Tree Shelf liner, my cricut and my SCAL program.  

While that was setting up I chose my favorite resin pieces and hooks.  You can go HERE and see how I made these hooks.

I found my placement for the hooks and screwed them into place.  After all my hooks were screwed in I used my E6000 to attach the resin pieces onto the hooks and let that sit over night.

I also attached my mirror using the E6000.  I cannot live without this stuff!

After letting everything set up over night I added my hangers to the back of the plaque.  I did not purchase anything for this project except the mirror, which I technically already had.  With that said, I repurposed some pop tabs for the hangers and screwed them into the back of the wood piece.  RECYCLE or REUSE!

I also used some wire that I had laying around to attach to the pop tabs and because the plaque is lightweight it wont have any problem hanging.

Now here comes by problem from earlier in the post.

I took my finished piece upstairs to my bathroom where I was going to hang it instead of this monstrosity.  

I wanted to reclaim my towel rack and move it to another location.  What a mess huh?  But guess what?  The plaque was too long to hang here.  Ugh, now what?

Well I improvised and hung it under a shelf above the toilet.  Not the ideal spot, but seriously, my bathroom is so small I have no other "wall" to hang it.  So much for the mirror in a great location!  However, I still love it!  Be aware, the rest of the post is picture heavy ...

Key hook on the left side of the board, I can hang rings on the key sticking up.

My skeleton hook on the right side, I can hang rings on the finger...lol

left side

right side

here you can see the etching of the mirror better.  

So love how this came together.

all put together, but wasted space under the mirror? 

ha, the mirror has tiny holes so I threaded my earrings throw there also.

 It also matches this mosaic tray I made many, many years ago and I didn't even try that.

And now I've reclaimed my towel rack.  But now I also remember why I used it as a jewelry holder to begin with.  Not much room for towels....LOL

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial today and as always,

have a great day and God Bless!

Wine stoppers Throw back Mold Rubber Monday

Good day all! welcome to a Throw back Monday on Mold Rubber Monday to show you an AMAZING (picture heavy) tutorial.

If you know me, you know I am a wine connoisseur. I love going to wineries and taking tours especially the taste testing, LOL. I have collected a lot of wine corks to some day make something magnificent with – but until I figure out exactly what I want to do with them, I decided to use one to make multiple bottle stoppers. I kinda ran with this before really thinking it out so let's experiment together.

If you have ever tried to put a cork in an opened bottle you know it's somewhat difficult. That's why they make these super cute "winestoppers" that can also be pretty expensive. Therefore, why not make your own? I started with a cork and cut it to make sort of a chisel point.

Then using my Creative Paperclay® I wrapped it around the chiseled part and made it into a nice rounded point and let it dry. Paperclay takes about 24 hours to dry.

Once it was dry I sanded it smooth.

I added some Amazing Clear Cast Resin to it to make it smooth and non porous so that I could use my Amazing Mold Rubber to create a mold that I could use over and over and over again. You definitely need to have a non porous item...

Once the Amazing Clear Cast Resin set up (about 24 hours), I hot glued it to the bottom of a yogurt container. It was just the right size for my "winestopper" with a little bit of room at the top so that the Amazing Mold Rubber covered it completely.

I mixed and poured the Amazing Mold Rubber and let it set up overnight.

Please CLICK HERE to watch how to mix/prepare Amazing Mold Rubber.

I wanted to be positive it set up completely –

being a thick mold and also it's the middle of winter.

Now here is where the tricky part came. I could not get my "winestopper" out.

I wound up cutting my mold in half. 

This picture shows a well used mold, I've used it

about 20 times so far... looks like it, doesn't it?

Once I put the pieces together I wrap a bit of painters tape around the mold to keep any leakage from happening, but honestly the mold really stays well together.

Here is an example of the two pieces separated with a molded piece. 

I just used my Exacto knife to cut away the little bit of overflow. The top of the "winestopper" looks like a well used cork where the bottom is nice and smooth.

I wanted to somehow incorporate a way to add items to my "winestoppers" and remembered I had these cute little forks and thought they might do the trick. 

After you pour your Amazing Casting Resin let it set up a minute or until you see it start to turn white and insert your fork piece and hold it steady until it sets up all the way. Another couple of minutes and you can let go. Let that set up a little longer to make sure it is completely set up. (See the strip of tape around the mold?) That's just to make sure the mold doesn't leak through.

Here is another "fork" going into the mold using the Alumilite Dye

in Brown to give it more of that "cork" color.

And that is how I attach all my "molded" pieces to my "winestoppers".

You can use E6000®, which is my favorite glue for all of my resin pieces.

Topped with a Chalkboard Heart.

A Butterfly (which got sold at the Winter Bazaar I was at last week).

I even used wire and curled it and inserted it into the mold 

while it was setting up to make a table marker that holds a card.

I even made a"winestopper" with an elephant using Amazing Clear Cast Resin.

 

Ready for some football?

And of course, my all time favorite, my elephant.

All the pieces for my "winestoppers" are also made with Amazing Mold Putty, Amazing Casting Resin, Amazing Clear Cast Resin and various Alumilte Dyes, Alumilite Metallic Powders or painted. ALL the items are sealed with Amazing Clear Cast Resin. The possibilities are endless and I think I've made about 20 different "winestoppers" so far. 

So, when you want a variety of the same item, make it yourself!

What would you LOVE to mold over and over again?

Thanks for stopping by and as always have a great day and God Bless! 

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!

Amazing Remelt to stamps

Good morning friends,

today I want to show you how I came up with a project by accident.

Not too long ago Amazing Crafting Products came out with a new product called Amazing Remelt.  This is such a neat product.  It does however come in this giant container and I didn't like the idea of remelting it each time I wanted to use just a little.  So I decided to melt the entire container and pour it into some ice cube trays so that I could just pull out a bit at a time to melt to create my molds.

Now whenever I want to create a mold I can pull the right amount out to melt.

So while getting ready one morning I pulled the cap off of my deodorant and saw that the inside had a unique shape.  Of course my mind started spinning...could I actually make something from this? 

I pulled my remelt out and poured my "mold"  You can see I also created a cup from my Amazing Mold Putty.  The remelt does get warm and in using the mold putty cup I can just peel it out when I am done.

Loved it

Then I cut the inside out and made another mold.  

Now you are probably wondering what I was going to do with these?

Well ....

I created a stamp and using various other pieces I created some more stamps.  

See #2 and #4 are the stamps I created using the deodorant cap.

#1 and #6 were the pieces from the ice cube trays.

#3 and #5 were created from a breast cancer medallion I had made a while back.

I can't wait to use my "new" created stamps to make up some cards.

I hope you've enjoyed my tutorial today and leave me a comment telling me what unique item you would mold to create a custom made stamp.

As always, have a great day and God Bless.