Christmas Ornament Wreath

I saw this pin on Pinterst:

I had to go and see what this pin was all about. From the Eddie Ross website I learned that all I needed were some ornaments, ribbon, a wire coat hanger and glue.  I figured that one would look nice on the door for Christmas.  Last year I stocked up on all different kinds of ornaments just after Christmas when they were on clearance.  I decided to use a mix of both glass and plastic.

I started off by gluing all the tops on the ornaments and making sure they were secure.  I found a good little trick to keep the ornaments from rolling around on the table.  I took a roll of scotch tape, laid it on it's side and set the ornament in the hole.

I managed to keep track of the ornaments that I glued by sticking them back in the box but with the tops facing upward.  Here I missed two. 

What I failed to realize is just how many ornaments it would take to fill one coat hanger.  I had to use close to a to a eighty ornaments in a variety of sizes and shapes.  You just place them on the coat hanger one after the other and move them around until it is full but you can get the two ends together.

This is where I ran into some problems.  The coat hanger wire is really tough to bend so I ended up just twisting them together a couple of times and then using some wire to wrap and twist around
the two ends to hold them together.

I then found a good video on YouTube on how to make a bow using wire edge ribbon.

I made my bow and hanger using 2 1/2" wide ribbon and 25' in length.  I attached the ribbon to the wreath using some more wire.  This helps to hid the hook part from the coat hanger. (At this point the ornaments are on there really tight and I popped a glass one off.  It hit the floor and shattered. Probably would have been better to stick with plastic.)   I kept enough ribbon to loop around the wreath behind the bow and knot, to hang it from.  I  used a Command hook upside down on the inside of the door, draped the ribbon over the top of the door and hooked the ribbon on the hook.  I have to say I'm pleased with the result.

I just hope the kids don't slam the door and knock it off. Also hope that the Command hook holds.
We'll just have to wait and see.

New times and Painted floors

New times are upon us.  I've been so busy since my last post to this one.  Life has taken some crazy turns.  The new studio is completed, construction and furniture wise, but not completely set up yet nor has everything else been moved and somehow it still is in need of a good cleaning. I'm still trying to figure out how to organize everything. I think a spring clean out is in order for next year.

I have managed to experiment with some new things though.  Porch paint being one of them. See I have these old hard wood floors that I can't stand to look at. They are just ugly and old.  We have speed bumps in them from swelling due to high humidity during the summers. They are also almost 2" thick.  To rip them out and replace them would cost a small fortune, so not an option. Laminate floor, not an option because of the speed bumps.  What else is left....porch floor paint.  I painted my living room/dining room floors.  They went from being ugly to I like them now.

The walls are a light green color so I went with a dark chocolate colored premixed Valspar^® Latex Porch & Floor Paint.  On the left you can see the old floors and the right is where I've painted:

 

Here you can see more of it painted.

I have to say that over all I like the paint.  The wood grain shows up nicely though the paint and what I did was so easy.  I just washed the floor and painted it on with a brush.  It probably would have gone so much faster with a roller but I like to paint with a brush.  I find it soothing somehow.

I would, however, recommend using some sort of sealer if you want the floors to stay nice and not get the paint scratched.  I did not use anything other than two coats of paint.  It does scratch and scuff but I want that worn look to the floor plus if there is a major scratch that I don't like or want in the floor I can just touch it up with a little brush and paint. Surprisingly the dogs and cats claws do not really scratch the paint.  Most of the scratches that are in the floor now are from moving furniture around.   I plan on doing the treads to stairs and the trim with this as well in the near future.  

Stampin Sketch Book pt 2

To continue on with my little Bloom Mae stamp, that I had colored in the previous post, I decided to use her on a book cover. I wanted something cute to go along with her. I chose out a section of paper from BoBunny's Back To Backs 12" Sophie Cut Outs.  The section that I chose was the section that says "Beautiful Inside & Out."  I figured that with this the book would have to be coptic stitched because the cut out that I chose would loose to much if I wrapped it around the book board.

I took my book board, cut to 6" x 6", and glued a glue piece of coordinating blue scrapbook paper down to it for both the back and the front covers, inside and out.  I waxed up some cotton hot pink thread with some locally sourced bees wax and placed a few stitches on the BoBunny cut out, one in the upper right and two in the lower left corners.  Then I glued this one down to one the now blue book board that will become the front cover.  I wanted to give the covers a sort of aged look so I took some really fine grit sand paper and sanded all around the edges.  Then I used some Distress Stain, antique linen, to give it an aged look.

Once that was all done I worked on the signatures. For the signatures, or sections of folded paper that make up the book, I used  Canson 90lb drawing paper.  To dress up the book a little bit more I decided to use a bright pink card stock to go over the spine edge of the signatures.  The sewing thread is the same hot pink cotton one that I used to stitch in the cut out.   I decided where my holes were going to be for stitching and drilled/punched those in the cover and signatures. Then I stitched the book together and finally attached Mae to the cover with some double sided sticky foam.

Here is the finished book:

Stampin Sketch Book

I was following someone on Facebook who happened to post a link to a wonderfully fun stamping site called Some Odd Girl.  I decided to check them out.

It turns out that they have some really awesome digital stamp and clear stamps. I've always loved the idea of digital stamps since I heard about them in my Copic certification class but I've never actually bought or used one...until now.  I found this really cute stamp that I just had to have called Bloom Mae.

Isn't she the cutest thing?  I think she's just fabulous.  The digi stamps come with both a JPEG and a PNG file.  I used Photoshop to downsize the stamp to the size that I wanted to use.  I printed her out and let the ink set over night.  Then I colored her using Copic sketch markers and cut her out.

Here's the list of what I used:

Skin - E000, E01, E11

Hair - E51, E35, E25, E29

Dress - BG11, BG13, BG34

Flower and Trim on Dress - RV11, RV19, RV34

Flower stem - G21, G24

Eyes - BG11, BG13

On a side note; I have found out that HAMMERMILL Color Copy Digital Cover 60lb is very Copic marker friendly.  I think that it colors very similar to the actual Copic paper. That is if you can find it.  I have a very hard time finding the paper where I live and often times have to order it.

What does this little stamp have to do with a sketch book or my love of making books? Well stay tuned my next post will show you just exactly what I was able to do with little miss Mae.

Copic markers color anything?!

So in the Copic marker certification classes we talked about how Copic markers will color anything.  I had to wonder if this was true. I mean a marker that will color anything. That would be completely awesome.   I had to test this...

Enter my problem...I was working on beading some of my new wine glass charms and I wanted some crystal bicones to match the purple skull that was the main focus. 

I took the Copic markers and tested them on paper to find the color that matched. This is the one I chose.

I took the brush side of this Copic sketch marker, V09, and used it to color a clear crystal bicone (and some of my fingers which got in the way.)  So, do Copic markers color crystal bicones? Yep they sure do.

I polished them up with a soft dry cloth and used them on my wine charms. Check it out:

So now if you want custom color crystal bicones just have some clear ones on hand and all you have to do is find a matching Copic marker and color away. :)

Copic Certifications

I figured it's about time that I post about my experience going though with the Copic standard and intermediate certification classes.  I took the standard and the intermediate back to back, so the standard class was on Saturday followed by the intermediate on Sunday.  These are not short classes  and made for a long weekend when I had to drive about an hour to get to them. The standard class is 7 hours and the intermediate class was a 9 hour day, with breaks of course, but when you add on 2 hours for driving it was just long days.

Let me say that it was fun as heck though. Both of my classes were nice and small, no more than 20 people there. This was great. We had time to share some stories, talk, get to know one another better than if there was a larger group. As a small group it also meant that we got tons of instruction and question time. Our instructor Cindy Lawarence was wonderful. She answered all our questions and gave us plenty of individual time pointing out when we should try something different or encouraging us to be brave and try colors we didn't think would work together.  I learned so much and had so much fun.

I won't deny that part of the joy of taking the classes is receiving goodie bags for each one. I love goodies. The standard class gave us this wonderful little Copic zip pouch, a sketch colorless blender 0, a refill for the colorless blender, and 4 standard non-refillable multi liners ( black 0.3 & 0.5, sepia 0.5, and grey 0.3)

Would you know it...I made the mistake of having the 0.3 multi liner sitting on my desk when the kid asked to borrow a pen and I handed it to her. She broke it....before I even had a chance to use it. She presses to hard on her writing instruments so I should have known better.  :(  So now I make sure they don't get put in with all my other pens on my desk and the kids don't use them.

The second day with the intermediate class we got a roll of x-press it double sided tape. I didn't realize Copic made such a wide range of products.  I must say that I love this tape and it's been a life saver for some of the kids school projects, much easier and less messy than glue. We also got a 72 marker travel case. <3

Then on both of the days we also go a cute little portfolio to put some of our works in.

Getting Crafty

So ArtFire.com is running this cool contest. It's your chance to win the supplies to try a new craft.
You can check out the post on their blog, Nosh, for all the details on how to enter this cool contest.

I thought I'd share my pin board on Pinterest with you all so you could see what my Get Crafty board looks like. It's full of fun things. Lots of Tim Holtz Distress Stains, some punches and Sizzix dies, a few stencils, and some essentials (cutting mat, scoring board, and table protector.)  I just got my Sizzix machine and I have not even taken it out of the box yet. I'd love to try to create some three dimensional paper collages all the goodies on my board. I'd like to learn more about the Distress Stains and the way they work with paper (so may ideas....)  I'd take everything and make something awesome!!!

Be sure to check out the contest and enter if you already haven't!