Lots of New This New Year!!

 

First; I'd like to thank everyone who supported Crafty Day Dreams, your support means so much to me!

Second; I want to wish everyone a very happy and healthy new year. I decided not to partake in the New Year's resolutions this year for a few reasons, the biggest one being that I normal do not succeed very well at them. I have decided to take on some goals for myself instead. One of these goals is to try to blog more and show maybe more in progress stuff. I'd like to maybe do some videos too. Second goal is to get everything that I have made photographed and listed in my stores. Surprisingly I have a ton of items made that I just have not found the time to photograph and list.


Third; Be on the look out for some great new items coming your way this new year. There will be a wide variety of new items appearing in my stores.  Booklaces will be making a appearance after a some good feedback from the lucky person to receive the prototype.  Adjustments have been made and the original improved upon. Start looking for these in the up and coming weeks.  Be sure to keep checking back to see what's been added to the store. :)

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.