Happy New Year

Yeah, so better late than never. HaHa

I have no idea where the time goes. Just yesterday it was Halloween and here we are through the holidays and more than half way through January 2017!

But we did have a wonderful, relaxing Christmas.

I cannot honestly say what I made over the past couple months. I know I made more Christmas cards. I am pretty sure I did not remember to photograph them lol

Here is a project I made just a few days before Christmas. 

I found this 14 x 14 shiplap sign at a local craft store. It had a thin white wash on it.

I base coated it with cream colored acrylic paint and then applied vinyl lettering.
I then painted the entire thing black.
Next came a vinyl manger followed by a coat of dark red.

I then peeled up all the vinyl to reveal the prior colors.
The red had bled a bit under the manger vinyl so I dry brushed a bit more over the black to make it look like that is what I intended all along :-)

I wanted to stencil a star but the vinyl wouldn't stick to the red paint so I cut a star from glitter card stock and glued it on.

I love how it turned out!  I picked up another sign at the same time which is about 12 x 24. I need to get working on it so I can hang it in the same spot. 

That finished up 2016.

So let's start 2017!

My best friend (and collage roommate) Cathy...I call her Helen (long story lol) has a birthday this month. Of course I made her a card!

This is the Pansies box card from the Springtime box cards set at SVG Cuts. I love how it looks just like a basket full of pansies sitting on my desk. I think she is going to love it.

And of course I made her a little something to go with it.

I have a big box full of mint tins. I stared into that empty tin for over a week trying to decide what to put inside. 
I finally decided on 'mermaid'. But what exactly should be going on?

I searched through the Cricut image library for mermaids. I found several. Once I had chosen a few that fit beautifully into my tin I needed to decide what kind of scene she would be living in (which would help me pick which mermaid to use)

I thought of sunken ship and this mermaid seemed to be looking at something so she was chosen. 
I googled images of sunken ships until I found one I liked that would look good cropped into the lid. I then searched for an under water scene to fill the bottom of my box.

I used the Cricut Explore Print Then Cut feature to get my backgrounds cut to the correct size.

The mermaid is from the Cricut image set "Mermaid Party". Her tail is cut from Cricut glitter card stock, Her top is cut from Cricut Pearl paper. Both of these papers cut beautifully even at such a tiny size. (the mermaid is only about 3" tall)

All the plant life was also cut with my Explore. I really pushed the intricate cuts to the limit on this project and the Explore still performed beyond belief.

My only problem was her eyes and mouth. They are sooooo small. The Cricut cut them but being so teeny I couldn't handle them and found it easier to paint them on instead of making a gluey mess.

The final touch was to glue the plants into a gravel/sand base so that it created a 3D scene.

I fell in love with it and kept asking hubby if it would be horrible of me to keep it lol

So, because it is just wrong to keep the gift you made for someone else (or so hubby kept insisting), I made another one.

Same backgrounds and plants but instead of a fushia and lavender brunette mermaid I maid a copper and dark red blonde mermaid.  She also has a couple sea shells on her ocean floor.

Now I had a bigger dilemma.....I loved BOTH of them. How on earth do I decide which one to send?

I won't tell you which one I kept (because I just mailed it today and in case she reads this blog I want her to at least have a little surprise lol)  But the decision came down to this.....one box opens easily, the other kept sealing itself shut! Ha!

Thanks for stopping by!
I wish you all a year full of peace, love, health, happiness and lots of crafting time!

Time Flies when you are having Fun

I can't believe that I have already completed 38 days of the ICAD challenge. 

Then again I can't believe 2016 is more than half way over. My parents always said that time flies the older you get but this is just crazy.  And why does it happen???

Well, here are my cards from the past week. And let me tell you, some of these prompts did absolutely NOTHING for me!!!

Like this one...

Day 32: Zodiac

It took me most of the day to force myself to sit down and do something. (and I didn't do much lol)

The goat is drawn with pencil and colored Inktense pencil. 
Capricorn is stamped with black StazOn ink using the Close To My Heart Circus Alphabet set.


Day 33: Magic

The rabbit, hat, cards and wand were colored with Inktense pencils. The table and background were watercolor pencil.

I like this one. As soon as I saw the prompt I knew I wanted to draw a bunny. :-)


Day 34: Statue of Liberty

Since I am still trying to teach myself how to draw chibi characters Lady Liberty just came out that way lol

The outlines are Sharpie fine point pen (not the markers, these have a slim body and super fine point). 
Color was added with Inktense pencils.


Day 35: Sunflower

Drawn with Sharpie black pen. Colored with Inktense pencils. Sunflower was written with a Cricut calligraphy pen.


Day 36: Prism  (another boring prompt lol)

I had no idea what to do so went very literal (and boring). I have to say I do like the vibrant colors. I used Cray-Pas oil pastels and blended them with my fingers. Very messing, very pretty lol


Day 37: Meditation

I don't meditate and this card shows why. 
I start out with good intentions everything as it should be and soon my mood goes to black as the cat is howling out in the kitchen, I am thinking I need to get dinner on the stove or I start thinking about work....  I am much better off locking myself in my art room and grabbing a pencil or some paint! lol



Day 38: Folk Art

Wow! I thought I would just whip out a folk art flower in a couple minutes and be done. They used to take me no time at all. BUT that was over 30 years ago!

It is hard to believe that this was the craft painting style of the 80s. I don't think I have seen it since. But I still have a couple painting books on my shelf so I hauled one down and gave it a go. 

It isn't great (after 3 attempts! lol) but it will do.

Painted with acrylics (that I still have from the 80s lol)

So that covers all my cards for the week.

But I also did a vinyl project this week.  :-)

I love yard sales, You can find the oddest things. Like a couple months ago I scored a box of at least 50 glass baby food jars with metal lids for $1.

I had no use in mind other than maybe sorting and storing beads or something but everyone on the Let's Learn Cricut Explore facebook group has been making fairy jars.

I am not into fairies, although I do like Tinkerbell, so I hadn't jumped on that bandwagon.
Not until someone posted a Mermaid jar. Now there is something I can get into :-)

I cut the vinyl pieces with my Explore. A mermaid lounging on the sea floor, a couple fish, a sea shell and a sea star. They were applied to the inside of the jar.

I did not have any colored tissue paper so I made my own. I spritzed some tissue paper with water and then with Dylusions Ink spray. Voila! Colored tissue paper. I then dried with it my heat gun and then sprayed it with Krylon Workable Fixatif so the color wouldn't bleed when I glued the tissue to the jar.

I used Mod Podge to glue the tissue.
I then sprayed the metal lid with Rustoleum white metal primer, let it dry then dabbed on alcohol inks.

Just a piece of jute tied around the top and some sand glued to the bottom with Tacky glue.

I have a tiny battery tea light inside.  I think it turned out cute. 

That about covers it for this week.

Stay cool and dry. Happy Crafting!!!

Day 3

Day 3 of my Creative Doodles class!

I won't bore you with my random doodling exercises lol

I tackled yesterday's "What do you see?" challenge again. I just sat back, squinted my eyes and waited. Slowly a mermaid tail appeared so, not to be unkind, I gave her a body lol And then the bottom of a treasure chest so of course, I had to add the top. :-)

Then, just like seeing images in clouds, fish began appearing everywhere. And then columns, as if she lived in Atlantis!
We have 4 more pages of 'what do you see?' today. I have only completed 2 so far but figured, since I was diddling around on the computer, I would go ahead and share.

My first was pretty straight forward. The images were blatantly obvious...flowers. I tried to doodle them up a bit and then I came back in with my trusty black pencil to add a bit of depth.

This next one called out to me as soon as I saw it.....I saw a poor little girl, just awakened by a horrible monster! So, what would a psychiatrist read into this? Probably that I spend way too much time alone, I have a warped sense of humor (because I find this picture very funny) or I am nuts....or maybe all three! lol But I like it!