Fabric Paint & A Canvas

So just like the picture above says, the big deal about this is using Fabric Paint to make your design for your canvas,—no Silhouettes, or Stencils or the ‘using sicker letters and peeling them off’,—Here’s a brief explanation of what I did:

I created this canvas as a gift for my mom.  My son calls her “Mamaie” (Ma-mai-eh) which is Grandma in Romanian and their favorite song to sing together is “You Are My Sunshine” and so this little canvas was born.

I prepped my canvas and painted it with Acrylic paint.  I was going for it to look like the sun was rising and chasing away the darkness; my mom thought that it looks like the deep ocean and then coming into the shore and the sandy beach.  Either way I just painted it by plopping a ‘blop’ of acrylic paint in the section I wanted it, one each of blue, turquoise, and yellow, and then blended them across the canvas horizontally and then down into each other.

I put the canvas aside to let it dry.  In Photoshop I created a little subway art with the words of “You Are My Sunshine” that I wanted on the canvas.  I printed it out on plain paper.

Grab a FREEBIE on my Facebook Page under my “Exclusive Content” tab.  Get your own “You Are My Sunshine” Subway art.


Then I grabbed my dimensional Fabric Paint

and a piece of wax paper.  I lay my subway art down on the table and laid my wax paper over top and taped it down a bit so it wouldn’t move on me.  Then I got to work tracing the words in Fabric Paint onto the wax paper.  (When doing this you want to make sure that you’re not going too thin with the fabric paint so it’s easy to peel off the wax paper when it dries.  If the paint is too thin then your letters/art may rip or stretch out.)

I also printed out a little abstract doily that I traced too.  I let them dry for a couple hours.  Once dry, I began to peel the letters off and arrange onto my Canvas the way I wanted.  When I was completely happy with it (I had to make sure cause after the next step there was no going back) I grabbed my Mod Podge (I LOVE this stuff) and went over the letters and doily to glue it all down.  You may need to hold onto the letters with your finger or the end of a paintbrush so wen you brush the Mod Podge over top you don’t pick up any letters—they’re a pain to straighten down again.  After the letters and my doily were dry I covered my entire canvas with Mod Podge to seal it. 

Voilà!  My beautiful canvas! 
Now depending on your canvas and what type of finished sides it has you may be satisfied and move on to another project.  Well I wasn’t satisfied. So…

…I grabbed some pretty cardstock and cut strips to match the width of the sides of my canvas and Mod Podg-ed it on;  then sealed the sides with another coat on top.  Gave my canvas a pretty ribbon effect all around…also hid a couple ugly staples (I hate it when they staple canvases on the side!)
There now you have your own beautiful piece of art and I’m sure many more will be on the way…at least for me they will be!

DIY Gripper Socks

So I’m sad to say that I did not come up with this fabulous idea, I had originally found it on Pinterest a while back, but nonetheless it is still totally awesome! 

So as you may know, if you’ve been following my blog, I have an adorable 2-1/2 year old boy.  He loves to run and run and run around the house.  Because of this I have tried to make sure I only buy him grip socks, to help do my part in preventing slips and falls.  However as he gets bigger, grip socks are less common for his size; and he’s received socks from others that are soft and comfy but he can’t wear because he’ll fall all over the place; and the gripper socks from the store are often thicker and more plush which makes for a tight fit in shoes, so when we go over to someone else’s home I’ve actually had him wear non-grip socks inside his shoes and then switch into grip socks when we arrive.  So now you can understand my dilemma and see how truly important grip socks are to our family! (I bet you didn’t think this post would be so serious did you?! lol)

Anyways, after I saw the pic on Pinterest, I immediately went out and bought a bottle of Tulip Slick Dimensional Fabric Paint.  You can use any brand you like, the idea is just that the paint is dimensional, so it dries raised and rubbery-hence providing the grip.

Then I grabbed my little ones socks and went to town.  *Note:  Make sure the socks have been washed to avoid any shrinking/stretching and other fabric deformations before you make your designs.  Also, thick designs can tend to stretch and crack when worn, so keep that in mind when drawing.

Okay, I know you’re tired of looking at socks but one last pic ‘cause these are my favorite!

I think I’ll go and make some of these for myself…perhaps they’ll say “Best Mom Ever”…hmm…
Hope You Enjoyed,
Happy Crafting,

Journal For Sale

I’ve got a new item in my Etsy shop, this pretty journal! 
This journal is the perfect place to write down all that you dream about, hope for, and believe in.

Read more about it by going to my shop here  or by  clicking my “shop” tab at the top of my page. 
And As Always,
Happy Crafting!

To Do, To Do!

     So if you’re at all like me you have a 100 things to do, about 5 min to do them in (okay, so technically it’s more like 15-16 hours but it feels like 5 min), and 1000 distractions to keep you from actually finishing any one task.  Enter the “To Do” list.  Yes I know this is not a new idea, I’m sure the ancient Egyptians had the hieroglyphic “To Do” carved into their walls, which is where we should have kept our lists too.  Not carved of course, something more “semi-permanent”, such as a separate board on our walls;  at least that way we’d have less random pieces of paper around, no accidentally thrown out phone numbers, and we could even keep the receipt for that dress we’ll never fit into pinned up there too!   

     Seems we’ve caught up to the thinking of those ancient Egyptians because now we have the ever so popular message boards everywhere.  Usually comprising of a white board or chalk board and either cork or pins or ribbon to help hold loose items all in your line of sight.  Now you could go buy one, and spend $10 and up, but where’s the fun in that?  Let’s make one.  

    Now you could turn this idea into something much bigger and fancier and make it all your own.  I’m just here to get the ball rolling, and I do hope you’ll roll on and on…

Just a note…you can find very inexpensive contact paper at the dollar store.  Sometimes they even have white board paper rolls too!

You can click on the picture above to see it bigger.

I hope you enjoyed!
Happy Crafting!

Thank You!

 Something that seems to have been lost in life is the “Thank You” Card.  We’ve become such an “on demand” society where we just expect the world on a platter that we've forgotten to appreciate the people in our lives.  Sure we might say a verbal “thanks” now and then or send a text message “thanx”, and it is nice that we’re not totally neglectful of others;  but, how much nicer is it to give a “Thank You” card, to show that you've put a little bit extra of yourself into it because that person or their gesture were worth it.  Anyways, I’ll get off my soap box now and show you a couple cards.


This one was so quick to make.  First I just border punched the one edge and inked it white to stand out against the back side of the card.  Then I lightly inked the other edges of the card too;  gives it a more aged look and sort of frames the card.  Then I cut a paper strip and a ribbon strip and glued them to the card.  I stamped the “Thank You” Sentiment and embossed it in clear and then inked the piece of cardstock around the edges.  I then glued my accordion flower on top (click here to see the tutorial for it).  Voila!  A joyous note of appreciation.


This card was also pretty quick to make.  It’s just layers of patterned cardstock, a silky ribbon, a stamped and embossed sentiment, paper flowers.  The image is printed out in black and white and then softly shaded in by me.  I then cut out a blue cardstock frame which I stamped and embossed as well.  I made this card as a thank you to a dinner invitation.
I used mini clothes hangers to attach this card to the front of a basket that I had filled with homemade muffins.  A cute idea for a hostess gift. 
 
I hope you’ve been inspired to appreciate the loved ones in your life!
Happy Scrapping!

Candles Spiced-Up!

                           
I love candles!  I mean I really love them.  My husband suggests that it’s a borderline obsession.There’s just something so comforting about a room full of lighted candles on a chilly evening.  But some of the more unique candles also have a rather “unique” price to go with them;  So I thought why not get creative with some of my boring candles and spice them up for my home.
                           
This project is quite easy to do.  All I did was hot glue cinnamon sticks around the candle and tie a burnt orange ribbon and raffia on top of that and then made a layered paper flower and glued it to the raffia.  So simple and yet so cute!  This little craft can be modified to suit a wide variety of tastes, styles and occasions.
I hope you try it out for yourself!
Happy Crafting!