Monthly All Girls Craft Group - May 2013

Again, a little late on this since we had May's craft day on 5/18/13, but here we go!! (I will try to get better and more prompt about posting these, I swear!)

First, we had Anne working on a necklace and earring set for her mother:

Isn't it pretty?! 

Chessire spent some more time getting her scrapbooking done... I envy her, I have 2 drawers full of stuff I need to get in my scrapbook for HIGH SCHOOL that I STILL haven't gotten to!! One of these days.... Hopefully I can get that done before getting married and having kids to scrapbook for. 

Next up, Michelle was working a little on her silver polymer clay flowers for an upcoming wedding. These guys keep getting better and better!! 

Airon brought out the perler beads once again and had some fun... Guys, this is only 1 of the 2 boxes we've acquired of these things, and the 2nd box is more overflowing than this one! Also, we have about a dozen pegboards to use too!! They're still not enough! lol

Here she is working on some hearts...or is she?

Iron, iron, and iron some more!

Final design to be shown below...

Anne got in on some of the perler bead action and made these guys for her daughter!

This guy got ironed just enough to give him some pretty funk-a-licious hair, don'tcha think!?

After my first attempt of making a felted bunny here, I decided to make another one except I did it more like the original tutorial and did a more 3-D head. I left the ears for this craft day but after making 1, I decided to see what it would look like on my fella:

 You guys, I was *this* close to leaving him like this! But I was talking into making another ear....

As you can see, I was also talked into making a little cut-out in his new ear as if he's had some "special" times.

 My next project was to follow this tutorial and decided to try my hand at a felted rattle ball:

 This thing is actually pretty awesome... It's soft, it has a small rattle in there and is just pretty neat to begin with. We didn't have any bells or plastic eggs, but Anne was kind enough to supply me with a plastic ball from a toy she'd gotten her daughter and I put some beads in there. I then wrapped a ball around that with some yarn she also was kind enough to bum me (double-sided tape was the best we had or could find in getting the darn yarn to stick to the plastic ball but it worked fantastically!). Then I just used some yellow, blue and purple felt to make the outside! Took me about 10-15 minutes I believe to make this and so wasn't really that hard at all! I might just make some more!

 Then I decided to make a free-form piece that I could maybe turn into a wrist cuff or just an embellishment for a purse or something for later...

Final result at the bottom of this post...

 Anne saw this felting thing and decided to get in on the fun there too!! 

She made the CA-YOOTEST bunny!!!

Then Mr Bunny wanted to sit on Airon's heart-petal flower!!!

Here are all the final pieces (with the exception of my first 2-D bunny in there too) that got made this craft day!!

How's about that for a craft day spread!! We didn't get in progress pics but the butterflies were also made by Airon for her nieces and the felted ball bead (above the fish) was made by Michelle when she decided to test out the felting craft too! Bottom right is the final product of my possible future wrist cuff. I played around with using random pieces of felt as well as getting longer, bigger pieces and doing things like the twisted swirl on the left in blue, the folded over twist in purple at the middle top and the thinner loop of yellow on the far right.


I am sooo excited for where these craft days are going!! They have mostly been small, but hey, that means we can play around a little more with each others crafts and we still have lots of fun! I can't wait for next month!!

Craft ya laters!!

Feature #3 for an Artfire Collection!!

Hey guys, I was featured in another collection on ArtFire!!

On the far right, top row, that's mine!! I did some polymer clay pieces a while back where I was trying to use various shades of brown and pieces to resemble faux woodgrain I made to make some steampunk-like pieces with clock parts. This was also towards the beginning of my using resin, so I tested using resin to encase them. This definitely was the best piece, but I never got around to making it anything ready-to-use unless someone buys it just to glue it on a bezel or something.

Anywho, just wanted to let ya'll know! :D

Craft ya laters!

First Time Needle Felting!!

Yup! that's right! As if I don't already have enough hobbies or crafts I work on, I just had to go and add another one, right??

I've been hyping myself up all week with the idea of trying this medium out and just couldn't wait to try it out! So I headed to my local Hobby Lobby who stocks the basic supplies and spent $30 to start a new hobby:

I got 7 dual color packs, a basic kit to make a flower applique, extra needles (I know the kit comes with them but I figured I'd want more) and some wool yarn to use as base for other projects.
 

I started with the kit first. It included some white and black wool, 2 needles, a piece of felt with the flower outline to follow, instructions and the foam block.
 

 It started off easy enough, tear a piece of white off, round it in the general shape of one of the center dots and get to poking!!

Alright, all the dots are...well, sort of done. I know I could use some more wool on a few of those guys, but hey! I want to do the other color!
 

I got out the black and got to poking it in, around the white dots.
 

I figured it would happen with my being so naturally accident prone, working with such sharp needles with sorts of barbs, I poked my finger clear through on the edge!! Thankfully, it didn't hurt too much and I didn't get any blood on the felt....w00t??
 

This is about as far as I got before getting bored with such a 2-D surface project... I had been seeing pictures of people doing animals!! I was inspired by this tutorial:

Tutorial for making these can be found here.

 Aren't those guys CUTE?!?!?!

I started off with the dark purple I got and tried making a ball, but it was more of a button...it flattened out when I poked it enough. that's ok though, makes it easier I guess for my first try!
 

I got one ear made and attached...
 

I made the 2nd ear and decided to try putting an accent color on the inside...
 

I got the ears attached and got a mouth on him....
 

And there you have it! My first attempt(s) at needle felting!! What do you guys think?? I definitely need to work on this to get better and gt a sort of method down, but I kinda like the little guy!!

Have you guys tried needle felting before?? Anyone have any hints or tips to give?

Craft ya laters!!

Painted and Mod Podged Work Tray - Pt 1

I keep not wanting to work in my craft room on projects and opt instead to work in the living room, on the coffee table, so that I can watch tv, eat and spend time with my bf. This unfortunately sometimes results in my projects perhaps spending much more time than they should out and making a mess.

My solution? I'm going to get one of those trays with handles that I can just put my things in and pick up easy enough to take to my room to put away! Except I don't like spending $20-$30 on one when it might possibly get mussed up by my projects on occasion.... Solution!

I went to my local Hobby Lobby and got one of these bad boys for $3.49!! What a bargain!!

I went ahead and painted the whole thing using a mixture of a brick red, pumpkin orange and gold squirted on the wood, and mixed as I was painting with my sponge brush:

I already had some scrapbooking paper on hand (which is actually why I chose the colors I did, otherwise, it would have been blue ;) ) and used about 3 layers of mod podge on the paper, and 2 on the rest of the tray. 

You like the paper?? The sides of the tray aren't too rough with the multiple layers of mod podge as i lightly sanded in between layers.

The one thing I did very poorly though was to not actually measure the dimensions of the tray and paper; I free-handed the fitting and cutting process and the result?
 

Yeah, there was a gap... :( The best I could do at the time was put another piece of paper underneath the main one to sort of hide, but I'm not too happy with the way this looks so I will be trying to come up with a way to hide that before finishing this tray... I will be mixing a 3rd medium into this baby!! Check back later!!

Craft ya laters!!

Monthly All Girls Craft Group - April 2013

Hey guys! We actually had a pretty mild Craft Day in April as it seems it's just the 4 of us regularly showing with the exception of 1 guest along with my mom visiting for a couple hours, but not to make anything. I did get pictures of what we did get done however so...

First of all, this is a polymer clay brooch/hair-pin piece Michelle made to test the viability of use for bridesmaids in a wedding. The green is only tissue paper to hold up the petals during baking so imagine those gone, and the in center is a black button pressed in there.... Pretty awesome, don't you think?! We thought so!! Can't wait to see if she kept with this idea and made more! ;)


Leena was able to make a couple of pieces of jewelry I believe (pics to come soon!) but spent most of her time being an awesome hostess!!

Airon and I apparently decided it was time for more perler bead pieces!!

Mine

Airon's.. and no, the 'A' isn't for her, it's for a friend who's an Atlanta Braves fan :p

I know this isn't much to show for you guys, but it was a short and simple craft day for us. May's Craft Day should have a bit more going for it as attendance sounds much better this time (darn school and kid's schedules! :p)

Craft ya laters!!

Monthly All Girls Craft Group - March 2013

March was much more productive for all that showed, even me!! w00t!!

Airon didn't have to work on a paper (Yay!!) and after looking up a little last minute advice on best way to do it..

She was able to finally get her project finished she'd been dreaming about for a few months!!

Inspiration came from the lovely and talented Kristi Linauer at Addicted2Decorating.com only, in a much smaller scale than what she presented in her post.


Leena worked on a necklace:

 

As well as a very cute baby announcement/card for a friend:

After some discussion and brainstorming about supplies for other projects...

 And some playing with one of the pet attendants...

I was able to make some necklaces!!

As well as one that we mocked from a necklace Michelle had already and modeled by the lovely "Airon's neck"...

Michelle was working on a necklace for her soon-to-be sister-in-law:

Which was pretty enough as it was, then she had to top herself and make more for the bride and bridesmaids to choose from!!

All in all, this craft day was pretty good in terms of projects worked on/finished but again, was just great to see the gals and have a little wine and gossip!!

Craft ya laters!!

Monthly All Girls Craft Group - February 2013

I am really behind on this guys, I apologize, but just haven't had the chance to get this post up!!

We had our monthly Craft Group get-together for February on 2/23/13 and most everyone got work done!!

 We had Angry Birds masks being made for a son's birthday party....

Leena made a fox tail out of a braided rope base, then hand stitched pieces of frayed yarn down the length to create the tail....

Unfortunately, Airon had a paper to work on for class and was distracted working on that... Good news is, she got an "A"!! Go Airon!!

We apparently weren't entertaining enough for all present......

My mom showed up and was able to get a badge lanyard for work strung for herself, first one ever!! Yay!!! And of course, plenty of wine, and in my mom's case chocolate red wine, was enjoyed!!

 

 

Michelle turned a regular old hardback book cover into a Kindle case!!

Carrie made a perler yoshi (which is so freaking cute!!) and a couple of crocheted arm cuffs (of which I will try to get a picture posted later and you can kinda see if on the bottom left.. the blue one...)

Now, I wish I could say I was just as productive as everyone else that day.... unfortunately I was only able to attempt 1 thing (a little zippered clutch like the blue one I made before, I can try to get a picture up later of what it would have looked like) but as I completely screwed up the one actual stitch I laid down (the cross ribbon piece on the front), the only thing I really got done that day was....

Yup! that's it! I drank, ate and was sorta merry.... except for not getting anything actually made. To be fair however, I was helping my mom in directing her how to make her lanyard... soo..... that counts, right?...Right?!!?!

Anywho, on to next month!!