Modge Podge and Decopatch

Today I decorated a vase and some tumbler glasses with decopatch papers. This is great fun! 

I bought the vase from hobbycraft in the sale a little while ago for £1.49 and the tumblers are from an asda value box of glasses. My intention is to use the tumblers as tea-light holders. I was a bit apprehensive about whether they would withstand the heat so I have tested them by leaving a candle to burn in them and they didn't crack under the heat (literally). However if you attempt to do the same I should advise that you also check the glass and leave it to cool down before touching it. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR MISHAPS USING GLASSES AS TEA-LIGHT HOLDERS!!!!

To make I simply ripped the decopatch paper up into 50p sized pieces. I turned the vase upside down and started at the top (bottom of the vase). I used a decopatch brush to paint on some modge podge then applied the paper, brushed out any bubbles and applied a thin coat of modge podge over the top. I continued to do this, overlapping each piece of paper slightly. Once covered I left to dry for a couple of hours.  I took a sharp craft knife and ran it closely around the base and top of the vase to cut away the edges leaving it smooth and neat.

I really like it, but you can see the difference between the pink vase and the clear glass. I have 4 other vases which I think I'll just decorate and sell on by itself rather than as a set. I'd be a bit worried to sell the tea-light holders in their new form for health and safety reasons. This lovely little set sit pretty in my girly spare room.

Work in progress

Unfortunately I only have my work in progress to show today as I have been busy painting my wooden shapes from Wood Be Nice:

Decorating wooden shapes

I have somewhat neglected my blog this last week as I had a friend visiting. She and her sister were instrumental in me meeting my partner Simon and we've got lots of great memories together as a group. She adores the boys and it's lovely to see them interact with other people.

We went to West Kirby for the afternoon which brought a very welcomed breeze from the stuffy heat we've been experiencing. Toby really enjoyed watching the water and dipping his toes in. There were lots of dogs about which he loved too. His language has come along brilliantly over the last week. He has started saying so many new words-it amazes me how much he actually knows and understands, and is now communicating. Joseph wasn't in the best of moods which meant the trip was cut short.

Anyway, with Toby in nursery today I had chance to do a bit of crafting. So today I have been busy painting my box of treats from Wood be nice and crafty bugs. Watch this space for completed items...

Personalised plaque / sign new baby

Thought I would share a commissioned personalised door sign and plaque that I made. This was for a friend to send to America for her brother who just had a little baby girl.

I used one of my bulk-bought plaques from ebay without holes drilled. Since I bought my dremel 3000 I wont buy them with the holes pre-drilled as sometimes I make something and decide that I prefer it not to have twine poking through at the front. With baby gifts, for example, I find that it a more eloquent finish can be achieved by attaching ribbon to the back of the sign using double sided tape.

I wanted to create a border on this sign as I wanted it to be quite plain, but eye catching nonetheless. I spray painted the entire plaque in white and left it dry. I then used making tape to section off the border. I was worried that the masking tape would pull up the paint when I took it off so I only placed the masking tape down loosely. When I pulled it up I realised the paint had seeped under the masking tape. Initially I was mortified but after leaving it to dry and them going back to it I decided I actually really liked it. It kind of gave it a a torn paper feel. Anyway, I spray painted my letters and hearts, measured out where I wanted them placed and then glued them down with super glue. To attach the ribbon to hang the sign I placed some double sided tape at either end of the plaque vertically (from top to bottom) and stuck the ribbon in place.

For the details plaque I used my Kobra spray paints again, and wooden bear shape bought off ebay and a heart embellishment bought from Debs cards & crafts (unfortunately now closed down).

Day trip, crafty buys and kind words...

I took my mum and granny out on a day trip to Llandudno today with the boys.

For those who haven't been before its a lovely little place on the north wales coastline with an abundance of things to do. There's the beach and promenade, the town centre, the Great Orme tramline and the welsh mountain zoo a stones throw away. We went for..... The craft shop!! 

Tucked away amongst a road full of cheap, seaside-shops is the most amazing craft clearance shop! They've got stacks of fab bits at really really cheap prices. I think I spent about £12 and got this whole pile of goodie:

I even picked these 12x12 Dovecraft Christmas papers up for £1 each!!! Bargain!

I could easily have bought more, but the kids were playing up so I had to be quick. The shop is in the process of developing its websites I when it's up and running I'll post a link.

Despite these bargains the best part of the day was something a stranger said to me. Something which I (do actually) realise every day..... 

I was waiting outside Marks and Spencer's for mum and granny and a man came over and smiled at the boys. He asked how old they are and said how lovely they seemed. There was one or two other small comments made before I spotted my mum, but just before he walked off he told me "you're very wealthy!". I knew instantly he didn't mean financially. He was referring to my boys and their worth. "I am," I replied walking off, "I am VERY wealthy".

Disney Countdown Sign

We are going to Disney World Florida in October as a celebratory treat to mark the end of a year of operations for Joseph. We booked it shortly after we found out that our baby would have a cleft lip and palate while I was pregnant. The most difficult thing to come to terms with was the fact that my poor little baby would have to go through the pain of the operations. We knew feeding was going to be more difficult than it would be with a non-cleft baby and we just felt that we could do with something to look forward to after dealing with all the difficulties we would face.

I was lucky enough to visit twice as a child but my partner Simon has only ever been to EuroDisney. He is Disney crazy and always buying the boys DVDs and popping into the Disney store to buy them little treats. Needless to say he is VERY excited about the holiday. As I've said before he regularly rolls his eyes when I try to talk to him about my ideas or makes so I thought I would test him..... and I made him this countdown plaque:

I actually made two and gave him the choice of which to use. He said he wanted both! :o) so the small one has been made into a magnet and put on the fridge and the larger one is on the kids bedroom door. You can't see it in the picture but there us a stick of chalk attached to the string that holds the sign up.

The plaques were bought from the same seller on ebay - I negotiated the price for buying them in bulk and with the holes pre-drilled. They were painted using my Kobra spray paint. The Mickey Mouse head shape was bought from my trusty LaserSmith and painted with chalk paint bought from hobbycraft. They were glued on using Gorilla superglue and the writing and decorating was completed using my uni posca paint pens.

It took about 30 minutes to make both of them and that included paint drying time. Simples!!

Princess Crown Wooden Sign

A fellow cleft mum has been having a hard time of things lately and her little girl recently went through her palate repair operation. Through all the difficulties she is facing she continues to work for clapa in her fundraising efforts and has applied to become a contact parent for clapa, which means she will act as a point of contact for new/ other cleft parents that may need help with their babies. I thought she could do with a few bits to cheer her up so I made this little Crown Wooden Sign for her daughter.

Both the Crown shape and letters were bought from my favourite craft shape supplier LaserSmith. The heart was bought off ebay as bulk buy of 50, and the small stars were bought as a mixed box of embellishments from hobbycraft.

I started by placing my bits on the plaque to check they fit and see how they looked best. I planned to paint it with my Kobra spray paint in pink.

I always spray both sides of the plaque-even when the back is unlikely to be seen. I think it looks more professional. I ordered some items from some established crafty pages off facebook and was really disappointed when they arrived and were only painted on the embellished side. Especially as it was an item where the back could be seen, I.e. on a freestanding shape! You MUST make sure it is thoroughly dry before attempting to paint the other side though. If you have sprayed a thick coat (as I always end up doing because I'm too inpatient) I recommend waiting a good few hours before turning around to spray the back. However, it is a better recommendation to use the spray paint as instructed on the tin and just do several thin coats as it dries much quicker this way.

I glued the embellishments in place using superglue (I have found this gives a much better finish that a hot glue gun as it doesn't ooze out of the sides and it sticks well without the need to clamp it together for half an hour after gluing - can you tell I am impatient?)And those of you with eagle eyes may have noticed that there have been holes drilled into 2 of the crowns peaks. To do this I used my Dremel 3000 (see, it was an essential buy afterall :o)!)

So that my lovely CLAPA friend knew why the devil she was receiving this gift I also made her a card...

I would like to enter this card into the One Stop Craft Challenge Challenge #238 - Pastel Colours

It was a pig to try to photograph this card. I love the design, but again I am disappointed with the stamped sentiment, which reads 'THINKING OF YOU'..... YOU NEED NEW INK PADS :o)

Car boot crafty finds

I have just placed a fairly big order with crafty capers for wooden items to decorate. They have a great range of products suitable for painting and decorating and their prices are some of the best I've found so far.

However I found a couple of cracking items at the car boot sale this weekend. I very nearly bought a wooden wine box, but thought I'd leave it until closer to Xmas as I've splurged a fair but lately on crafty bits. However I found a gorgeous box for 50p! I had to use all my energy to stop myself from fist-pumping the air with delight at my find!!

I also rather strangely found that there seemed to be a box a children's wooden dominoes for sale on practically every stall. For any fellow followers of itsallfiddlefart, you'll know she uses these to create fabulous gift tags. I limited myself to two boxes so that I could try this too, but I am hoping to find some of my own inspiration and find something else to do with them too.

Birthday Cards, Body Shop and Cystic Fibrosis

I attended a Mad Hatters Tea Party event today in aid of a little girl called Anya Bentham who is suffering from Neuroblastoma, an awful, very aggressive childhood cancer. Anya is a local girl and the community has pulled together brilliantly to raise money for her treatment. I heard yesterday that £200,000 of the £250,000 target has been raised. This is fantastic but its so sad to know such fundraising is necessary. If you would like more information about her and this terrible illness you can read about it on her just giving page.

I was attending the event as a Body Shop Consultant and have offered to donate all my commission for sales achieved at Anya events. I am a sucker for children and always do what I can for charities. If you are fundraising and would like info on. How I could help please get in touch.

I always over-pack my stall. Today I tried to limit what I put out and I was quite pleased with the final look. Still, room for improvement!

I met a remarkable woman there too. Her little girl had cystic fibrosis and was treated at the same hospital where Joseph had his lip repair, Liverpool's Alder Hey Children's Hospital. If I'm honest I was pretty ignorant about the condition and what it entailed, but she was able to explain how it affected her daughter and the implications for daily life. It made me feel pretty silly having been so concerned about a cleft in Joseph. Despite what she had to deal with, this particular mum had awe and respect for Anya's parents and what they had to go through with their daughter. A couple of days ago I posted a picture of some sentiment plaques I'd made and one of them seemed particularly potent...

I have since been quote hunting and really appreciate these words by Albert Clarke:
“In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy."
On a lighter note, I returned from the event to my creation station :o) It is my partner's sisters' 16th birthday this weekend so I needed to make some cards. Being a beginner my materials are only cheap. I love the linen effect cards used by itsallfiddlefart, but I've got a bulk pack of plain white cards from hobbycraft which need to be used first. 

I used glitter and silver card from a bulk pack bought from home bargains or B&M-I bought them a while back so I can't remember where exactly I bought them from or how much they were but I can't imagine it was much more than a couple of pounds for a 20 sheet pack. I cut the squares by hand but this took forever and I wasn't very accurate, which shows in the quality of the finished product I think. I really need to invest in a guillotine-any recommendations?  The little star embellishment was from The Works-I think it was £1.50 for a pack of 6.

I do like this card (I surprise myself sometimes). I always start with one idea in mind and end up with something that looks completely different which I kind of like. I'm really disappointed with how the sentiment stamp turned out. I had to improvise and use my promarker to colour the stamp as I only had dark coloured ink pads.....more thinks to buy!! :o)

I can't help but think this looks better in the photo than it does in real life. I've printed two  monkeys to represent her two cheeky monkey nephews as she likes to call them. I didn't stamp them very well and some of the finer details bled. I also used the wrong sort of ink pad to colour the stamped image. I'm told I need to use Acid based ink....the shopping list gets bigger and bigger!

Body Shopping and crafting was just about complete when my partner arrived home and I was able to have an amazing snuggle with my big, little boy! :oD

 

Sentiment wooden hearts

Here's a few sentiment hearts I made from 7cm plywood hearts bought from Daisymoon Designs Daisymoon Designs. 

I love meaningful quotes and I'm forever looking through Pinterest's quotes section. My background in Religious Education means I'm a particular sucker for the religious ones. 

My all time favourite is not biblical, but from an inspiration Christian figure. Do you know who said:

 "I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much."

I just can't decided whether to make them into hangers or magnets?!

Oh dear-buying crafty bits again!

I've been browsing some of my favourite blogs, namely itsallfiddlefart. As a result I've convinced myself that despite only having made about 4 cards in my 2 years of crafting, I DEFINITELY need a Sizzix Big Shot!

Are you as bad as me? I bought a dremel 3000 last month, and then a dremel workstation. I haven't even taken it out of the box, but at the time I couldn't craft without it. No wonder my dear partner rolls his eyes at me when I talk about making money out if crafting..... You've got to speculate to accumulate ;o) 

Decorating wooden plaques

I've been decorating wooden plaques for nearly two years now. Initially I just used tubes of acrylic paint and decorated them by hand with uni posca paint markers and embellishments. However, I hated seeing the paintbrush streaks and my handwriting was never quite neat/"arty" enough for my liking. 

Irritating paintbrush streaks

Poor handwriting

I've tried a gizzilion different sorts of pens and finally decided that for a professional look I am best using wooden letters. The prices of these vary but the cheapest I've found them so far is about 20p for a 4cm letter. Alternatively you can buy pots of 250+ self adhesive letters from amazon in arial font. One of these pots do go quite a long way, but it may be more economical to just buy the single letters to spell the words that you want rather than having a mountain of qs and xs that you'll never use.

Plaque made

I discovered a great secret to avoiding paintbrush streaks too... using spray acrylic paint instead. They give great coverage, they dry really quickly and I find that they're actually much more economical as I'm not applying 3-4 coats. My favourite is Kobra, which I buy from Graff City. Fab range of colours and if you buy in bulk (6+ cans) they're a great price compared to tubes of paint.

The wooden plaques themselves I buy from ebay. Depending on how many you want and the size you want to work with I recommend contacting a few different sellers to see what they can offer you in terms of discounts and combined postage. 

I'm always trying new techniques and will gradually blog the different methods I use with mini tutorials and information on which materials I use and where I have found them from. In the mean time, here's a few pics from my earliest attempts at plaque making:

I learnt whilst making this plaque that you should lightly sand
acrylic paint where you intend to glue and embellishment
otherwise it wont stick as well. Love the sign, hate the writing.

I wish I had done the writing in white for this one. Love the
pink colour. Think the writing looks a little lost - a smaller
plaque probably would've been better. I like the handwriting
for 'smile' but then it went all horrible! :o)

I actually really like this one for some reason.
It is very basic in terms of skills, but there is something about
it that catches my eye.

My first ever craft fair