Make-up Organizers in the Craft Room

 

Acrylic Lipstick Holder
Stacked on top of a 3-drawer unit

Magicals, Tim Holtz Blenders, Adhesives, Water Droplet Thingys, Perfect Pens, Needless Syringes for squirting colour, and bandaids just 'cause I can be careless!

Note: The Magicals jars are ever-so-slightly too tall to fit in the drawers.

18 Mini Distress Inks
keeps my most used colours close at hand

Pens & Scrapers

Perfect Pearls, Memento Ink

Note: Perfect Pearls jars fit into the drawers, Magicals DO NOT, they are ever-so-slightly too tall.

File Folder Holder
small watercolour set, WIP [work in progress] items

File Folder Holder

Metal Blog page for real

After practicing with the metal tape, Zoo and I were to do a page in our AAJ2 using this technique. I once again pulled out a variety of things from my collection and went to town. I wanted to use drywall tape, fun foam embossed to look like waves on the water, my tree punch and left over twig punches from Zoo’s punch. These things all reminded me of nature and the great outdoors so I figured I would do a camping theme. Growing up we did a lot of camping and fishing in remote areas and to this day, I love exploring in the woods, hiking, scrambling up and over hills and mountains (I dislike bugs a little more now though).

I started with the drywall tape diagonal across both pages, as the walking path. Then I added the road using my 1999 Lyuell Harlow LG611 Stone Wall brass embossing plate. This I experimented with in my Big Shot. I put the metal tape on strips of card stock, ran it through the Big Shot, and then applied it to the page using more metal tape. Being a very thin brass plate it and then layers of tape on top, it didn’t show a deep embossed effect but doable for this. I thought I needed a defining line between the path and the road so I used the beaded string to make the road edges. 

                  Next, I started on the lake. I used the fun foam with waves embossed in it (purchased at the Dollarama). I cut it to fit up in the corner and wanted to find something in my stash to act as a rocky shore. I had purchased, from the fabric store, a set of two 80’s patches with antique brass half domes sewn on them. They were 99 cents and so I bought one for myself and one for Zoo. They reminded me of the shoulder patches in the Michael Jackson era and made my day at the time. Zoo, of course, didn’t have a clue why I had bought them or what the heck to do with them when she received hers : )        They did work perfect for a rocky beach, though, so this page was making me smile all the way during the process so far!

 For the grass, I used a million twig punches. Zoo needed a twig punch for some Christmas cards we were working on a year or two ago and I found one at Walmart here and sent it out to her. Before I send it, however, I killed my hands by punching out a million of them for my use. Well, I used up almost my entire stash in this project. The grass is made up of many, many layers of the twig punches glued on and then taped over. I found that my double-ended embossing tool worked the best to bring out the desired texture. I love the grass. I guess I am a little bit of a tactile person and running my hands over the grass and other areas on this page feels cool.

The tree in the upper left corner is made with my Fiskars tree punch. It was too small so I cut out more of them and trimmed the branches off and added them to expand the branch system. It turned out cute. The page needed a little something so I added a van cut out of card stock and taped over. I attached it using foam dimensionals on the top and glue and the two metal brads (bought from Dollarama years ago – yes… I love the dollar store!!!). 

 

I painted it with the black paint a couple of times until it had the effect I wanted.

I must say, that I do love this page. I had my book standing up on my table with this page open for weeks. Playing with metal tape is fun and inexpensive. Zoo and I will have to do more with it in the future.

 Enjoy! Red Bear : )

Button Art

Good morning Bloggers,

Today’s topic will be about a recent creation I made for Zoo’s daughter, who has been ill. It so happens, that Zoo had recently sent me some links into the world of buttons and I decided it would be fun to delve into that for my get-well wishes, and so it began….

I don’t know what the protocol for inserting other people’s links are, but I will do it here so you can see where I came by the inspiration and some of the methods I mention. 

  http://bustedbutton.com/2015/05/18/button-turtle/    and                                      http://bustedbutton.com/2012/01/29/button-tree/   and                                    http://bustedbutton.com/2012/04/27/button-elephant/

Now Zoo’s Kidlet’s favourite colours are purple and yellow and she likes stegosaurus dinosaurs, as well, so I started there. I am not much of an artist so I looked on google images and free handed a stegosaurus similar to one I found there. 

 I began placing purple buttons on the drawing, starting with the bigger ones and filling in the gaps with smaller ones.  To distinguish the body from the spikes I used lighter purple buttons.  When I finished placing the buttons, I was then in a bit of a fix because I had 40 or more buttons on the original drawing and how then do I take them off so I can glue them on. Yes, this is a laugh at myself note for you to take an extra step and trace your figure onto the paper you will be using to secure your button creation to.

 At this point I had to go looking through papers to see where a purple dinosaur would look good living. I found in my folder of paper I had made or manipulated a lilac card stock with texture paste stars on it. This was one done in my first experiments with texture paste and the StampinUp! Stars stencil.

 I then had to take off the buttons and place them in order carefully on a cleared space on my desk in order to trace the dinosaur onto my paper of choice (this step could be avoided if you had already traced it onto the paper to begin with!). I took the advice of one of the bloggers in the links above and I coloured the figure with a purple watercolour pencil crayon and used my aqua pen to paint it smooth. I am not convinced this was necessary, as I can only see a tiny, tiny bit of the purple paint in the finished product. I imagine that if the buttons were see through or the seed beads didn’t reach all the empty spaces it would have been a good idea to have the proper colour under the buttons.

For glue, I ended up using Royal Coat Dimensional Magic. It is a clear liquid that when dries stays raised and see through to accent what is on the paper. I picked it because I hoped the buttons would sink into it and be welded into place. I did not want to do all this work and then have the buttons fall off in a month.

Once I had all the buttons glued into place, it was time to get the seed beads out and get started on them. At the beginning, I was sorting out the pale purple beads out of the mix of all pastel colours. It soon became apparent that it was going to take a lot more beads than I had first thought, and so I stopped sorting the purple ones out and poured the whole colour scheme on. This part in the process shows my lack of patience in the nit picky and I found it a challenge to finish it all in one sitting. However, once I finished the spikes and had some of the darker beads around the body it started looking much better and I was able to complete it. I wanted it to dry flat so I placed it between layers of parchment paper and placed a couple of heavy book on it to dry for a few days.

 It did turn out to be adorable and after trimming the paper, masking it on a darker purple and placing it in a white frame, it took a big plane ride across the country to it’s destination. Over all it was a quick project that I started and finished all in one day. I contemplated leaving the glass off the frame because it felt neat to run my hand over the dinosaur but in the end, I figured it would be easier to keep clean with the glass on.

Have a happy St Patty’s Day tomorrow and happy crafting!

Red Bear : )