Piñatas for Kids

Howdy! It is a blustering, rainy day in the middle of January and I am hiding away, pretending it is the season I love... winter. Admittedly, it is hard to do when the rain is pouring down. Sigh. However, I am bound and determined to enjoy my plus 5 winter day, so let's talk about something fun.

In the past, I developed the tradition of making piñatas for each of the kid's birthdays, Christmas', year end class parties and moving away parties. Recently I have revived this tradition for my husband's three little nieces. I am enjoying the process of making a shape of their choosing, filling it with chocolate and getting everyone at the party to decorate loot bags for the fun things I bought and the chocolate from the pinata. It has been fun watching the older ones get into it and the youngest one trying to understand why she gets a toothbrush from her unicorn instead of riding it like she was doing after she unwrapped it. For the kids who have everything, this is a blast on both ends of the giving and receiving.

I used to make the piñatas using wallpaper paste powder that I could buy in bulk and use when needed. In this new day and age (lol.. makes me sound very old) I have been unable to find wall paper paste except in an already made paste that is too small of an amount and much too expensive. So... I have started using flour and water which works wonders to hold the shape together but not so wonderful at being strong enough to be whacked with a stick more than a few times. I have been playing with the amount of water and white glue ratios and will hopefully come across a mix that is strong enough to withstand the strength of the girls as they get older and stronger.

In any case, here are the ones I have made in the last year and a half except for the clown. I can't find pictures of it : (

 
 
 

Part of the fun for me is getting the kids to pick their shape. Yes, the oldest of the three wanted a pineapple. I made up the grab bags for this one, as I was not going to be in the province to attend the party and do crafts with the kids.

As you can see, the youngest one's unicorn was big enough to ride and I had fun braiding the tail and painting it her requested purple. I am amazed at how I can go from hating it (it never looks good at the wet paper or dried paper shape stage) to OK... it'll do, after the painting and decorating stage.

I will have to wait until fall for the next request. We shall see what they want this year. It should be interesting though, as what the youngest wanted for Christmas was a pickle and to be a pickle and her middle sister wanted a real live donkey. I can't wait!

Dsitress Ink Monoprinting

Zoo sent me a link to a video from Jennifer McGuire Ink, on how to do a background using distress ink and heat embossing. It made two backgrounds for each inking, so of course I had to try it out.

Jennifer McGuire Ink

Distress Ink Monoprint (and 25+ Cards)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsySZEPT8HI&feature=youtu.be

Zoo had given me three of her old Tim Holtz distress ink pads, and as they are the only ones I have it was an easy colour choice to begin experimenting. The colours are: peacock feathers; vintage photo; and tea dye.

In the top two and the bottom left you may notice a faded area where I taped the two pieces of card stock together. I used some masking tape I had sitting beside me and it turned out too thick and affected the way the ink transferred. In the other three I removed the tape before spritzing with water and just made sure I held the pieces together without moving them.

I lost track of the video theme for a few minutes when I used copper embossing powder on some of the backgrounds. I like the effect but I think I would have liked it as a more mono colour style, as well.

I look forward to making new cards with these backgrounds. I will wait awhile though, as I have all but two of my cards for 2019 already made : )

Using Left Over Paint From a Pour

Morn'n. One more post about the paint from rock painting.

As you may have learned from past posts, I do not like wasting things. Along this vein, when we were doing rock pours last year, I was in a state with the amount of paint pooling under the rocks after a pour. So I ran into Zoo's craft room and pulled out a bunch of circle punched paper and 8 1/2' x 11' white card stock. I went ahead and dipped the circle punches in the pooled mixed paint and then used a plastic spoon to pick some up and smear or drip onto the various card stock.

The resulting paper ranged from cool to baby poo. Zoo's sister thought I was insane and I told her she would be receiving a baby poo card from me in the future. Below are the cards I made with the various punches and paper.

     

Dot Mandala Painting

Good morning. I am back for more computer torture and will attempt to shrink my pictures again today with a quick post on some dot mandala painting I attempted. As I said yesterday, I am very much a beginner at this painting technique but have enjoyed the process and the finished product.

When out at Zoo's last year, we had purchased dowels of every size from her local hardware store. I cut a piece about 3-4 inches in length from each of them for both of us. When doing my first attempts at home a couple months ago, I could not find my dowels and ended up using small corks from the Dollar Store and pen ends to do my wing-it trial pieces. So the pictures from yesterdays post were done with found objects in my craft room (except the last photo, which was done last month at Zoo's with freshly cut dowels and things).

Having cut new dowels and following a beginner YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rub1aoqnuFY&index=19&list=LLrPw3KR7TMCTKUPVvRy-_3g&t=0s) away I went. It took me a bit of time to figure out what size dowel would work for the sizes of dots in this woman's videos but after a piece or two I was getting the hang of it.

                 

When I returned home from out West, I made a few cards with the small squares of dot painting I had done. They were quick and easy to make and turned out cute.

Practicing on the small black pieces of paper prepared me for the next day's rock painting with Zoo and her sister.

I know I will do more dot mandala painting in the future and will watch additional Shwetart03's videos to inspire and teach me how to do better.

Have a great weekend!

Rock Painting Fun

Good  morning. It has been ages since I have done a post, mainly because I wanted to figure out how to make my pictures smaller first. Well, this morning I was shown by Zoo and my wonderful Hubby, and so here goes. I played around a little bit with picture size in Paint and they are a little smaller and I can get a couple side by side but will need some practice to get them so I can put two or three side by side.

About me and rocks...I have been collecting rocks since I was a small child. I had many, many, many of my parents' old tobacco cans lining the basement staircase filled with rocks and rock dust. I would break the rocks open to see what the inside looked like, I would crush rocks to dust to see the differences of each kind. I took a geology class in university and loved it. I married a geologist. Suffice it to say that I have always loved rocks and that my house is full of them to this day.

So when Zoo's sister came out to paint rocks with us last year, I was thrilled. She showed us how to do a pour and then we went to town painting away.

 

 
This past winter I was sorting one of the pails of beach rocks I have in my craft room and decided to try out some dot painting. Turns out I love it and was surprised to discover that hours had gone by when doing so. These are my first ones with a big bug that I had a blast painting to go along   with it.

 

 I used a can of ancient Spar Varathane, that my Husband had out in the shop, to protect these latest rocks. The can said that it may 'yellow' the surface and in fact it did. You can see it in the picture to the left,  where the varathane pooled in the dimples of the rock. It took forever to dry between coats but I am curious how it will survive outside in the garden. The kids and I painted some rocks years and years ago and the varathane (I think it may have been indoor varathane) we used then wore off within a year or two and then the paint chipped and flaked off. I am hoping this stuff will last longer, as it is used on boats and other marine things.

 Below...On my latest trip, a couple months ago, to Zoo's, we once again had her lovely sister out to paint more rocks. I once again worked on mandalas, this time using the dowels from Zoo's house and a beginner YouTube video. I will do a post on dot mandalas next, as I don't have her link on me now.

Well. I am finished for today. I see on the preview that the picture still do not line up the way I had hoped but I will work on it again another day. Hope you are having a fun and relaxing day like myself. Happy Spring!

Origami - What I Learned on the Internet Today

I have a habit of being easily distracted.  Especially when I'm procrastinating!

Today's adventure began when I needed to look up a grammar question which took me to Quora [as easily a time-sink as YouTube] which took me to this:

Can Origami be used for something else?

which led to The Modern Science of Origami.

Too cool!

Red Bear's Teacher-Daughter might be inspired by this, I'm feeling tickles on the edges of my comprehension, in the olden days of complete brain function I could have had some fun with this.

More Texture Paste

Good Morning.

It has been a long while since I have done a blog post and upon looking though my pictures, I found some more texture paste cards I have made. I thought I would include those in an easy continuation of using up the paper I have made theme and the texture paste creations theme.

These two are from my original experiments with texture paste and
I didn't know what to do with them. I don't do Halloween cards or
 decorations with the kids all moved out on their own, but turning them
 into 'shocking' birthday cards turned out cute and usable.

 I used up the remains of my last batch of paste that was starting to dry up by adding some kids glitter glue to it. I used three or four different stencils and covered a whole piece of canvas with it. I love it but have been mulling over what to do with it for months now. I don't want to ruin it so will keep mulling it over until I figure out what will look good or loose patience and just experiment (the more likely of the two).

I hope everyone is enjoying their Victoria Day long weekend. Our weather here is gorgeous and we hear lawn mowers and motorbikes galore. Happy Spring!!

Red Bear : )

Textured Wall paper Butterfly Card

Surprise… It’s me again. I thought I would be out of character and be the first one to do a blog post the other day to shock Zoo and here I am again. Like she said, I do produce a lot of cards to send to friends and family every month. My cards are fun to make and not always as detailed as Zoo’s but I enjoy sitting down and seeing what will be the finished product of the relaxing time spent in my craft room. As Zoo has now received the card I wanted to tell you about next, here it is.

I had some leftover textured wallpaper from renovating our upstairs bathroom and was playing with my water soluble wax pastels (by Caran D’ache of Switzerland) and my Stampin’Up! Aqua brush. I love the feel of the wallpaper! It is soft and pliable even after the pastels were applied, painted with water and dried. I kept the pieces of painted paper out to mull over what I wanted to do with them until inspiration finally struck.

I recently purchased a large page of butterfly stencils (one for me and one for Zoo) with four types of butterflies on it, all about 4” square in size. They are gorgeous. As the first card was to be for Zoo I chose the end of the wallpaper that had a lot of peach/pink on it. I used washi tape to attach the paper directly to the back of the stencil where I wanted it and then proceeded  to cut out all the shapes carefully, so as not to cut the stencil. It worked very well, though the hands and elbow barked at me afterward. I saved the bits I cut out and placed them aside in the correct placement for use on another card.

I found a little scrap piece of textured green paper that looked good under the butterfly and then mounted it on a complimentary pink card stock. I mounted the entire top piece onto the card stock using a piece of fun foam. It gave a uniform thickness and as it turns out, I didn’t have to pay extra postage. Yay! The idea of using the fun foam came from a YouTube video Zoo had sent me (sorry but I can’t find it at the moment – maybe Zoo will add the link later). I liked the uniform thickness for this card but on some cards I made the other day it didn’t make a difference between that and the double sided sticky taped dimensional squares I usually use.

The saved bits of the cut out butterfly I glued onto a plain piece of white card stock. It made a nice subtle card. Here is that one and some others I made with the remaining big pieces of wall paper. I really liked how the butterfly shows up so well from across the room. I wasn’t sure what I was going to use the butterfly stencil for but boy did this turn out nice! Oops. Forgot to mention that the stencil was made by Craft Décor. Cool... the computer added the asterisks for me. 

Hope you enjoy the butterflies. They made my day!

Red Bear : )

Using up scraps

Good morning and Happy 2016.

For a couple of months now I have been trying to use up some of the paper I have made or painted over the years and also to use scraps of paper and odds and sods from around my craft room. I always discover things I forgot I had when hunting for something in my craft room and it is my goal to use these things more often in future.

With that in mind, I found two tiny baggies containing little squares and four sided stars. I can’t for the life of me remember what project the squares are left over from but the little pointed bits are left overs from using a friend’s die cut plate. It was a stained glass type of die and because I never throw anything away, I saved the tiny bits in a baggy and forgot about them for a couple of years.

I haven’t used my embossing powders for a while (some of which are over 20 years old) and wanted to compare my old Bridal by Personal Stamp Exchange and my new Iridescent Ice by Stampin’Up!. The pink and purple one is Bridal and the blue/green one is Iridescent Ice. I prefer the Bridal one for this project but there is tinsel like sparkles on the Iridescent Ice one that in batter light is cool.

In making the card I wanted to use a stamp to cover all the squares and then to pull them apart and place them on a darker background. I had to think for a moment to find a way to keep all the little squares together while stamping, heat embossing and then keep them in order so I could transfer them to the darker paper.  I used my ZiG Memory System 2 way glue dotted all over a scrap piece of paper, let it dry (with the help of my heat gun, as I am not a patient person while crafting) and then placed the squares on in the pattern I wanted. It worked like a charm!!

The two stamps I used are my favourite background stamps, both by Stampin’Up!  I prefer the floral one as it had more surface area to emboss but they both worked well.

I used brads the colour of the background paper to bring depth to the card and it finished it off nicely. Now I just have to do the insides of the cards and then start all over with the remaining squares and pointy bits to use them all up so they don’t go back a drawer for a couple more years.

I hope everyone has an awesome 2016 and that you and yours are happy, healthy and near loved ones!

Take care and have fun,

Red Bear : )