The Day After...

Little did I know that the festivities for my birthday did not end on my actual birthday...oh no - there was more planned.

In fact a crafty friend had something more up her sleeve.  A crafty friend who would not tell me what we were doing.

At first I was taunted with directives like putting on a prom gown...


I was game.  I'd do it. I would even bring out one for her.


Luckily - I let her off the hook and the bluff was not called...
Since it was my birthday I was feeling generous. 
 All formalities, err - formal gowns out of the way, I was whisked away for some 'creative juice'...now my mind was racing.  What were we going to do???  What kind of hazing was this?

The creative juice ended up being Starbucks and our destination was a paint your own pottery place!

Now I love going to those places - but I blank.  I can never decide what to do.  I break out in a cold sweat and while I'm staring at the stencil rack like there's an eclipse - everyone else in my group is done and the girl behind the counter is asking if she can clean my paint tray.

I had to think of something and quickly. 
 
    "Here!", my friend said.

A travel mug interrupted my memorization of the ceramic bowls and kitten figurines.

So in a spark of desperation I decided to use the Starbucks cup as my inspiration.
Simple - green, off white, black.  I was finally going to finish with everyone else!

Cut to employees clearing the cups of cloudy paint filled water and my friend paying.  And where am I you ask? 

At the table sneaking in finishing touches...

So much for a quick execution.

But while I will always be the last kid at the craft table...I know I have to take the project home.  So I have to like it!

And I have to say, I do!

Baby Bento Box

Since I'm showing off baby gifts, I found one that I made awhile ago for a friend's first baby.

It really started with a cute little memory book of baby's first and I thought it would be a good idea to have something to collect all those firsts.  I came up with a memory box with separate boxes for different keepsakes. 

I attached the memory book to the box lid with ribbon. I glued one end of a length of white ribbon inside the box lid and attached velcro on the other side.  I covered the spot where I attached the velcro to the ribbon with a small wooden star.  

 
The added challenge was the fact that I had no idea if it was going to be a boy or a girl...
So I decided to go with a star theme.  I painted a wooden keepsake box a light yellow and embellished it with white ribbon and rub-on stars.

I painted the smaller boxes white and trimmed each box with thin yellow ribbon.  Each box was titled with a sharpie and embellished with the rub-on stars. 
(I have to give credit to my Mom for her lovely handwriting!)
The smaller boxes correspond with pages in the baby book.

The book had pages for news from when the baby was born.

There was a page for everyone's inspirations and suggestions for names for the baby.

It included space for keepsakes like the bracelet from the hospital.

Then there were places to record baby's first impressions.

And who could forget the first tooth and the curl from the first haircut!

It took a little (ok, a lot!) of maneuvering and switching out box sizes and shapes to get them all to fit in the large box.  ...I'm probably on some watch list at Michael's...  But eventually I got the combination and got everything to fit just right.

So now that my friend is due with her second little one...I guess I had get to work again!

All Washed Up...

So I have those moments when someone mentions a passing thought and as a friend of my describes it, 'I am solidly in the canoe paddling along side of them'.  No real prompting necessary.

One of those passing comments spurred this little number and now I am obsessed with vintage teardrop trailers to the Oh so modern Tab trailer.

Lorrie mentioned that she always wanted to decorate her laundry room in pink flamingos and the color teal.  That was all that I needed to get going with an idea.  Now don't get me wrong, she mentioned this around October and I really did not finish until it was a belated Christmas gift...

I had a bright idea of what I wanted but in all fairness things didn't work as I envisioned.  What should have been a simple little project - simply wasn't as simple as I had convinced myself.

I used an unpainted decorative 'bird house', a pre-painted fence piece and a pre-decorated wooden die-cut flamingo from Michael's.  Noting to it - right?  Not so fast cupcake...

To begin with the rough finish made tight details a bit difficult - I really should have sanded it first.  In the end I think it turned out I just think it may have made some of my lines neater.

I got the bright idea to use a fence as a 'make-shift' looking sign perched atop this little laundry trailer.  Getting that sucker to stay might have been easier in real life.

I ended up painting chopsticks the same color as the trailer.  I attached them with strong glue and then tried to reinforce it with my staple gun.  That really did not work the way I hoped it would.  The staples were difficult to get around the chopstick and into the roof of the trailer.  The chopsticks began to split as I missed and from the pressure of the staples that got the chopstick in it's hold.  I got the front piece to stay and glued the bottom edges of the fence.  Holding the fence piece down to the front set of chopsticks and against the trailer roof, I glued a single chopstick behind the fence to reinforce it.

As I moved things around certain ideas got displaced and reworked.  The windows really needed something to accent them but any attempt at a shade never looked quite right. I tried a micro-fiber towel in baby pink that I hoped to use as a curtain.  I gave edged card stock a shot as an awning of sorts but that really just did not stand out enough.
 

I wondered how I could jimmy-rig a popsicle stick and the cloth over one of the windows to make an awning.  The more I tried to make that work, the more elaborate it became.  In the end a coffee sleeve painted silver became the perfect corrugated metal awning.

The overall composition really took quite a bit of tweaking to get just right.  There were always those one or two pieces that stood out like a wall flower at a school dance; ackward and self conscious. The opening to the bird house 'laundry' just seemed to stand out too much when I left it undecorated.  But to be honest, my 'Open' sign really didn't look all that useable until I got the other pieces to look just right. The awning I mentioned never really worked out for the front of the trailer.  The 'corrugated metal' however, was quite useful for a few handy-dandy signs!

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Even my little flamingo moved quite a bit as all the other pieces danced around. 

In the end however, I was pretty happy with how it turned out!

And I'm happy to report that Lorrie was pretty happy with it too.  In fact, she doesn't want to leave it at home in the laundry room...she keeps it at her desk at work.

Wicked Little Number...

So the first project I will share is a ceiling tile I entered into a contest at a local restaurant.  I did a play on Something Wicked this Way Comes...

As you can see they used the big tiles...I don't think I realized just how big or how brittle they were until I did this.

I tried to use sealant on the tile since it's so porous, but honestly I don't believe it helped.

I used basic acrylic paint and foam brushes.  The foam got torn on the tile but I
really don't know that regular wall brushes would have worked better.  Coverage is just tough on a tile.

I tried to sketch things out and then make that sketch into a template, anything that could help me plan things out.

 

I mostly worked from the top down

The writing on the tile proved a little trickier.  As I mentioned the coverage made delicate details difficult.  I guess a big part of the problem is the fact that I got to the bottom and just wanted to finish.  In order to use an appropriate font instead of my handwriting I would have had to print out the title, a few letters at a time in order to get them to their necessary size since anything I had was just wrong size and style wise.  And according to Murphy's Law - the printer was out if ink.  Then I would have had to cut out each letter and then deal with spacing, soooo my handwriting won out.

Fin!