Day #159

I got my supplies out to decorate the boxes today, and had no idea what to do, so I only got to do a couple. I quite like the square gems on the gold. They look pretty and the pattern matched up without really planning it. I tried putting micro marbles on one, but for some reason couldn’t figure out a good way to do it with minimal mess, as I wasn’t able to use my craft room.
I did look up some ideas and thought I’d try quilling on one later, and maybe get some fabric and ribbon out.
I finally got around to baking the clay that I moulded the other day. I’m loving the fondant mould I got, but I’m unsure if it’s because I used cheap clay, or that I didn’t bake it long enough, but the pieces are a bit bendy. I’ll have to try the super Sculpey that I have although they come out a bit mottled. I think I’ll have to experiment because I couldn’t find anything online about it.

Day #158

So, if you’re reading this, you might have noticed a change in the theme of the site. I even made a quick banner. I realised that the website was taking a long time to load. I think this is because the theme took the actual pictures from the pages instead of making a low resolution thumbnail, cropped as a circle. I did like the theme, but the meta menu was bugged and there wasn’t much that I could edit. The new theme I picked, (I think it’s called sketches,) is a lot cleaner and nice looking. I need to update the ‘about’ page more, but I didn’t know what to say. At least its better than the blank/default one I had.
I felt like doing something crafty this evening, without much effort. I was originally going to decorate boxes, but realised that a few of the boxes, that I had in my drawer, weren’t finished and needed another coat of paint.
I got a few disposable oven trays the other day, so I could use them for polymer clay, baking them when the tray is full. I discovered that they are good to put drying boxes in to keep them out of the way.

Day #157

Shopping day, Yay! Had a short time but a fun time out. At the craft store I bought some floating charms, a chocolate mould, a silicone baking mould and a Wilton fondant mold, all for crafting purposes. I got some more white card stock, some geisha doll fabric and a cheap magazine with next to nothing good but nice patterns and colours for cutting out. I got two magazines, one on digital painting and sculpture, and a card making magazine which I got for the cute Christmas ‘me to you’ stamps and paper. I then got some beautiful turquoise glitter paint, which is the bottom right picture. The picture looks more green than it is, since it looks like green glitter floating in blue. I also picked up some bottles with fine tips which are perfect for PVA glue, especially because I buy big bottles and use them to refill the little bottles.
In the craft store, we saw scrapbooking paper that was just brown paper with coloured designs, which would be so easy to make, as I have the same stamps as the design. I’ll have to make some presents this year so I can make my own wrapping paper.
I had some fun playing with clay in the fondant mould. It works really well with the polymer clay that I used, and these would look very nice on a box project that I’m working on.
I’m excited to used the ginger bread man moulds as the examples on the packet were so cute, showing a princess and monster. It got my creatives thinking.

Day #156

I’ve been slowly working on this guy. After the base coat of red I showed you a while ago, I’ve put about 5 coats of pinkish purple glitter paint. I should have done another coat of red, since the glitter is transparent and you can still see the bad paint strokes. It’s quite pretty in the light, but the camera on my phone doesn’t pick it up.
One thing about having cats and a craft room is it makes you a little bit tidier. I often hear strange noises coming from the room only to find my tools on the floor. Also covering drying items is a must. They share my love for art, or they just like playing with my things. They’re lucky that they’re so cute.

Day #155

Didn’t do a lot today. I had the energy of a pine needle. Must be the change in weather. I should migrate with the winter so I stay cold.
I felt like doing some polymer clay pieces, but only got as far as warming up three pieces of clay to push into moulds. Being silicone moulds I know it’s possible to bake the clay in them, but I like adjusting the clay, and they pop out easy enough before baking. I’m not good at mixing nice pink colours, so I’ll probably paint the S after I bake them and I’ll need to sand the back flat.
While I was cleaning, I found one box that hadn’t been painted, so I found a lovely red that suited the heart and got to painting. All these boxes that I paint will come in handy for gifts or selling eventually. For now, I have a whole drawer full, and will continue painting them for the fun of it.

Day #154

Phew. Just finished. Spent most of the day painting, and my back knows it.
I did plan to do resin today, bit my asthma was playing up a bit, so my partner assigned me a project. He plays World of Warcraft and is a big fan of the Lich King, Arthus. I decided to call this painting Art-hus. Hehehe.
It’s quite small, smaller than letter size paper. My partner was impressed half way through, only because he said he’d have given up from all the effort already. Not sure if he was trying to compliment to my talent or my patience.
I definitely need to more paintings for the house, but my hands and body need a good rest first. 🙂

Day #153

Really bad picture of the glass things I made. I might turn them into magnets unless I can think of something else before I find my magnets. I made some Christmassy ones that I thought would be good for sticking Christmas cards to the fridge. I might try using some ring bases that I have. I’m not sure they’d be great on cards, being rather heavy, but that would look nice. I did use licenced characters, but I’m not going to be selling these and thought they’d be nice as gifts.

Day #152

“Wow you made headphones?” I hear you say. No, silly, I painted in the debossed design. My partner, is rather picky when it comes to technology. So his phone is black and white (like a stormtrooper, he says) and he bought a new pair of Skullcandy headphones that he wanted to match, but the white and black ones were more expensive for some reason, so he got the plain black ones. He was complaining about this again once they arrived in the mail today, so I offered to paint them for him. I used white acrylic paint and my smallest 20/0 brush with no water. I also coated it with a sealer. I’m not sure how durable it will be, but I’ve asked him to tell me if the paint chips or anything. He was happy with the result and I was quite pleased. Lucky my hands weren’t shaky today. I even named the skulls- Squinty, Jack and Bob.

Day #151

Bottle caps and glass stones.
I made these yesterday but I waited till the glue was dry so it didn’t look weird when I showed you. I’ve been preparing bottle caps for resin doming…which I will get to one day. With these two, I made a pair so they will match when I glue them back to back. I poured glittery nail polish into the flattened bottlecaps and after a few days, decided to used alphabet stickers and gems to decorate. I like the pink and silver against the turquoise blue. The bottle caps seem to have a coating that isn’t quite gold and isn’t quite silver, so I can use either gold or silver decorations and fittings. If you’re wondering how to flatten them, I use my big shot on I think the embossing folder platform. Make sure you buy the unused crown seals in the beer making or craft section.
As for the glass stone, I followed a tutorial on making gems out of catalogues. I had done this technique before, but it inspired me to look through some catalogues to use them up. It turns out that the shops are beginning toy sales for Christmas already, but this gave me a few Adventure Time, Hello Kitty, Winnie the pooh and Peppa Pig images to play with. Unfortunately, the stones I had had a slight blue colour to them, which distorts the colours. Maybe I’ll look for larger, clearer ones since this is a fun and easy craft.