A gift for my dad

My dad is an amazing man. He is a daily example of unselfish love. 

Over the years he has spent countless hours helping me with my art program, tackling chores that most people not only don't want to do, but never see. For example, just last week he sorted, washed, dried and stored a thousand soiled flag blanks for me. And these weren't just dirty.. they were rodent soiled from being in cardboard boxes in a storage building. UGH! 

So anyway, I wanted to do something to show my appreciation and I've been wanting to try a new art project, so I figured this would be a good time. When I think of my dad, I think of music and art. Specifically, screen printing... and I just happen to have access to some of the screens that he used in his business for twenty plus years!

I pulled this photo off my dad's facebook page. This is so him!  In fact, this was him in his early twenties.

I took the picture and edited it in photoshop and used it to draw on the silk screen. I used a couple of different kinds of sharpie markers as I found that the plain sharpie dried a grey color, but the one that was created for fabric dried black. You can see the difference in the two below.

Here is the piece in process. I ended up going over the entire thing a few times as I liked the dark contrast on the screen. (If I had time, I would have used both shades to create more depth.. but no time!)

Here is the piece complete.

It was so much fun giving him the gift. 

I have to say, this was one of the best gifts I have ever made. I loved creating it and I loved giving it! I know that what made it special was the meaning behind not just the piece but the screen as well.

The alLUREing necklace tutorial

I am not a fisher woman.

And while I have been fishing a couple of times,
I wouldn't know where to begin if I had to buy a lure in order to catch a fish!

How did I decide on a fishing lure necklace?

Well, I saw a necklace made from "wobblers" in a book.

It was bright and colorful and looked fun.

I also needed to make a thank you gift for a friend and I didn't want a traditional gift!

So....I went to Walmart to look for "wobblers". They didn't have any.

Granted, I don't know what a "wobbler" looked like, but I didn't see anything named as such.

If we lived in a big city where there are sporting goods stores and the like,
I might have found what I was looking for, but we don't.
And given that improvise is my middle name.

And that I was just looking for good colors,

I settled on these fine lures.

And of course a chain (well 2 really), some jump rings.

I already had beads and the silver straight pin type things you put beads on.

Okay.. now for the tutorial!

1.Your cute little jewelry tools will NOT work for this project! I had to go dig out my husbands cutters and needle nose pliers. The hooks are HARD to cut off!

2. After trying a number of different ways to cut off the hook, I finally settled on cutting open the end the hook was placed on and not the hook itself. The picture below shows this. (once you cut open the end, you can pull off the twisted piece if you want. I tried to just untwist the wire, but I couldn't without hooking my finger on one of the THREE hooks! OUCH!)

3. Now the fun part!! After you take off all the hooks, decide on the beads you want to use and make the ends of the lures pretty!  I used the opening that I cut open and then just closed it around the bead addition.

4. After the lures were finished, (I used 4 of two different kinds and 1 larger one) I got my 2 chains and made them into one necklace about 28" long (not sure on length.. original was 22" plus a portion of the second to make it long enough to be able to put over your head).

5. I put the largest lure on first. I used two jump rings on each lure. Two reasons.. first I hate that many "custom" or "homemade" necklaces fall apart so easily and I wanted to make sure that the lures would stay on the necklace. Second, I liked how it looked. :)

6. I placed the lures on every fifth ring. No reason. I just liked the open four between each lure. Because they are pretty big, I didn't want them sitting right on top of each other.

 7. And there you have it! The finished necklace!

I'm not sure if the necklace is very practical, but it sure was fun to make.

I'm going to be on the look out for some "wobblers" and maybe make a couple more gifts!

Blog Candy Makes Me Laugh!

 

So I participated in a challenge over at Erin’s blog, you can check it out here:  Inky Smiles: Scrap My Scraps II: Reveal #1- Emily McLemore

I love how it turned out!  You know sometimes things just work, well this one did! Yippee.. So I thought, why not give it away??  I’m hoping that it will get motivated and make another one, this time I’m going with black and pink and it will say Sisters.. We will see if I follow through..  But that’s a story for another day.

Here are the details from the banner.

   

If you would like to win this, leave me a comment and I’ll put your name in the drawing.  Become a follower and I’ll put your name in 2 times!!

Have a great day!

In case you were wondering..

No, I haven’t given up crafting for Lent, for 2010 or anything like that.  Life has been flying at us from all directions, but I have been able to create a few things.  I thought I’d show off a few of my latest creations.

I’ve made some thank you cards…

Some of my fast and furious template pages.  3 sets to be exact.  Now I just have to get the pictures to put on the 40+ pages I have ready.

And today I finished a little 6”x6” gift album.  It’s really cute I must say :) Here are a few pictures of it.

So there you have it.  Not much crafting, but a little to keep me somewhat sane!

Crocheted Necklaces

 I am becoming a jewelry making fool.  Last night I completed my 10th piece.. all in one week!

I’ve also learned a lot in the process.. like silver wire stays on the roll and unwinds nicely. Gold wire does not!  I’ve also learned that the best looking pieces have a variety of gemstones and acrylic beads.  This also helps with the cost if you happen to need a lot of gifts.

One of the nicest things about these pieces is that they are forgiving when it comes to size.  The mesh you  make crocheting gives the piece flexibility in the size!

  My inspiration for these necklaces came from Inky Smiles blog and like Erin, I recommend watching the tutorial below curtsey of Auntie’s Beads if you want to learn how to create these yourself.

One thing I would say different than the video is that it does matter (at least to me) how the beads are strung onto the wire initially.  Random is great, but if you have different sized beads or a few special beads, you need to take the time and string them on at different intervals on the wire.  Otherwise you will get a lump of special beads.  Yes, I speak from experience :) In the necklace above, you can see what I am talking about!

Well, good luck in your jewelry endeavors!

Ink on Glass

My sister’s birthday is this week and I wanted to make a little something for her.  So I combined one of her favorite verses with a technique I had been wanting to adapt for crafting and here are the results!

I printed out the verse on cardstock and layered it in a 9”x9” frame. I then took out my caligraphy pen and ink and started going over some of the lines on the front of the glass.  I really like how the brown ink matches and highlights the colors in the background paper.  One would have thought I planned it :)

The hardest part of this project was deciding when to stop adding color.  I wanted the ink to be seen, but not overpower the rest of the piece.

  Supplies: CTMH Boom-Di-Ada papers and Barn Red ink, frame from IKEA and calligraphy supplies (see below picture.)

Hope you like this Libby and have a great birthday!

Accordion Slider Album

I saw the idea to make a paper album with sliders somewhere in the internet world, but the lady was only selling kits and to get the template you had to purchase a $30 kit.  I of course thought to myself.. what the heck! and made one myself.  I don’t know what the original dimensions were or how it was done, but I am happy with mine and I am happy to share what I did :)

First, here are some pictures of the album open and laying flat on the table so that you can see the hidden parts that slide out!

And more pictures..

    

I loved making this and seriously thought about keeping it for myself.. but once again, I gave it away as a thank you gift.  I seem to be indebted to a lot of people these days!  However, I think I’m gonna have to make one of these for me :)

If you want instructions on how to make this, give me a few days, but email me to remind me and I will get a link posted on how to do this.

Have a great weekend and I hope to be posting more treasures soon!

Emily

Supplies: CTMH Silhouette papers, CTMH Desert Sand ink, embellishments from a variety of sources.

A handmade box and a set of cards for Thankful Thursday

Yesterday I had the opportunity to have lunch with a friend who is an inspiration to me.  I wanted to give her a little something, so this is what I made.  To bad I didn’t get it finished in time for lunch, but I’ll drop it by for her today :)  Isn’t it wonderful to have good friends!  I am so thankful for friends for which we can share our lives.

I made the box using Tresa Black’s Card box tutorial.  I really like how simple and easy it was to make! The papers and color scheme come from Close To My Heart’s Caprice papers.  I had some of the stickease leftover from scrapbook pages and think that decorating with these is a breeze!

View Full Album

The card designs and stamps are from CTMH’s Everyday Celebration, the September card kit.  I LOVE this set!  And I love how great it looks with other papers and colors.

 

This was a pretty simple project over all to make, maybe I can make some of these for myself soon :)