Fall Vinyl Embellished Candles

Sharing a project I did for the Expressions Vinyl blog last week.

I’m having a long overdue lunch with some girlfriends and I always like to take them a little gift. I love embellishing these tall glass candles . I downloaded the image for the vinyl from the Silhouette online store and cut from gold metallic vinyl on my Silhouette Cameo.

Here are my images after peeling away the extra vinyl. For images with lots of detail, like these swirls, I like to use transfer paper to get my images cleanly off the backing and onto my project.

This made it easy to center the image and place it on the candle.  I used a Canvas Corp damask print paper ( white on kraft) and Mod Podged the paper to the candle, then applied the vinyl image.

Then I just poked around in my stash and embellished with some complementary rhinestones, plain old twine, beads, and paper flowers.

What's a gift without a gift tag? Since I have an abundance of paper scraps, I found a coordinating scrap from another project, covered a plain white tag and finished with a K&Co fall leaf scrapbook border, a giant eyelet, and coordinating baker's twine. 

Celebrating With A Giveaway!

 I hope everyone had a spectacular 4th!

Last week was crazy good. It started out with an email from Heather at Whipperberry that I’d won her superfantastic giveaway sponsored by Lifestyle Crafts of the Epic Combo Letterpress Kit! Squeal!!! I can’t wait to get it and start playing. Thank you so much Whipperberry and Lifestyle, and if you’ve never visited Whipperberry  you’ve been missing out! Amazing projects, features, link parties….!

Then, on Friday, Cassie from Paper Issues let me know I’d been selected to join the Paper Issues Creative Team!!!  I’m so excited and honored to be on this team with some of the most creative paper artists. If you are into anything paper (believe me, it’s not just cards and scrapbooking although there are some incredible examples of those) and have never visited Paper Issues, you really want to check it out.

To celebrate, I thought I’d do a little giveaway. The giveaway will be part of this week’s BFF Open House link party so you’ll need to come back Friday to enter!

A set of 6 notecards (5.5 x 4.25) featuring KandCo’s Poppy Seeds collection. Die cuts, self adhesive scrapbook borders, and dimensional stickers. Each card has an embossed panel I did with my Cuttlebug:

and each card is finished with coordinating rhinestone accents.

These made me really happy to make…I love the whimsical design of the series and it was a fun color palette to work with. Just something I thought I’d share to celebrate my good fortune! Come back Friday if you want to win!!

My First Resin Project!

I may or may not have accidentally prematurely posted this before :) so you may or may not be confused! We'll just pretend that didn't happen OK? 

I have LONG wanted to play with Resin, but have been intimidated to try it. When I recently had the opportunity to try Envirotex Lite by ETI (Environmental Technology Inc) , I was so excited to jump right in! I am not always good at reading instructions…ask Mr. Chocolate. But I CAREFULLY read the instruction sheet that came with the package which was super easy to follow.

EnviroTex Lite has many many uses from finishing furniture to home dec uses to jewelry making. I decided I would do a pendant.

I bought these fun bezels from the Bezels, Frames and Filigree collection by Bead Landing at Michaels. I was so excited I pulled them off the card before I took a picture! I had this great collage paper in my stash by Kand Co so the hardest part was deciding on a focal image.

Decided on this one (you can’t go wrong with Paris) and punched a circle out, then using PVA glue, glued it to the center of my pendant (you can see the glue’s not quite dry here but it dries clear) . Make sure you coat it really well so you don’t get any edges coming up

I also had some glass micro beads in my stash. In doing some prep reading about using resins, I followed the advice not to use plastic or coated beads because of interaction with the resin. I poured some in this bezel as well as a smaller bezel from the same package.

OK GO time on the resin. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY! Just sayin’…if you’re like me and usually don’t. Mix your resin. Oh man. I was nervous. And I should NOT have been! You mix the two components together in a clean cup (ETI provided plastic cups and wooden stir sticks). When I thought it looked ready ( which I based on stirring it for the two minutes the instructions said) , I was ready to pour!

Sorry , no pics of this part of the process because I was so focused on not goofing up! A little goes a LONG way. I used an ounce each of the resin and the hardener and had leftover.

It’s hard to tell from this pic but this is after the resin has been poured and set. Mine bubbled when I first poured it and the instructions said to go over it lightly with a match or butane lighter.  I chose to do this project when hubs wasn’t home in case it came to this! Also in case it was smelly…he doesn’t do smelly. It was not at all but I ensured good ventilation just to be safe.
I just waved my pencil torch lightly over the top and voila, the bubbles disappeared! You can see the micro beads floating in the resin.

You can see the depth of the resin here a little better on the smaller pendant. I filled it w/ micro beads, poured the resin on top and then sprinkled a few more micro beads on top. Why? Cause I did.

Once my pendant had set and dried ,  I went to work on the necklace, just wire wrapping a collection of crystals, pearls and agate, and using different lengths of chain. But the focal is this pendant which I’m so happy with and LOVE LOVE LOVE working with this resin!

Thank you SO much ETI for the chance to experiment with Envirotex Lite. I am HOOKED!

ETI sent me this product to try out. You won’t believe all that you can do with this product.  Envirotex Lite was created by Environmental Technologies Inc. (ETI), which is the home for many resin and mold making products.
 

The use of resin in jewelry making, mixed media and paper arts continues to grow in popularity. Today, artists are using ETI’s products in many crafty ways and they will be showcasing these works of art on their new blog "Resin Crafts".

Check them out on:
Resin Crafts Blog
ETI on Facebook
ETI on Twitter

  

Composition Book Supplies Journal

If you’ve read my blog for more than a minute, you know that I love to roam around Michaels, JoAnn’s and assorted other craft stores looking for nothing in particular and finding goodies. But, I also need to keep track of things I use regularly, and things I need for projects I want to try.  I love technology as much as anyone but sometimes you just need to go old school and have things written down in something you can carry with you. So I made a “Supplies Journal”.

This is hardly a new idea…altering composition books, but I’ll still show you what I did.

Started with your basic composition book…I pick these up around back to school time for next to nothing. Covered the front and back with Recollections “Batiked My Interest” Collection…this paper’s called Coconut. Source: Michaels…4 sheets for $1! I Mod Podged the paper on so it would really stick:

I covered the inside with a coordinating brown and cream paper and used the scraps of both papers for the cover, along with a rub-on of my initial, some Michaels $1 self adhesive metal bits, KandCo self adhesive vellum scrapbook borders, and one of these :

Added some coordinating leftover typewriter alphabet stickers to spell “Supplies” and then punched a hole in the front and back covers so I could thread ribbon to tie the journal together. You don’t have to. I just did. This is also the perfect place for me to keep my coupons when I go after those supplies I need!

Linking Up At: 

I Crafted and I’m Telling. Elmer’s Craft and Tell Party With No Biggie

Kami over at No Biggie was lucky enough to be selected by Elmer’s to host a “Craft and Tell” party where she got to give away craft kits to some of her followers. I was lucky enough to win one of these! Thanks Kami and Elmer’s!

It was like Christmas. This is what arrived!

And Kami is so on top of things because look at her cute notecards! She also had the cutest matchbook cover mint holder.

I mentioned in the post where I shared my Mother’s Day printable that I was woefully behind on Mother’s Day and hadn’t made any cards. Printable+Elmers Craft and Tell to the rescue!

Reduced the printable down to 2x2.5 and printed several on white cardstock. Took one pair of the decorative scissors and trimmed the panels, then mounted on coordinating cardstock. Layered that using a floral print paper from KandCo and another striped paper and embellished with paper flowers, ribbon,  and self adhesive rhinestones.

This is my new best friend:

I love my big ATG tape gun but sometimes you need a little guy for the details. I’ve used other dot runners but this one worked the smoothest! I used it to apply the ribbons and paper flower in the lower right corner of my focal piece. Love it.

These were fast cards to make and the XActo Decorative Edge scissors and the Elmer’s Dot Runner were lifesavers! So thanks again Kami for hosting the giveaway and Elmer’s for sponsoring it!

Speaking of Mother's Day:

Thank you Mr. Chocolate and Chocolate Chip! This is my new camera that I barely know how to use. It's perfect for me...DSLR function and quality without having to know all the whatchamathingy terminology, and the ease of a point and shoot. Squee!!!!

Back to Christmas...More Ornaments

I'm bouncing back and forth between Thanksgiving and Christmas like I think a lot of us are. In my case it's partly because I'm doing a craft fair the weekend before Thanksgiving because I'm insane.

You know these? :

These are not the ball ornaments but the flat round ones? Like if you flattened the ball ornaments. I tend to stock up on stuff like this after Christmas when they're on sale so I had some on hand. I did buy some new K&Co  stickers. "Snowglobe" they're called and that's exactly what they look like...the snowglobes you shake and then snow comes down. So I had this idea. I squeezed some glue inside...whatever dries clear (I used Diamond Glaze on this one because it dries pretty fast and I wanted to see if this idea panned out, but since it's pricier and I'd end up using a lot for these, I switched to plain diluted white glue for some others. Takes longer to dry but cost effective! Then added silver glitter and just shook it kinda like a snow globe:

I didn't want it to coat the whole thing so it's just kind of wherever it went. After that was dry, I took one of the "Snowglobe" stickers and stuck it to the front:

I decided it needed something more, so I hot glued a silver pipe cleaner around the sticker. Put the cap back on and finished off with a bow, a button, and a rhinestone:

I also did some more with the paper mache ornaments. These are super simple and fast:

 

Plain paper mache ornament, covered with polka dot wrapping paper from stash ( this is from Paper Source and I think they carry it every year). Adhere paper to orny with Mod Podge. Add clear alphabet stickers. Add bow, buttons and I put rhinestones in the center of the buttons. I hot glued braided trim around the edges to finish.

Linking Up At: