I Knew I Saved That Can For A Reason!

Thank You Monique! 

My son was on a smoothie kick requiring pineapple juice which I could only find in the kind of can that juice doesn't come in that often anymore. It's about 7 in tall. I saved one of them because it seemed like a smart thing to do and with my addiction  collection of K&CO adhesive scrapbook borders continuing to grow, I needed a better way to contain the mess  organize them!

Large juice can

Ordinarily I would have covered with scrapbook paper, but I remembered I had some contact paper scraps and thought they'd work. I also had some decorative tape I picked up from Michaels $1 section so that went into the plan.

Wrapped the can in the contact paper, went around the top and bottom with the tape. Then I went to my sticker stash and got out some clear stickers from American Crafts. I love these sticker books that have pages and pages of stickers and I'm pretty sure I got this one for $2, 3 bucks at Michaels w/ a coupon!

Since this was going to hold my K&CO scrapbook borders, I thought I should use some of them too: 

For the focal, I took a small flower sticker from the pack and mounted it on a white card stock scrap and then mounted to the middle of the medallion sticker on the can using a foam dot.

Here are my scrapbook borders all neat and tidy ( and there's even room for a few more!!!)

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Knock Off or Knock It Off #2

Call it ICTMTM ( I Can Totally Make That Myself) Inspired By-itis or Knock Off Fever, all of us creative types have it in some form or another.

I had fun with my first real knock off piece that even got featured over at Copy Cat Crafts, it emboldened me to try again. I may have exhausted my skills!

This time, the inspiration came from Ballard Designs. Both in their current catalog and on their website they have several pieces of abstract art, either paintings or digitally printed glicee prints…and they range from $249 to$459. GULP. I can’t draw to save my life but these aren’t still lifes they’re abstract so no one can tell me that my apple looks like a pumpkin.

I liked these from Ballard:

because even though our house isn’t contemporary, these are really muted and I think they go with many styles. And they’re $249-$429!

So, I had a canvas (previous DIY art) that had been hanging up that I was tired of, and I had paint, and I even had some Golden Gel Medium molding paste that I bought for reasons that weren’t clear to me at the time. I think an art store was closing.

I covered the whole thing in black paint, then smudged ( sorry all you Fine Arts people whom I do truly respect) some of the Gel Medium goop all over with a plastic knife. Dried that overnight. Then I started splotching ( another technical term) various paints on. I used a combination of pewters, silver, grey, black, white, gold. Whatever I had wherever it went. Added some silver rub n buff in places.

Closeup of the layering of molding paste and paints

Another closeup from another section

I know the Louvre or MOMA won’t be calling any time soon but hey, it was stuff I had on hand and it works for now. Be honest. I can take it…I have chocolate.

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Printables Aren’t Just For Framing

My to do list today ( besides bathroom cleaning) includes making a birthday card. A guy birthday card which I always find a challenge. I’ve been having fun w/ printables and since they’re essentially resizable JPEG files, I decided “duh” , I could make one with a birthday theme and resize it to whatever size I want to use on a card.
So here ‘tis…and you’re welcome to it as a printable or whatevs. If you use, would appreciate a follow but would LOVE a link back with what you did w/it!

Haven’t made the card yet. Or cleaned the bathrooms!

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Thanks For Stopping By !

BFF#11: Netty’s Craftings

TGIF all! Welcome to another :

here at The Answer Is Chocolate. This week’s featured blogger comes

to us all the way from Northamptonshire, UK, the lovely Netty from her blog:

Netty is an amazingly talented paper and mixed media artist who produces pieces that just make me swoon. Every time I look in my blog reader, she’s got something or other done for one of the many challenges she enters, or has had a piece published or has just made something fantastic as a gift or just because. I envy her ability to interpret the themes of the various challenges which she makes look easy.

For example, look at this altered notepad she just did:

Or this beautiful card she did following the requirements of a challenge to incorporate inking and stamping masks:

What fascinates me most is her attention to detail and the way she jokes about using tossed off materials :

As Netty describes it, this piece uses “chipboard waste”. HA I wish my waste looked so good! No wonder she’s been published in the UK’s Craft Stamper magazine.

There’s so much to look at on her blog, truly a feast for the eyes, so I’ll end with this which while coffee themed, I’ve told Netty I’m considering it chocolate themed:

I promise that you’ll spend lots of time oohing and aahing when you go visit her! And she leaves the sweetest comments.

Cheers,

I'm A Stumblin' Fool!

Be nice! No I didn't fall down the stairs ( or up, as I've been known to do...trust me it can be done!). I'm one of those late bloomers sometimes, and I just "discovered" Stumble Upon and I am hooked!  I'm just barely Facebook literate ( my son would argue that point and not from the standpoint of telling me I'm being modest) but while I was on my FB page, I saw a post by my friend Erin at Crafts and Sutch in which she mentioned Stumbled Upon.

Being nosy  curious, I went to check it out. I'd seen this little logo on people's sites, and seen people mention it on their blogs,  but today was just the day.  One of the things I'm really focused on is finding websites and blogs that feed my creative appetite, that are inspiring, that are ones with projects and ideas similar to mine etc. This is PERFECTION!

You can select your interests and then you click your little stumble button and up comes a site. You can "like" it and then it gets saved for you ( or if it's a blog, you can choose to follow it ) or if it's not your thing, you can just "Stumble" again and again and again. But wait...that's not all.

A new car! Just kidding :) But you can "follow" some of your favorite bloggers in Stumble Upon and then you or they can share w/ each other or post to Facebook or Twitter.  I know...your head's spinning. Mine too. Some days I don't know whether to like my face or tweet my book, but social networking is here to stay so I'm trying to at least pretend to keep up with it!

So check it out if you're interested in finding some new ideas or places to stalk, I mean visit. I'm theanswerischoco on Stumble Upon.

And I'm writing this because I'm really excited about it. The Stumble Upon people don't even know about me ...yet.

C is for Celtic

 

It’s also the middle letter of the word LUCKY.

I wasn’t going to make a banner for St. Patrick’s Day. I really, really wasn’t. Until I did. I may have a slight problem with banners. Mr. Chocolate will tell you there’s nothing slight about it.

I love, love, love and did I mention love, Celtic knot work. I bought a book once to learn how to do it. FAIL! But who needs that when you have the whole internet and a bajillion free fonts at your fingertips? I found this font called Celtic Eels and downloaded it and used it to create the letters LUCKY in my graphics program. Being greedy, I also downloaded this “dings” font ( these are images that correspond to letters) called Deco Dings and kept typing letters until images I liked came up. Scientific huh?!

After I printed the letters on white cardstock, I trimmed them and mounted them to black and green papers and then added some embellishments from my pot of gold rhinestone stash.

Finished off with clothespins covered in paper scraps and more rhinestones.
If I did this right,  you can click here and get the .PDF file with the letters and “ding” images I used. If that doesn’t work, email me (email link in sidebar). If you download, appreciate a follow.

Lucky I’m in love with my best friend !

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