Little Houses 3-Piece Wall Art

Whimsical little houses. They're everywhere lately and I love them. I made this wall art using various patterned paper from my stash. I just love little stash-busting projects like this. The "canvases" are just 8x8" pieces of quarter-inch plywood that we had leftover in the garage from building Peanut's birdcage.

I made these for OGD and they're heavily inspired by these that she pinned and wished for.

Also, a little gem from Pinterest: the hanging hardware pieces are the pull-tabs off of the top of cans of tomato soup. I used E6000 to attach them to the backs of the pictures,and they work like magic. Cheap and easy.

I hope everybody had a great weekend :) I went to Corpus Christi (my little nieces call it "Corbis Crispy") and we had fun digging up teeny beautiful clams and bigger squishier, cooler snails. And a tiny shrimp and a tiny fish.

Retro Camper Altered Altoids Tin Lid

Hello, friends! I'm in Texas right now visiting with my sister. I probably won't do much serious crafting while I'm here, but luckily I have a backlog of projects to share for the next couple of weeks. I made this altered Altoids tin lid for onegroovyday for the Craftster IYP swap. She loves retro campers...

Check out the glitter and beads along the edges... I love glitter glue because it covers the edges of the paper lining the back of the lid. Looks more finished that way.

Here's the back, there's some chain so the tin can be hung on the wall.

I made the little camper from white polyclay and then painted it with acrylics. The little lines I did with a micron pen. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Aaaaaand the decorative topper piece is made out of matches. I put some clear nail polish on the tips, hoping it might make them less flammable... Does that make it less flammable, or more? Oh well. Just keep it away from open flame :) I have tons of loose matches about from making altered matchboxes, so I've gotta use em someplace. They look nice, right?

Anyhoo, I hope everyone is having a splendid week so far. I am. I went to Sea World yesterday evening with my sister and it was great. We're going to go about 3000 more times before I leave... I want to feed a dolphin.

Alice in Wonderland Card

Stamps: "Alice" by Janet Klein for Stampotique and "Altered Hello" by Amy Wilson Wellenstein for Stampotique

I made a card! 

Isn't this Alice stamp so flippin' great? I love it. I adore it. And I put some glitter glue on it after coloring it with watercolors. Janet Klein has a whole set of various Alice in Wonderland stamps available from Stampotique and they're all just awesome. I got some in the mail today and I couldn't resist playing, even though I've got about 3,000 things to do before the weekend.

 I used some paper flowers and glitter tape to embellish. You can see the glue's still a little bit wet. Oh well, I got excited. I hope everybody is having a splendid week so far and is enjoying summer as much as possible.

Morehouse Farm Knitkit Winner!!!

I had help from my sun conure, Peanut, with picking a winner this morning! Congratulations, Miss Rose! You win the little elephant purse knitkit from Morehouse Farm :) And to see the cuteness of how Miss Rose was randomly drawn by Mr. Peanut, watch the video. 

Monster Lineup Watercolor and Notebook

Monsters, monsters, a family of monsters. I drew and watercolored these guys for this notebook in the IYP Swap on craftster. If you're a craftster, you've probably seen Onegroovyday around the boards, and she is awesome. That's who I swapped with, so you'll be seeing things I made for her for the next few posts :)

I used my Zutter Bind-it-all to put the book together and the inside pages are recycled kraft cardstock.

Here's a scan of the painting before I cut out the monsters and pasted them to the front cover. I hope you're all having a great week so far...

And if you missed it, go enter my Morehouse Farm Knitkit Giveaway! I pick a random winner tomorrow, so get on it.

Knitting! It's a sizzler scarf... And a quick giveaway!

 Check out what I'm working on! I got this Morehouse Farm knit kit in the mail recently, and despite my being a sub par knitter, I'm making pretty quick progress and enjoying myself! The pattern is really easy, so I can knit while I watch/listen to TV. Hulu Plus just put season 2 of Downton Abbey up, so I've been knitting and watching and feeling fancy. This little scarf is going to turn out gorgeous, BTW, check out what the finished product should look like here. No guarantees mine is gonna look that awesome, but it there's a chance it might. It's been a long time since I've knit anything serious.

 The kit came with these delicious little raspberry bamboo knitting needles, which do add to my feeling of fanciness. The soft clicking these needles make is quiet, no metallic clickity clickity.

And oh, this merino yarn. Doesn't it look good? That's because it is. Lace-weight, cornflower blue, so pretty. I'll post a pic when my little scarf is all finished. I think I'm going to have to add some fancy beads or sequins to it. Did I mention the word fancy in this post at all? No? Fancy.

And hey! Morehouse Farm also sent me this super cute Critterknits knit kit!

I'll be giving it away to a lucky knitting reader :) Just be a follower and leave a comment on this post to be entered. Be sure there's some way to contact you if you win. I'll be picking a random winner on Wednesday July 18th 2012, sometime during the day. Here's more info on this Little Elephant Purse. This prize ships to US addresses only, though, sorry. I'll do an international one soon :) Good luck, friends!

Entries CLOSED! Congratulations to the winner, Miss Rose!

And thank you to Morehouse Farm!

Silver Ring with beads! I'm soldering, folks, and it feels fine.

My new jewelry desk is finished, and I've finally made my first piece of silver jewelry from scratch. I'm pretty dang pleased with how it turned out. I couldn't bring myself to leave the house for church today. All of the babies and pregnant women make me too sad, and I just needed a break today. So I sat at home listening to church stuff and making some pretty things. I'll go back next week.

So yes, indeed, I made this from sterling wire and sheet silver. I had the idea to combine soldering with that wirework I was having fun with, so I made this simple shape. Mixing up all my chemicals and using my torch to solder for the first time was interesting, and a little teensy bit challenging, but I am going to enjoy it. I'm stoked to add this to my list of skills that I have a compulsive need to constantly add to. There are worse compulsions than needing to learn to make stuff, right?

Here's the ring after I put the beads on with wire. It took me ages to choose which beads I wanted to use, for this, my most epic momentous first ring. I'm satisfied with my choice. It's summery and it'll go well with most of my outfits.

 The band is a hammered texture, which is a happy accident. I accidentally cut the band too small and had to hammer it out a bit to make it bigger. Oops. Still looks cute, though, and definitely more handmade-looking :)

My hands look wrinkly in these photos. I hope you all have been having a great weekend! Here's to feeling better.

You go, Glen Coco! Hammered Penny

Quickie project today! I'm experimenting with hammering coins, and then using metal stamping letters. For this little piece, all I did was use a ball-peen hammer and beat the heck out of a penny. Pennies made before 1982 are 95% copper, so they pound out pretty nicely, if not incredibly LOUDLY. Definitely use ear protection if you want to attempt this. The copper also gets really hard after a fair amount of beating, and then you can't get it any flatter... I've been learning a little bit about metalworking, and you can anneal the metal (make it soft again) by heating it with a torch until it's red hot, then letting it air-cool. Worked like a charm, and I was able to hammer this out to about the size of a quarter! Then, I had to stamp something on it, and I couldn't think of anything else except "You go Glen Coco!"

I need to put this on a necklace! But I also thought it would make an excellent dog tag, cell phone charm, or key chain. Happy Friday!

Bunny "You can do it" mini-canvas painting

Here's your affirmation for the day! You can do it! Whatever it is... that you need to do :) I needed to make something positive, so I made this little mini-canvas. It's about 2"x2" and is acrylics, ink, and paper.

 The thing is about a half-inch deep, so I lined the edges with book page glued-on. You can find these awesome little tiny canvases at Michaels in a bunch of different sizes. Love them. I think I'm gonna put this little painting at eye level in front of my computer.

Happy Independence Day!!! Enjoy some hotdogs and watermelon and the smell of fireworks today :)

EDIT: Bobby found a wee toadie outside and brought it in to say hello.

Red, White and Blue Pin up Altered Matchbox

It's July! And that means another challenge over at Unique Crafters. To celebrate Independence Day, this month's theme is "Patriotic!" As part of the UC design team, I decided to make a little altered matchbox. I'll admit, this theme was a bit of a challenge, since I'm not sure I've ever crafted in a red/white/blue color scheme and I didn't just want to do a monster in an Uncle Sam hat :)

 I went with a vintage pinup image, because pinups are so Americana, and I felt like it worked with the theme. I thought of eagles and maps and fireworks and stuff, but came back around to this. I got this image from an Etsy shop called itkupilli (lovely collage sheets!)

The feet are little beads, and I did more embellishing with paper flowers, brads, and wee metallic stars. 

So if you're up for making something festive and patriotic, don't forget to head over to the Unique Crafters Challenge Blog and enter it in July's challenge! Happy 4th of July :)