Saturday, January 21, 2012

Gift for Mom

Now that Christmas is past, I can share something I made and gave to my mom.  This started out as a plain tan-colored paper mache' box.

Getting it to its finished state required a lot of patience on my part.  Not usually my strong point.  But there are several layers that each required full drying before the next step could happen.

Some of the ingredients that went into the box were:

  • Pretty paper napkins
  • white gesso
  • rubber stamping with solvent inks
  • Vintage black velvet ribbon
  • Vintage jewelry pieces
  • Antique lamp crystal (colored with solvent ink)
  • glitter glue
I have to say it was really satisfying to watch this project progress through each step and then wind up with this result.  It is exactly how I imagined it.

And hopefully my mom liked it as much as she let on :)

I'll be back with another post about my mother-in-law's gift.

Stay tuned...

Friday, January 20, 2012

Why I Love SCRAP

If you don't know, SCRAP is this totally cool little place that people donate all kinds of weird stuff.  And artists, crafters, quilters, and tinkerers of all types can find surprising supplies there.  For next to nothing.  The cool part is that the inventory changes all the time, so you can always find something different.

I stopped by today and here's what I came home with...

  • 1/2" stack of bright red tag board
  • 8 sheets of alphabet stickers in various colors
  • Several yards of embroidered ribbon
  • Vintage doilies
  • Button blanks for my iTop tool
  • Fine purple glitter
  • Red frog fasteners
  • Round ceramic tiles
  • Two pairs of shoe laces
  • Paper Crafts magazine
  • A gorgeous red and white upholstery fabric sample

And I paid a grand total of $6.80!


This is such an amazing community place.  They have a little gallery of art projects that people have made with things from the store.  If you have kids, this is a great place to go stock up on art supplies and not spend a fortune.  Dylan loves taking a couple of his allowance dollars and seeing what he can buy for his craft stash.

It's like a little treasure hunt and you don't have to feel the least bit guilty about buying art supplies!