Hard-boiled and colorful

I'm going camping this weekend which means that I need to get my Easter baskets delivered today cuz I won't be around on Sunday morning.

Alisa Burke decorated eggs with a Sharpie. She has some lovely designs on her blog using nothing but a fine point black Sharpie. Beautifully done, but way too one-color for a crazy crafter like me.

So I headed out to the store to buy some extra fine point permanent markers and boiled up a few eggs.

I'm doing four baskets. One for my mom, a couple for neighbors who have helped me with some things lately, and of course, one for my niece. So these eggs will help decorate the small baskets I'm preparing for each of them.

If you don't have a lot of time, I understand why dying eggs in the traditional way is a good option. These eggs definitely took me longer than dying would have. But it was fun and, heck, it keeps me off the streets, right.

The rest of the Easter basket is made up of a handful of dark chocolate eggs, some jelly beans, and some homemade blackberry muffins (recipe link here). Blackberries were on sale at the grocery and these muffins are YUMMY! Oh yes, I tried one myself after they cooled. Go to my Strawberry Oatmeal Muffin post for hints about making fabulous muffins.

Happy Easter!
Happy Passover!
Happy Spring Equinox! (whichever floats your boat)

I'm linking up to the following fabulous sites:

Savvy Southern Style Wow Us Wednesday

Shabby Creek Cottage Transformation Thursday

Made in a Day Made U Look Linky

Skip to My Lou Made by You Monday

Boogie Board Cottage Masterpiece Monday

All Things Fee Calling All Crafters

Our Delightful Home Show Me What You Got

Simple Home Life Simply Creations Linky Party

Ladybird Ln Weekend Show Off Party

For my habitat and yours

I finally checked out the Habitat for Humanity Restore they opened not far from my house. I've been meaning to go there for awhile. The community choir that I sing with helped build a Habitat House here in town so I've supported the organization in other ways. And you know how I love a bargain.

A couple weeks ago a windy day laid waste to the storm door on the side of my house. The frame of the door blew completely apart, but the storm windows were still in perfect condition. Since the new door I bought to replace it came with storm windows, I put the old storm windows in my car and drove over to the Restore to donate them and take a look around.

If you have a Habitat Restore near you, get there quickly cuz it is full of good bargains. I looked at the section with doors hoping I might find a replacement for my front door. I rummaged around where there were scads of knobs and hinges and picked out a knob to go on my new sheet music cabinet.

Then I spent considerable time in the paint aisle opening up $1 quarts of pre-mixed paints til I found 4 that I could use, including the black I'll use on the music cabinet project. Plus I bought a few cans of spray paint.

And as I headed for the cash register, I spotted them . . . stacks and stacks of commercial carpet tiles . . . literally hundreds of them. Most were 2 ft. X 2 ft. And as I started picking up tiles here and there, leafing through them to see the selection, I saw the colors in my living room staring up at me. They were saying, "Yes! You need me! You need an area rug to go over those newly re-finished hardwood floors. You need a rug your dog can happily drag her belly around on in order to give herself a good scratchin."


So I picked three different colors/patterns to mix and match and just taped them together with duct tape, the tape of a thousand uses. I put a 1/4 inch carpet pad underneath for a little extra cush. The tiles were $2 each. The carpet pad was $15.

Hello! I am loving my new area rug. And as for the dog, I think the new rug makes up for the fact that I made her wear homemade dog sweaters this winter.

This post also appears at Today's Creative Blog Get Your Craft On, Skip to My Lou Made by You Mondays, Flour Me With Love Mix it Up Mondays, and DIY Home Sweet Home More the Merrier Mondays.

A crafter is born

My niece Sydney, the one I do alot of crafting with, had her mom go out and buy her a bunch of duct tape. She has been busy all week perfecting her duct tape crafting techniques.

Her latest creation is this beautiful wallet, with plenty of compartments for credit cards, bills, etc.

I got word of her latest creation last night while I was out having dinner with friends. I received a text from my younger sister that went something like this . . .

"Your daughter has just made a beautiful duct tape wallet . . . I will post soon."

So when she crafts, she's my daughter. Cool. 
Sydney takes the pics herself also.

Pictures are worth a couple words anyway

I don't think I'm ready to reveal the decoupaged piece yet. It's turning out really nice and I want to kinda savor the moment. Plus, it doesn't have enough layers of finish on it yet.

Decoupaging is like a zen thing. You have to be patient to get through the process. You have to let it dry, go back to it, hit it again with the decoupage medium or other finish. Then wait. Then go back and hit it again. Then wait. Then go back again. Then wait some more. Sometimes I end up working on them for days until I get just the right amount of finish on.

If you recall my previous post, I gave you a hint as to what the jewelry armoire might look like in the end. The hint pic included a print of an Henri Matisse painting done very late in his life. Here's another pic to tease you. The Matisse print is now firmly Mod Podged to the jewelry armoire. I believe it's Matisse's wife in the painting, but I'm not positive about that.

As I said in my opening post, I am not an artist. I didn't go to school for art history and I do not lay any claims to being an artist of any sort. That does not mean, however, that I don't enjoy and appreciate art. And one of the artists that appeals to me is Matisse. The simplicity of his later work, particularly, and the fact that he winds up "cutting and pasting" in his advanced years, one of my favorite activities (thus the decoupage!), just endears him to me even more.

And when I look at Matisse's representations of women, I think he really must have loved women. His paintings and drawings of women seem so loving and generous.

So this print is what inspired the direction of this decoupage project. This print sent me to the basement to search for yellow paint, a very bright golden yellow paint. So this piece is definitely gonna be bright.

And it will have a name. It's going to be the Frenchmen Love Women Jewelry Armoire!

Check back tomorrow for the reveal!

Duck Tape Nirvana continued

As I think I've mentioned, I get distracted easily. I thought the next post would be about the decoupaged jewelry armoire. Fear not. The jewelry armoire is well underway. It has two coats of golden yellow paint on it and is going to get decoupaged today.

But just because I have one project started, doesn't mean I can't start and finish another one before the first one is completed. Remember, I'm the crazy thrifty crafter, not the highly organized, completion-obsessed crafter.

My neice Sydney owns an iPad I. We decided that the leftover Duck Tape Brand duct tape from the purse project, would make an awesome iPad cover. So, we consulted the internet for design ideas. The only one that we used is one we found on youtube by coregeek. We only partially used this idea. We used the 3-panels-so-we-can-make-it-into-a-stand idea from his design. But coregeek uses magnets to keep it together and we prefer velcro. It looks like he might have used corrugated plastic and we prefer recycled cardboard. Plus, I don't like measuring and planning so we winged this one on a number of features.

So once again, Sydney and I bring you our very own Duck Tape design, this one for an iPad I notebook cover and stand.

First, we gave thanks for cereal boxes, which can be used for a million different things.

We cut three peices of the cereal box for the body and then covered them in duct tape. The back piece is the size of the iPad, or maybe just a little bit bigger. The other two are for the front. One is a 2-inch strip of cardboard so the front cover can fold and become a stand when we turn it inside out. Here's where you can get creative with color. We used pink for the front and aqua blue for the back, and on the front just one zebra strip.

Now, don't get carried away because we have to tape together the 2 inch peice of card board that is covered in duck tape to the other peice of cardboard you want to be on the front, giving the front a natural fold that will make the stand when turned inside out.

Next we brought the back and front together with a "spine" made of one strip of duct tape fabric. We used aqua for the spine and just taped the spine fabric to the front and back pieces to form a book. The thickness of the ipad is about a half an inch so that's the distance between the front and the back, taping the spine on both the inside and outside of the "book" to make it stronger.

Now here comes the tricky part. We created a little pocket for the iPad to sit in so it would be secure in the case. We made one strip of duct tape fabric one tape-width wide. We then folded that piece longways in half, tucked the ends under to create a pocket, and taped the pocket to the edge of the back of the cover.

Now in order to close the cover and create a stand we needed one more peice of cardboard. We used the side of the cereal box and covered that with purple tape. You can see in the picture that we cut a pretty long piece. There's a reason for this. Running this connector piece all the way across the back of the book gives stability for it to bend both ways--to close the book and make a stand.

Then, before we taped this piece on, we tested to see where we would need folds going to the front of the cover and back when we create the stand. We taped this piece onto the back up to the point where the fold for the stand would be, reinforcing with a couple layers of tape.

Then, we attached a piece of velcro to the purple strip and the front (where the zebra strip is) And now when you fold the the front back under and attach the closing strip backwards it creates a stand.

My first attempt to link to Skip to My Lou's Made by you Mondays is with this post. Of course, I failed miserably because the thumbnail I tried to upload is not showing up, but there it is. I'll do better next time, I promise.

Here's a hint

Matisse . . . some leftover yellow paint . . .

Look out jewelry armoire, here I come!








Stay tuned . . .

Not all crafters are the same beast

Part 2 of Duck Tape nirvana

So, I've come to the conclusion that there are many different kinds of crafters.

There are those who are unbelievably meticulous about their crafts. They plan out their crafts in meticulous detail and execute them with the same rigorous attention to measurements, adornments, final appearance, and photogenic excellence. These are what I like to call the Meti-Crafters. The internet is full of them. They are the folks making beautiful crafts, posting thorough and meticulous tutorials with plenty of in-process pictures.

Then there are crafters who are highly specialized in one area. They do one kind of craft, they do it very well, and they do it in great volumes, seemingly unable to stop themselves from creating more and more and more. They sometimes create highly complicated forms of what may look like a simple craft because they have created so many they eventually compulsively make the craft more complicated than it starts out to be. These are our OCD-Crafters. They are the ones making youtube videos of their unstoppable crafting and then speeding it up into fast motion for our perusal as the measurements and directions are posted across their lightning fast handiwork.

There are other sub-categories of crafters I am still identifying as I wade through the world of internet crafting. But more on that later.

Please don't get me wrong. I am not casting derisions upon the afore-mentioned character types. Because the fact is the quality of their crafts far outshines my meager offerings executed for myself and a very small circle of friends who tolerate my madness.

I mean only to explain why, even though my niece and I had the best of intentions when we bought all this Duck Tape yesterday, we failed to take enough in-process pictures to fully execute a proper “tutorial” on our design for a Duck Tape purse. As I think I've mentioned before, I tend to get swept up. I am neither a Meti-Crafter or an OCD-Crafter. I'm a Crazy Thrifty Crafter, characterized by my willingness to fly without a net, build without a blueprint, dive in head first, etc.

And so, without further adieu, and because the world would not be any friggin' fun without a variety of crafters on the internet, for your crafting pleasure, my niece Sydney and I bring you our very own Duck Tape Purse Design.

The 80s called; they want 'em back

I saw some cute legwarmers on Pinterest and I just couldn't resist trying to make some for myself.

I can't take credit for this idea. This is from mrsfleury at split the lark and you'll find the music. There's a tutorial included at this site so I won't bother repeating her instructions. Bless her heart, her dainty little legs (or the legs of whoever is modeling them) wear them much better than my big ole honkin' calves.

But if you're anything like me and you find yourself at the thrift store YET AGAIN looking at old sweaters and saying “gee, what can I do with this,” then you are always on the lookout for ideas like this one.

Maybe you can learn from my mistakes

I admit that I sometimes get ahead of myself. I'm the kinda gal who thinks every new lover is THE one, every new job is the best job I ever had, every new teapot is my favorite (yeah, the teapot issue is another post entirely).

Being overzealous has its good points and its bad points. On the bright side, I can be fearless; I'm more than willing to go careening down a snow-covered hill in an inner tube not knowing what obstacles may be awaiting me below, and I'll be nothing but exhilarated by the whole experience.

On the other hand, that overzealous fearlessness can cause me to jump into projects without doing all my homework. The old adage “measure twice, cut one” was totally invented for people like me. And I try really hard to follow that advice. Still, not everything works out as I'd like.

Take for instance this idea that we can spray paint over lace to create decorative items. I saw some of these on Pinterest and elsewhere and they looked really lovely. http://offbeatbride.com/2011/07/spray-paint-through-lace http://pinterest.com/pin/4362930858495401/ http://pinterest.com/pin/120471358751751201/

I have used lace to imprint onto clay in ceramic class. Surely I could find a project for it in my house somewhere and heaven knows I have my share of spray paint in the basement.

I never thought I would own a dog, let alone dress her up

I resisted getting a pet for years because I always claimed that I needed to be able to leave town on a dime and not worry about what to do with an animal left behind. But my better judgment got the best of me and I adopted a schnoodle almost two years ago.

She is about 20 pounds of stubborn terrier. She's half miniature schnauzer and half miniature poodle . . . schnoodle! Her name is Daisy and she and I have been doing battle ever since I adopted her from an older woman who couldn't afford to lose her arm because of how strong this dog is. Daisy is 8 years old but can still jump as high as my shoulder. Schnauzers were bred by the Germans to be ratters around the barn and house. They were not bred to be companions. I wasn't either, so that makes us a good match.