3D Image In A Handmade Frame

Phew! It appears that I ended up taking most of the summer off, which was quite unintended. I am sad that I lost a couple of followers and want to thank all those who stuck with me.

I purchased the cutest paper tole images over the summer. I made one of them for this project.

Arent' they so pretty. I love the soft colors and content of the image. The paper tole sheet was die cut making it so easy to make. There are 4 layers total, all of which were large enough to make adding the dimensional foam easy to use.

The sheet is from the Paintbox Poppets Series from a set called Outdoor Children, which you can find HERE.

I needed to make my own frame due to the measurements of the image. I made the frame using some corrugated cardboard from a box. To cover it, I cut the appropriate sizes from a thick chipboard sheet. Can you believe I can't remember what I adhered it with! Yikes! (an embarrassed winking smiley would go here) I do know that it worked really well.

I had some really pretty butterfly embossed shimmer card stock. It is all white, though, since that is the only color I could find it in. No problem really. White can always become any color you want, yayyy. As you can see here, the shimmer just shines right through the ink.

I covered the top sheet with two Stampin' Up colors that matched the blues and greens in the image. For some reason, the photos show it as not matching so well, but in real life the paper really brings out the colors from the image.

I kept the paper on the edge of the frame white. You can see here how dimensional it is even from a top and side angle. The lace, pearls, flowers and butterfly look so lovely no matter which angle you are looking from.
I matted the image with some light purple shimmer paper, which really made the pale purples in the image pop out. I like matching the papers to the soft colors of an image so that they are seen more and not lost in the background.

I covered the back with more of the thick chipboard so that it would look neat. I then added a picture hanger so that it could be hung. To make sure that the nails did not slip out, I made the holes first, squished some liquid cement into and a little bit around them. Then I inserted the nails which will not come out, lol and the overflow holds the picture hanger on securely.

Though you can't see it in the photos, I put some of the inked butterfly paper around the inside edges of the opening. To protect the image, I used the Stampin' Up thick window sheets. These are fantastic! They are thick enough to not flop around when using them, score and bend really well and adhere perfectly with double sided tape. They are still available in the current catalog on page 216, but do not mention how thick they are, only that they are window sheets.

You needn't worry about getting finger prints or glue on the outside (or even inside before adhering) because Goo Gone removes it all perfectly and easily without leaving any scratches or streaks! Isn't that fantastic! I love that, especially since I get more glue on the wrong parts of a project than I get where it is supposed to be.

It took me a while to figure out how to attach the pearl stand onto the frame. That is how the glue got on the window sheet, tee he he. Finally, I tried some of the 1/8" Score Tape. It worked wonderfully with no waiting for the glue to dry. Now THAT is incredibly important, WINK. I do wish it came in 1/16" wide though, as the 1/8" is slightly to wide. It really is not a big deal on this project, but may be on another project in the future. Do you think I should write them about making some, lol. would you ever use it that thin?

 

See those little knots. Those simple little knots seemed like the perfect way to snazzy up the corners a bit, since I did not want to add so many embellishment as to distract from the image. 

 

Simple! Yeah, right! Sheesh..Those things are a real pain, lol. Trying to tie them in just the right place was no easy task for me. Thinking back, I suppose that I could have adhered the lace to the edge, then tie the knot where I wanted it. That may have worked, though I am not sure I would not just pull the ribbon off the edge as I tied them. Hmmm...I guess it would be worth a try next time. Have you found a way to do this easily? If so, I would love to know how!

 

I hope you like this project.

 

What a looonnnggg post, ha ha ha. I guess I really missed talking to you all.

 

HUGS,

Easy Candle Holders

Walking through Micheal's (or it could have been ACMoore) I found these awesome rub-ons in a section where they had all kinds of wall decals and such. They were so pretty I purchased several of them. Not only are the images lovely, but they are glittered! Who doesn't like flowers, butterflies, birds and dragonflies!

They have been sitting in my sticker drawer since. When I cleaned out my craft room, I pulled them out, placed them on my desk and vowed to use them. After racking my mind for a few weeks, I decided to use them on some candle holders I got for $1 at the Yankee Candle Shop.

Here is a close up of one of the rub-ons on a candle holder. Can you see all the pretty glitter! Love, love, love it.

 I found that since these rub-ons are quite thick, I needed to pre-heat the glass before rubbing them. WOW, was my hand sore from rubbing before I figured this out. The only hard part after that was touching the glass while it was still hot. The rub-ons practically adhered themselves, so I did not have to hold the candle holder long!

There are a couple of "cracks" in the image since it had to be wrapped not only around, but curved around the upper lip. They are so small that you can't really see them though.

This is what they look like next to one another. I am not sure why the tall one looks crooked. Must have been the angle of the camera. As you can see in the above pictures, it really is straight. I made each one slightly different because I really like them that way...AND...I did not have enough identical rub-ons to make them all the same even if I wanted to anyway.

You can't see the images on them to well in this photo, but in real life they really came out so pretty. The best thing about them is that the flowers match the ones I have hanging on my walls.

I have not lit them yet, but I have tried this before and did light them to make sure the rub-on's would not melt or warp. The did not, yayyy! I am guessing it is because they are quite thick. I do suppose they would have softened and been quite easy to rub off, but who would want to try that, lol

Well, I am off to try my hand at quilling again, sigh. Since I paid for the class I at least want to finish all the "homework" and get some advice on how to make it "easier". I did find that my problem with getting the twirled paper to behave might have been the weather. Sonya, the "teacher", told me she has the hardest time getting hers to behave when they have a drought. I am so hoping that was the problem and not that I have just stubborn paper.

Hugs,

Ideas and Quilling

Well, here I am with my very first paper tole "homework" finished. Only a week late. As I am so far behind in my crafting, I am really proud that I finished it this soon!

I have to admit that it was much harder than I thought it would be. As you can see I do need a lot of practice. Getting those twirled strips of paper to behave is like getting my 2 year old grandson out of a tantrum. I did the leaves last and for the most part, they all came out the same. Only 1 gave me a hard time which is the top left one.

For the "homework" the "teacher" gave directions for making a card with these flowers. I did not like that idea since the flowers are quite big. So I decided to make what I have wanted to do for quite some time. An idea book.

Another thing I changes was the center of the flowers. They were supposed to have a tightly wound strip for the center. I did not like the way it looked as it stood out to much for my taste. To make it more to my liking, I used some tear drop pearls and a tiny orange pearl for the center.

The hard bound notebook was in the $1 bin at Micheal's months ago. I certainly know why it was only $1, it was REALLY ugly. Figuring I could cover it easy enough, I purchased one certain I would do so really soon. Ha ha ha, it was not meant to be. The notebook was meant to be used for this very project!

Here is the back side in which you can see the paper I used quite well. I had purges 2 piles of paper about 6" tall each when I redid my craft room. These papers were among them. I have no idea why I remembered these 2 papers out of the hundreds of papers, but down stairs I went to find them.

The burnishing of the back did not come out very well because I tried some plain card stock before this paper popped miraculously into my head. It had begun to dry by the time I decided to pull it off so some of it stuck to the back. This made burnishing the paper over it a bit less than smooth. BUT since it is for me, I really don't mind at all.

I also covered the inside since the original color was kind of a cream/orange mix, yuck. The front page was the same color so I simply used my craft knife to cut it out. I also gave it my very personal touch by making it upside down. You can see the bottom line should be the top line. That is sooooo me!

 I have had these self adhesive letters for years. I used them once and that was it. The problem with buying stuff like this is that you use some letters all the time and other practically never. Though they came with 2 of each vowel, I still just couldn't find enough left over letters to make a proper word. Low and behold, there was actually one of each of these letters.

Since they were cream or vanilla (which ever you like to call it) I patted my Certain Celery SU ink pad over them and it ended up matching perfectly.

I separated the pages into 5 sections and made small tabs for each one. One section each for ideas I think of (that is a small section, tee he he), ideas I glean from blogs, tips I glean from blogs, my ideas for egg art and the last section is for ideas my mother has for egg art which she asks me to remind her of (ya, right!)

HUGS,

Paper Tole Goose Egg

Well, here is another Goose Egg that I made. I made one like this a while ago which you can see here. There are 6 eggs to this set , 2 of which I have purchased so far. I hope they don't stop selling them before I get the other 4.

As you can see, my impatience got the better of me again and the Swarvoski crystal slid down the bow, lol. This is the first time I was able to make a multi bow with my bow maker. It never occurred to me to wrap the ribbon around the dowels in an eight pattern until my mother mentioned it. It really works great that way.

The image is made from 2 identical prints. The first is added to the egg flat. The next one is cut out to add the dimension. Each grass blade and flower petal have to be cut separate, giving lots of tiny pieces to work with.

This kit came with the image already to cut by pre-covering it with mod podge. I was a bit frustrated with this one because they added too many layers of it, which made it quite difficult to cut. Toling the pieces was another chore all together. I would tole them and they would just go straight again.

The first egg I made like this took only 1 afternoon from start to finish. This one took 2 afternoons just to get the image cut and toled. For the next kit, I am going to ask for the print not to be prepped so I do not run into this problem again.

Each side was pre-cut for the pattern. I will be purchasing the tools to learn to cut this spring. Until then, I depend on pre-cut eggs in the kits.

Each side is glittered and outlined with a thin gold cord. Before attaching the cord, I run it through some mod podge that I had on my fingers. This makes the edges not fray and much easier to make it "curve" around the pattern.

I am having a blog created, called Egg Transformer, of course. It should be ready next week. I am excited about it because the name and blurp under the header will make it come up when people do searches for egg art. I have tried looking for other blogs myself and could not find one! The only thing that came up were online stores which sell supplies.  I would love to see other blogs though.

I hope you will follow me there too.

HUGS

Wedding Doves Rhea Egg Art

I really need to get in touch with the person who designed my blog so that I can start a new "Egg Transformer" one. Until then, I hope you all don't mind me sharing my egg art with you.

Last Friday when I went to my mothers, we each made one of these eggs. The eggs came in a kit with everything you need to make it. The rhea egg came precut, which I think is just the best! I have yet to learn how to cut an egg like this one!

Another wonderful thing about buying kits is that you don't have to do the searching for matching hardware. And though they come with directions, you can basically make it anyway you want. For this one, I used everything in the kit but the outcome is vastly different from the photo on the directions.

The kit came with all the Swavoski crystals one could possibly use on this. Sadly, when I was finished the first time, I sprayed it with a sealer and the crystals were covered with a white film. All the beautiful shine was gone. I pried them all off, but the egg was a mess! I was so glad when my mother had an extra precut egg to match the kit.

Having to remove everything from the first egg caused some of the white paint to come off the hardware. The only solution for that was to spray paint them all again.

There was absolutely no way to remove the doves from the first egg. I am again sooooo glad my mother overbuys, lol. She had three other doves for me to choose from. What I like about these is that they are porcelain. When searching for figurines to add to eggs, I was suprised to find a vast majority of them are plastic, and LOOK plastic. Such a shame to spend all that time on a REAL egg and then put a plastic figurine in it!

Since all the Swarvoski crystals that came with the kit were gone, I chose to use pearls instead of breaking into the Swarvoki stash. I like the pearls better actually.

I decided to have the flouishes hang over the edge of the opening to add a little eye appeal to the plain edge of the heart.

You can see the pretty sparkle I added to the butterflies using the same glitter glue as the inside of the egg.  Even with eggs, I just have to add lots of bling, bling, lol

I chose to use 2 sizes of pearls on the lattice. Larger ones (3mm) on the outside to kind of frame it and smaller ones (2mm) inside.  I also used my copic markers to color the top pearl to match the others.

One thing I added to this egg is the procelain flowers. These were not in the kit, but added such a pretty touch and brought out the pink of the pearls. I also adhered the 2 extra flourishes to the base. People who put the kits together are often very generous with the hardware and embellishments which aids in creating a one of a kind egg from them.

Well....today I had 2 decisions to make. One was pretty easy. Should I clean or bloghop, lol? Though my house could use some, I don't miss cleaning (WINK)  I do miss my blogging friends, though.

The other desicion I need to still make is whether I should do some iris folding or paper tole today. I am thinking that which ever I choose I may add some paper stitching to it. I'll see what inspires me as I visit my blogging friends.

HUGS, Sandy O

Unique Use For Stickpins

WOW! I don't think I will ever sell off my stuff again, unless it is during a yard sale. Doing so has totally monopolized my free time :o( all week. I think I might have made a whopping $1-2 per hour, lol I am not complaining, really, I am trilled to have sold the items and gotten them out of the house.

I finally got a chance to try out my idea for using stick pins. Of course, in my mind it looked a bit better, but all in all, not to bad for using stick pins.

It's not really an original idea since I got the idea from making the snowflake the in my previous post.

What do you think? No flower I have ever seen is surrounded by leaves like this, lol. The leaves were originally white which I colored with Copics.

I was thrilled when the shimmer of the white leaf showed through the coloring, it made them look so pretty. I just NEEDED to add the tiny little butterflies, lol, What would spring be like with out them!

I tried a few beads and butterflies in different colors. Then I tried to color the flower to match. Well, the green looked best, so I used my Staz-cleaner to clean the Copic from the flower. It actually worked great, just missed one little spot that I noticed when taking the photos. I wonder if I will ever make something without a tiny mistake, lol

I left the back without a flower, unlike the snowflake. Instead of using paper, I used some chipboard circles I have had forever, coloring them green too. The pins and beads were quite heavy so to glue them on I used 2 part 5 minute epoxy. It worked great, but, I'll tell you, the 5 minute wait was grueling! I used the same thing to add the flower. I would be completely surprised if this fell apart. The epoxy is totally impossible to budge once it is dry.

Here it is hanging on my "totally needs cleaning in the spring" craft room window. It is hard to tell with all the snow behind it, but I think you can see how pretty the flower is with the light coming through it. I am thinking in the spring and summer it will cast a rainbow when the sun shines through it.

Funny, on Facebbook, someone had a picture of snow in their yard, just about as deep as this. She said they were snowed in. bwaaa ha ha. Not sure where she lives, but here in NH we call this a dusting!

I hope you all have a super duper Sunday!

HUGS, Sandy O

Snowflake Tag/Ornament

Yeay...I finally got something done in my newly organized craft room, lol.

Such a pretty snowflake ornament. It was really quite easy too...well, to put together. The blue gems were a bit difficult to cut until I figured out the easy way. Both sides are exactly the same. The little burrs on the edges of the legs can't really be seen in real life. Funny how when I get the new camera to do what I want, it picks up details that the eye really does not see.

Hmmmm...I just noticed that the cord to hang it fell off! Yikes! LOL

This is what I cut them from. Isn't it so pretty. I bought it from Cynthialoowho (I am figuring her real name is Cynthia) at her Etsy store HERE. It is a 1 yard by 4 3/4 inch roll for only...ready! A wopping $6.99! She has lots of colors too. I can see using it for card borders and on eggs, so bought 4 colors.

Isn't the center flower stunning! She also sells these at her store HERE. She has these in a few different colors, too.

I wanted to get a photo showing the clear crystal in the center of the flower. You can kind of see it here. You can see it a lot better if you click on it to get a look at a larger photo.

I did not come up with this idea on my own. I saw a link on a blog to a tutorial on YouTube for it. I can't for the life of me find it now. I wrote her to get the link, but never heard back. So if you would you would like to know, just shoot me an email.

Hugs to you all...
Sandy O

Ice Fairy Gifts

I finally finished some of the gifts for my husbands family. They are for the nieces and nephews that have no kids. The ones that do have little ones, we just buy for them. What a huge family he has. Thank God I have a very small family or we would not be able to eat for a month, lol

They are made from real medium size goose eggs and are called Ice Fairy. I made 4 in blue, 1 in purple and 1 in yellow/gold.

I was only able to get the purple photographed and one picture of the yellow/gold before my camera battery died.  I do not have time to wait for it to charge to make this post, so perhaps I will posts the blue later (which happens to be my favorite)

Why? Well, I have the next 2 weeks off of babysitting my grandson so am planning to go through my house top to bottom. It has not been done since my illness last year! Yikes, I think it will be quite the chore, but a wonderful way to start the new year. I know my husband will be thrilled, lol.

In this photo you can see the icy snow around the opening pretty well. You will not believe what is used for snow on eggs. It is bath & tub silicone! I would never have thought for a second that this could be used on egg art! It works so well and dries completely in 3 hours if the correct one is purchased. Of course, a ton of white glitter is added to the outside and inside of the snow.

This is the very first egg I cut the opening out myself. Such a simple opening, I thought it would be so easy. But it is much harder than I ever thought it would be. The shell is thin then thick which makes the dremel tool kind of bounce around. So glad that the edges are covered, lol
This is a fairly good picture of the inside details. Isn't the fairy so cute. She is made out of porcelain and hand made and painted. A dear friend sent these to me for her cost which was $10.00! And then she added all the do dads needed to complete the egg. My mother has quite a supply of the eggs, so the final cost for this was the fairy, a tube of silicone and some glitter.

The back trees are in three layers, one layer in front of the other, getting smaller at the layers get closer to the front. It is hard to see but it adds a really nice dimension to the scene.

This kind of shows the pretty chain bottom decoration as well as the Swarvoski crystal beads for the top hanger. The ribbon is not part of the egg, I just used it to hang it on the stand.

Oooooo...Look at that glitter. I used micro fine glitter from the Art Institute Glitter called Lavender. What is so good about the micro fine glitter is that it covers completely with one coat. One 1/4 oz container completely covered 4 of these eggs. Just imagine how long a 1/4 oz would last using it for paper crafting.

Here is the one picture of the yellow/gold egg. You can see how they are the same but different. It is hard to see the glitter that covers the egg in this photo, but am pretty sure you can see it better if you click on it to see it a bit enlarged.

Thank you so much for stopping by!!! HUGS, Sandy O

Cards and Gifts

I have been so busy the past couple of days trying to finish my Christmas cards. Boy am I glad I decided to make them all the same this year. I really should follow others example of starting to make them in January.

I only made 34 of these, you can see the details here. I did make a couple of individual special cards, but that is it, you can see them here, here and here. I hope this is enough, lol. I guess I should have counted how many I needed before I made them. Certainly hoping my guess is right, lol. All I have to do now is sign them, address them and hopefully get them in the mail BEFORE Christmas!

I also made some bookmarks for my sister-in-laws. My husband has 7 older sisters, the poor guy, lol. They like to read, so I thought these would be nice to give. They are made with real quail eggs, so all are different sizes and shapes.

Here is one of them which I think you can see a bit better than the pic with all of them laying down.

The eggs are covered with 5 minute epoxy which has pearl-ex mixed in. I must say that it is really hard to get the epoxy to coat the egg evenly before the epoxy starts to dry, lol. Here you can see the glitter like sparkle the pearl-ex added.

The rim is a Swarvoski chain wrapped around the top thingy (for lack of being able to remember the name of them right now) that the jump rings are put on to make the egg hang.

These balls (can't think of the name of these right now either, lol) are also Swarvoski crystals. They are so pretty as they shine in different colors depending on how the light hits them.

I really hope they like these. I am not sure how to wrap them yet. I am hoping to have time to get to the craft store to see if they have some long skinny gift boxes.

Thank you for spending some time with me today...HUGS...Sandy O