Egg on Your Face

Well maybe not egg on your face - around your face. And maybe not egg but egg shells. What I do to justify a clever title. Well maybe not that clever......

A craft revisited. I first used this idea here. Colored egg shells are used this time to enhance a frame.

Materials:

eggs

food coloring

vinegar

picture frame

black paint

white glue

clear nail polish

Tools:

paint brush

wooden skewers

Dye your eggs with a mixture of food coloring and vinegar. Peel the eggs and remove the membrane. Separate the colors. An empty egg carton is good for this.

Paint a frame with a wide flat surface, black. Allow to dry.

Paint an area with glue, about 1" square on the frame. Place a piece of shell on the glue and press down with a wooden skewer. The shell will crack. Reposition pieces of the shell with the skewer if you need to. Repeat until the frame is covered.

Fill in any large gaps with scraps of shell.

Seal the frame with clear nail polish. Place a picture of your favorite screaming baby in the frame and display for all to see especially those with perfect children or none at all.

A Rainbow for a Pot of Gold

In order to find a pot of gold, you need a rainbow. I'll show you how to make one in Photoshop.

Go to FILE>NEW>BLANK DOCUMENT. Make an 8x10" document. In the layers pallet, choose a new layer which will be transparent. Discard the background layer.

Open the gradient tool and choose the "transparent rainbow"(second from the last in the flyout option). Choose the first configuration which is to the left of "edit" in the options bar.

Drag a small vertical line.

Go to FILTERS>DISTORT>POLAR COORDINATES>RECTANGULAR TO POLAR.

Hit "Okay" and an oval will appear.

Use the move tool to enlarge the oval and make into a circle.

Use the marquee tool to select 1/4 of the circle. Go to EDIT>COPY>PASTE. Discard the whole circle layer.
Go to FILTERS>BLUR>GAUSSIAN BLUR to blur the rainbow.

Use the move tool to drag the rainbow to another photo. Resize the rainbow and move it to the correct spot in the picture. Use the opacity slider in the layers pallet to make it more natural looking.

The pot of gold is up to you.

oops... I Googled "rainbow images" and found that rainbows are yellow on the outside and purple on the inside. I did just the opposite. The way to correct this is to drag your small vertical line "up" rather than down. (as shown in the 3rd step of this tutorial) Do as I say, not as I do. (OMG, I'm turning into my mother)

Typing Lesson

People ask me where I get my ideas. Honestly, I don't know. Well, that's not completely true as I keep my eyes open all of the time. I browse the web, look at catalogs, gift shops and the ever dwindling supply of magazines. I tweak each idea and try to make it my own.

Here is something fun.

Pottery Barn has this piece of art, now on sale for $300. Susie Harris has knocked it off. Go here to see how she did it.

I opened my Ballard Designs catalog and saw this - individual typewriter keys used to create words. Too cool! An idea is born.

Materials

wooden disks

black paint

white acrylic paint

pencil

ball point pen

white paint pen - fine tip

permanent black marker

silver leaf permanent marker

brown shoe polish

Tools

bottle cap

Download this Times alphabet here and print. You may wish to enlarge it to fit your circles.

I got my wooden circles here. They are leftovers from a wind chime factory. Go if you are in the New York area as they don't mail but call first to see if the disks are in stock. (they have tons of other stuff too) Wooden disks are available at any craft store or cut them out of chipboard with one of those circle cutters.

Paint the disks black. When dry, place the tip of the silver marker on the front edge of the disk so that part of the tip is on the front and the rest is on the edge. Draw around the rim. You should have a thin silver line showing on the front of the disk. Fill in the rest of the outside edge with silver.

Dip your bottle cap (or any other circular object a bit smaller than the disk), in white acrylic paint. Press it on the front. The idea is not to have a perfect impression, rather a spotty one. Look at the Pottery Barn plaque for inspiration. I can usually get two impressions from one dipping.

Cut out the individual letters leaving 1/8" around the print; this helps to center them on the disk. Scribble pencil on the back then turn over and place in the center of the disk. Trace over the letter with a ball point pen. The pencil should have transferred onto the disk.

Carefully color in the tracing with your white paint marker. Elmer's and Krylon make these and they are usually found in paint departments. If you make a mistake, allow it to dry, then repair with a black permanent marker.

Apply brown shoe polish when all has dried. Let sit for a few minutes then buff off.

Hang as is or use to create pithy sayings. You might even tie them onto packages. You can have the last word on this (and spell it too).

Geisha Dolls

March 3 is Girl's Day in Japan. It is celebrated with a display of dolls. In the spirit of cross culture, I have made a tutorial of traditional Japanese paper dolls using western papers.

I apologize for the huge blank spaces. When I try to correct them, they just get bigger so I'm leaving well enough alone.

I picked up a copy of McCall's Needlework and Crafts from 1984. It had an 8 page article on making Japanese paper geisha dolls. I was intimidated but intrigued. Later, I picked up a number of Japanese craft books on the same subject. I couldn't read a word, but vowed to try this craft one day.

Finally I forced myself to sit down and attempt to make a geisha doll. Here is the result. It isn't a hard project; basically just folding paper, but I've included detailed instructions which, unfortunately make it seem more complicated than it is.

Materials:

small ball of cotton

white tissue paper

Kraft paper (or brown paper bag)

5 different patterns of paper

glue

Tools:

scissors

pencil

download the patterns for the face, neck, collar and obi here

download the pattern for the hair here

download the pattern for the inner kimono here

download the pattern for the out kimono here

Cut the 2 pieces of tissue according to the pattern for the face and neck..

Fold one piece into thirds, lengthwise and then in half. This results in a long narrow piece without the edges showing. Pinch off a piece of the cotton ball about the size of a pea and place it in the middle of the other long piece of tissue. Roll up and twist the ends.

Cut out the Kraft paper patterns for the hair.

Roll the two larger pieces around the pencil leaving the tails indicated by the pattern. Scrunch the rolls on the pencil before removing them. Take 3 of the small pieces and form loops. Wrap with 4th small piece and secure with a drop of glue.

Circle the scrunched ends of the large piece of Kraft paper together to form a donut. Glue ends together. Thread one of the tissue paper head tails through the center of the donut covering the joint with the tissue paper covered cotton ball . Tuck the unscrunched part of the bangs between the scrunched donut and the tissue paper. Bangs should curl down over the forehead. Glue bangs onto forehead to secure.
Add the top knot by glueing the ends into the roll at the back of the bangs.
Fold down the tail piece covered with the unscrunched part of the hair. Wrap both tissue paper tails and unscrunched hair pieces with the folded tissue paper. Secure with a drop of glue at the beginning and end of the wrap.
You now have a head, hair and neck.
Cut the collar pattern out of a piece of patterned paper. Fold it in half and place it around the neck. Glue to secure.

Cut out inner kimono from patterned paper. Fold top down twice. Follow pictures below to fold inner kimono over doll.

Cut outer kimono out of patterned paper and fold down edges as indicated.
Cut out kimono liner and glue in place.
Fold as shown in the following pictures.

Cut out the obi, wrap around kimono and secure. Fold up the bottom edges of the kimono to reveal inner and lining of kimonos.
Essentially your doll is finished. You can frame in a shadow box or drill a hole in a piece of wood and glue a chopstick in the hole. Thread the doll onto the chopstick (see picture at beginning of this tutorial). You can also embellish your doll by tucking a fan in her obi and flowers in her hair. I glued beads onto toothpicks and tucked them into the hair as well. Here are some other dolls I made with this technique.

This wedding party was made with wallpaper. The hair is made from crepe paper.

Stop Me Before I Buy Any More Punches

I've been a very bad girl. I can't help myself. I love paper punches and have bought way too many of them. Is there a 12 step program for punch buyers? Okay now missy, you better do something with them.

How about a wreath made from an old book?

Materials

old book

waxed paper

white floral wires

Mod Podge (matte)

white glue

Tools

various punches

paint brush

wooden skewer

These are some of my culprits (they made me buy them). Use whatever punches you may have or if you don't suffer from the same affliction, cut shapes out with scissors (hey, what a novel idea!).

Cut the margins off of about 8 book pages.

Since most old books have paper made from wood pulp, you need to stop the disintegration process so coat both sides with matte Mod Podge. I do this over a sheet of waxed paper.

Punch out your various shapes.

Make a leaf by punching out a circle shape (in this case, a scalloped one). Place the circle back into the punch - half way. Punch again and you'll have a perfect leaf shape. Fold in half.

Roll, fold or curl the punched shapes for dimension and layer them on top of each other. Encircle a few stems of white floral wire. Place the circle on waxed paper and glue the various shapes to your circle.

I made little spit balls which I glued to the center of the flower shapes and curled thin strips around wooden skewers to make tendrils.

I love the delicate look and hang it "as is" on my wall. It would look lovely in a shadow box frame.

Reading material on your wall - how unique!

Love Match

Here is a unique yet practical Valentine's Day gift. Inexpensive, and with a strong graphic, this warms my crafter heart. I hope it lights your fire. (stop me!)

Materials

box of kitchen matches

white cardstock

double stick tape or glue stick

Tools

stapler

Download this PDF file here. Change your "page setup" to borderless letter size otherwise you will lose parts of the labels. Print on white cardstock. You can make 4 boxes.

If you want to wish the happy couple a greeting, cut out a "you are" label. If you want to give this to your love, cut out "we are".

Staple this label to the inside of one end of the inside box. Fold the label to use as a pull tab.

Adhere the "Happy Valentine's Day label to the light cardboard match belt (I have no idea what it's called) inside the box.
Stick the label "A Perfect Match" or "A Match Made in Heaven" to the front of the matchbox.

Did you notice that the flame on the match is an upside down heart? So clever. (I'm double jointed so that I can pat myself on the back)