Archive for the ‘Craft’ Category

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Crafternoon: Fauxroccan Candle Votives

It seems to me 95% of the DIY/craft stuff on Pinterest qualifies as noncycling (turning a piece of garbage into a different piece of garbage) but even I had to admit these Moroccan Candle Holders were pretty cute!




I found these little glass containers at the dollar store (four for two bucks!) and assembled the required materials listed in the linked post (Gloss Enamel Paint & Puffy/3D Enamel paint). Basically all you do is dump the paint in there, turn the container so the paint coats the inside and then turn upside-down to let it coat a bit more and start drying.



The result is they look like crap! They looked really cute in the tutorial so I guess I didn’t do a very good job of ‘layering’ color. I also found after a while that a lot of the paint just slid off entirely and left me with some streaks of color and clear glass. Not really what I wanted. And don’t even try painting it with a brush – it’s Brushstroke City.



I’m a honeybadger when it comes to crafting so I was just going to throw everything away when I randomly came across a tutorial for coloring a mason jar with mod podge & food coloring. The gloss enamel was not dry – because it takes FOUR DAYS to dry (per the bottle) – so I just washed out three of the jars. I kept the green one because it actually turned out OK. Unfortunately I can’t find the tutorial I originally used, but this one is pretty much the same (except I didn’t mix the mod podge with water).

It starts out all creamy gross but dries clear, I promise!

It worked! I still used the golden 3D enamel paint to draw on some childish designs. I liked this method better because I had mod podge and food coloring laying around, and the gloss enamel smells gross while mod podge smells like every collage I ever made in high school (ie AWESOME). Although I will admit that the gloss enamel one (far right) does have a nice, opaque color – maybe it’s just a practice thing. Only a poor carpenter blames his tools blah blah blah.

Thursday, November 15th, 2012 | No Comments »

three things thursday: gel medium

I normally get the cheapy-cheap supplies because it usually doesn’t matter but I have actually noticed a difference in quality when it comes to gel medium. I use the Golden regular gel (matte) but I know other people have their preferences – feel free to leave a comment with yours!

  • Image or Text Transfer
    A gel medium transfer is an easy/cool way to transfer an image or text onto another surface. I usually use it to add a little ghost of text to my pages.

    i'm good over here.

    The lazy Mariza way (is there any other way?): Apply a layer of gel medium to the surface onto which you want to transfer your image. Place your image (face-down, obvs) on the gel and let dry. Peel the paper off, et voila! You can see me do this in the video below – I peel the paper off and then spray with water to help me rub off the remaining paper. I’ve also been known to start peeling before the gel is dry which gives a more inconsistent/ripped look.




    This works best with uncoated magazine pages etc or laser jet printouts (ink jets don’t work as well).

    The more thorough way to do transfers, or so I’m told, is to apply several thin layers of gel medium to your image (letting dry completely between each layer) and then submersing the paper in water and completely peeling everything away. This site has a really good breakdown of this.

  • Texture

    You can build up the medium to add another layer of texture to your pieces (this works best with heavier matte gels). For example, you can apply the gel with a palette brush or credit card to get a scrape-y texture. One of my favorites is to rake my fingers through the gel and leave the ridges. The image below is kind of a combo of transfer & texture – I was doing a haphazard gel medium transfer but lost a lot of the text and just left the gel medium as-was rather than smooth it out, resulting in the textured look.

    I'm always amazed at how fast it is

  • Layering

    Gel medium can seal layers and prevent blurring or blending; it can also cause a sort of floating effect (that is very difficult to see in videos or scans, sadly). This one is pretty straight-forward: put down a layer, cover with a thin (or textured, if you want!) layer of medium, let dry, repeat. I use this method somewhat regularly but you can’t always tell since I tend to edit out the gel medium parts because watching gel medium dry is about as interesting as watching paint dry. :)


    some people are too particular

    I also use this technique in a more recent video.

Thursday, June 9th, 2011 | No Comments »

altered art project: helping hands box

I used to attend this meditation group which mostly involved meditating (weird, right?) but sometimes we’d do little projects. One meeting we made “Higher Hands” boxes, but I keep calling them “Helping Hands” boxes which I’m sure has absolutely nothing to do with Labyrinth.


The idea is that if something worries you, you write it on a slip of paper, put it into the box and forget about it because now it’s in higher (or helping) hands. I had a helping hands box around for a while and I actually found it kind of helpful in a silly little way. Anyway, the box has gone missing (probably wandered off when I moved) and a new random little box has come into my possession, so the obvious thing to do is make a new helping hands box.


It originally housed a paperweight. A couple in-progress shots:


I thought about making a video but I kind of worked on it haphazardly so … I didn’t. Here it is finished:

I put Buddha on the front because I find the image soothing and generally I’m going to the helping hands box in the first place because I’m stressed. I kept the inside simple:



In case you’re wondering, the gold is this sticky-backed glittery foam-type stuff I found in the kid’s section of the craft store (I had originally purchased a pack for an unrelated project). It’s frickin’ awesome. Although, due to its thickness, it’s hard to not get a thick seam-type thing going on. I suppose theoretically you could cut some kind of weird triangle-type piece to fill that gap, but who has time for that?? Not this girl. I don’t even have time to cut straight lines as you can see in the photo. ;)

I suppose the ideal format for such a thing would be a box with a slot in it so you can just slip your worries in there but I kind of like slamming the box shut on them (my previous box was a hinged one as well).

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010 | 3 Comments »

fail-ish

I had to abandon the page I was working on for a journal video because it just wasn’t going anywhere. I think it’s OK to abandon pieces that aren’t working – I see a lot of blah blah about how there’s no such thing as a mistake, but there is such thing as a piece that isn’t coming out the way you want. I guess the important thing is to not hate yourself about it. Fortunately I don’t have that problem: I just hate the piece since obviously it’s its own fault for not being awesome. :)

Is it better to power through a piece that’s not working? At what point should you give it up?

OH speaking of powering through things that are dumb, or in this case kind of creepy, check it out:


Today was Sock Monkey Saturday at the American Visionary Art Museum. The place was packed – a couple hundred people turned out to make monkeys. Some people had obviously made some before. I obviously had not. I haven’t even named him yet, I’m afraid that will give him power. Of course, if I know his name, then I will have power over HIM. In conclusion, I am thinking too much about this monkey. He’s in my mind!!!!

Saturday, December 11th, 2010 | 2 Comments »

plastic bag journal

I had this idea on the fly today, so the video is a little (or a lot) haphazard. Here’s a really good tutorial on recycling plastic bags. I’m also mostly kidding about the recycled stuff looking like junk – I think this could be really cute if I had actually spent time on it. :)

Anyway, to answer your question, the table is kind of short but mostly I’m really tall.

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 | 2 Comments »

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