My second sketch book is full. Here are some samples from the book.
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Bellingrath Home and Gardens
Located south of Mobile, Alabama is a very nice place to stroll through a beautiful garden.
Tiny Flower
Blooming Into Spring
It’s spring! To celebrate here is little touch of spring.
Drawn on a Studio Series Artist Tile using Micron pens. Colored with cheap gel pen because I had places to be and things to do. See it’s a pretty day. The gel pen are probably going in the garbage because I can not trust them to do their job.
I see I missed some swirlies. I will add them tomorrow.
Dark Chocolate Chocolate Cake Like
Here is a Dark Chocolate Chocolate Cake like dessert I made for the low carb eatting birthday person.
It is made of dark chocolate and Splenda.
Melt chocolate, add Splenda to taste, pour in mold.
Let chocolate harden. Remove from mold. Decorated.
Remove sugary and eat sugary decoration be for giving the low carb birthday celebrant their piece.
Their piece.
Boxes
Here are the boxes I did as Christmas presents for my nieces and nephew. I decided I could not leave my “superhero fan” nephew out, especially since his sister were getting boxes.
For Kegan’s box: I used an acrylic type pour for the letters and loved to design, but it got lost on the blue stained wooden background. Since he loves superheroes, I used metallic paint to do a geometric design. Inside the box, I made crosses from polymer clay and silver puff paint as the grout.
The pastel box: The top of the box was painted in glow in the dark paint. (Yes, I used a lot of glow in the dark and neon glow paint this Christmas season.) The outside of the box was done in chalk paint base and a sponge technique to get the different colors.
I put polymer clay crosses inside the box to resemble the top of the box. Both boxes was sealed with high gloss polyurethane.
Tissue Box
I saw a some videos on fluid painting and pour painting. Just watching the videos is mesmerizing, and the results are beautiful. I decided to try it out. But, I did not have any fluid to add to paint to get it to flow. All I had was the acrylic paint that comes in the 2oz bottles. I use a trash bag and painter tapes to tape off each side that I would not be painting. I used metallic acrylic paint. Letting each side cure overnight. It took days to finished. The outcome was impressive.
Now, I trying to decide if I should do a pour on the inside of the tissue box, or just leave it like it is.
2017 Christmas Card
It is the Christmas Season! All the presents are wrapped and all the cards have mailed; it is time that I share with you my Christmas Card of 2017.
I usually start thinking about my Christmas Cards around July. If I wait until Thanksgiving, I sure that disasters will strike and I would be force into buying Christmas cards from the store. This year the ideal was a Snow Globe Christmas card. I researched the ideal and knew it was possible.
But, I didn’t really want to put a piece of plastic wrap or it’s equivalent on the card. And, than I found Jullibean Soup’s Large Circles by Hampton Art. It was a quick Click and Order from Amazon. Once the circles came in, I started to work on the card.
I thought about designing a village scene to put inside the snow globe, but I wanted a little deep. Then it occurred to me; I have polymer clay, I have cutters for snowman and trees. The card was coming together.
The snowman, trees, and snow were made with Sculpey Polymer Clay using a setting of 3 in the pasta machine and cut with “cookie” cutters, bake and covered with sparkle varnish. (Which was the first mistake.) However, I need to draw the face and buttons, and color the hats on the snowman. I got out may Sharpie pens and colored the hats. They looked awful. I should not have varnished the snowmen first. What was I going to do, paint all the snowmen? Nooooo! I had just recent purchase a set of Chameleon Pens, which worked with beautiful results. It even covered where I used a Sharpie.
Since the Snowman were coming together, I could now design the inside of the card. This was done using Corel Draw. I probably spend too much time making snowflakes, but I was having so much fun. I hope the shading on the snowman gives it some dimension.
At Office Depot, I found dual color cardstock. It was light blue on one side and white on the other side. This was perfect for my card. It would give me the blue sky I wanted behind the snowman scene on the front and white on the inside. I found the snowflake paper at Hobby Lobby. I found some nice light blue glitter paper at JoAnn’s and had the silver paper left over from last year.
The Jullibean Soup circle comes with adhesive around the circle, so it was not necessary to stick it through the first layer of paper and glue everything down. I used Silhouette Studio to design the silver snow globe and the cut for the top paper layer. Everything was cut using my Silhouette Curio. I was really dreading gluing it all together.
More research. I found this wonderful blog that talked about ways to glue paper together. Did you know you can put cheap plastic wrap between two piece of paper and use a hot iron to fix them together. I didn’t use plastic wrap. The blog also talk about Xyron Creative Station for sticking paper together. This is the best machine I have bought all year. It did exactly what I expected. It basically creates stickers when you roll your paper through the machine. Afterwards, you just peel it off and stick it where you want it. It even handled the delicate “Merry Christmas”.
To assemble the card:
First step: print the inside of the card on cardstock on the correct side of the paper and cut everything. Run the snowflake paper, the silver snow globe, and the Merry Christmas through the Xyron Creative Station.
Second step: stick the snowflake paper to the correct side of the card.
Third step: Use glue dots to fix the snowman, trees, and snow to the card. Top with snow. (Second mistake.) After sitting in a box for several weeks, the trees and snowman started to come loose. The problem was I did not use permanent glue dots for those items. I had to gently open up at least half of the cards and redo the inside. I am glad I switched glue dots during the assembly.
Fourth step: Place plastic circle on tope of snowman and snow.
Fifth step: Place silver globe around circle and add Merry Christmas.
We have a finished card. Well, almost. It needed something else. I used glitter glue to around the border to give it more sparkle.
I put the card in an envelope that I stamped with snowflakes. Both, envelope and card was mail in a bubble mailer. Any thicker and the card could not be sent First Class mail.
Jewelry Box
In August 2016, my parents house flooded. They had 44 inches of water in their home and they lost most of their belonging. For Christmas I stained and put mosaic on a jewelry box for my mother.
The box was purchased from Hobby Lobby. The mosaics was done with polymer clay, and for the grout I used glue and micro beads.
Several coats of polyurethane was placed over every surface, including the mosaic.
Glitter Ornaments
One of my Christmas projects for 2016 was to create glitter ornaments. I purchase clear glass ornaments from Hobby Lobby and made two packs of theses beauties.
Removed the top from the ornament and seat it aside.
Sprayed the inside of the ornament with spray glue. Careful, if you miss the hole on the ornament, you get glue sprayed on your hand and it takes finger nail polish to remove it.
Pour glitter inside the ornament. You do not need to fill the entire ornament, just enough to slick to sides. Place paper towel and your finger over the hole and shake the ornament to distribute glitter. I used extra fine glitter.
Remove excess glitter from ornament and let dry overnight.
Place cap back on ornament.
Decorate as desired. I used glitter puff paint (fabric paint) to put the snow effect on the ornaments.
