Since there probably will not be any more painting done until 2026, I thought I would share some of my wood craft projects from the year.
I found this bamboo box at Hobby Lobby. I thought each striped needed its own color. I used the Sharpie Creative Color Marker to paint the outside, and Americana Craft Paint to paint the sides and inside. I am still deciding what to do with it.
2025 Puzzle – This originally was just a blank puzzle. I use black gesso to paint both pieces, the puzzle and the base. The I used paint markers to design the piece.
Puzzle FrontPuzzle BackPuzzle Base
A couple of round wood blanks:
Another item painted with Sharpie Creative Markers
This was my first attempt at creating my own diamond art piece. Just an experiment to learn how to create one.
Recently, Sharpie, you know the company that is famous for making permanent markers, released acrylic markers they claimed would “Boldly Mark on Most Surfaces.” I thought it was very interesting and decided to give the Sharpie Creative Color Markers a workout. I purchased both sets, the brush set and bullet set.
My first attempts were on black and white paper. The colors were brilliant and look good on both colors of paper and did not bleed through. The markers would probably look good on any color of paper, because the provide good coverage.
I did not try it on glass. Being water based acrylic markers, they would wash off of glass.
My second, third, and fourth attempts were on wood.
Puzzle One: This design used the both the bullet and brush markers. I was able to obtain blending effects by either painting areas white on the background or blending two colors before they completely dried.
Notice how well the black markers went over the other colors. I did not have to go over the black multiple times to get the effect. The white stars were placed by gentle touching the surface after it dried.
Wind Spinner: Another project using only the Sharpies Creative Color Markers. On this project, after the paint had dried, I noticed that purple color for the brush marker was slightly lighter than the bullet marker. I was able to go over the bullet marker purple with the brush marker purple to get a uniform color.
Every yellow paint I have ever encountered has done a very poor job of covering other colors. The Creative Color Marker yellow also did a poor job of covering other colors. I have an easy solution; I just cover it with white first then go over it in yellow.
Tree Puzzle: For the base of the tree puzzle, with the exception of the tree, I did not use the Creative Color Markers. I used acrylic paint. The surface was large, and I did not like the idea of having the paint the entire surface with the markers. The tree and flowers were made with the markers.
The background and the tree on the puzzle were all done with the Creative Color Markers. The blending of multiple colors provided the tree with a brown look.
PuzzleBase
Heart Puzzle: Can you see where I messed up? Probably not because the markers were able to hide my mistakes well. The first design I placed on the heart puzzle I did not like. So, I covered the entire puzzle with Gesso and started a new design. The white marker and the Gesso were almost the same shade. I used the white marker to cover up small mistakes on the white background.
The red and pink marker when placed next to each made it difficult to tell where one color ended, and the other color started. Once touches of purple and black was placed around them, they pop off the canvas.
The edge of the base and the back of the base was covered using red acrylic paint.
PuzzleBase
All the projects were varnished using the Polyacrylic. Some were sprayed and other were brushed. My only desires concerning these markers are: I would like more colors; and I would like to some fine point markers.
I do not see using the markers every day, but they will definitely fit in with some of my projects.
This was the second time I attempted to print these objects. The first time, the filament stopped extruding after the second object was printed. I removed the filament from the machine and printed all of the other objects on the SD card before I attempted this object again.
Now that I have a puzzle. I guess I will need to Google it to determine how to put it together.
I purchased the Ravensburger North American Skyline puzzle to put together, with my husband, over the Fourth of July weekend. I selected the puzzle because the picture was beautiful and it had 3000 pieces. Most of the puzzles I could purchase locally only went up to 1000 pieces and those would have been done in a few hours. I was looking forward to this puzzle adventure, because we hadn’t put a puzzle together in at least a decade.
My husband gave up on the puzzle before the border was mostly completed stating that he was having trouble telling a difference between the colors on the pieces. Yes, I was having a little trouble too, but I pressed on. The border wasn’t completed until most of the puzzle was done, because those last few border pieces liked hiding.
The next challenge I experienced was telling the top part of the puzzle from the bottom part of the puzzle. They both looked a lot like, almost identical. The only difference was the bottom pieces usually had lines on them to indicate water. I ended up separating the top pieces from the bottom pieces. And, yes those few border pieces were still hiding.
What was suppose to be a three day adventure ended up being a three months adventure. Ok, I travel some, about 3 weeks, during those three months and some days I only worked on it a few minutes and other days I didn’t work on it at all.
This puzzle ended up being extremely challenging. If you moved a puzzle piece two inches away, it usually changed colors. A lot of pieces were different shades of blue, but it didn’t matter. Even the light blues appeared dark blue during the process. The pieces fit together very well. Still I think I will avoid Ravensburger puzzles in the future.