Batcidentally in love!

Yesterday was Not. My. Day. It was supposed to be my day off, but for reasons unbeknownst to me, I fell out of bed at 7 am. I mean, what the heck? So I went to lounge about on the couch with a coffee, read some blogs and make the most of it... and the phone rang. A dear colleague (luv ya, Barbara!) had an emergency and could not open the shop, so I duly went and did what a girl has to do. Sit in a badly airconditioned betting shop yawning her head off for 7 hours.

After crawling back home (man, I never felt so tired in my entire life!), I thought I'd just go back to where I left things and went about reading blogs, doing more yawning and pretty much being a waste of space when The Man suddenly stirred and shook his leg... onto which a fat spider had decided to climb.
Let's just say I spent some time on the middle floor, hyperventilating and shaking while the knight in shiny armour unarmoured himself in the quest to find the eight- legged freak. He thought it had made its way into his jeans, so he took them off, took his shirt off, examined the stuff properly and still couldn't find the foe.
Turns out the bugger sat under some furniture, but was eventually found out and politely asked to leave the house (with a gentle nudge towards the neighbour's door!)

With enough oxygen in my bloodstream to last me for a week without breathing, I thought I might as well do something useful (who said washing up? Are you kidding?) and get crafting. And that is where I batcidentally fell in love- have a look.

 The man decided that too many owls spoil the broth, so for my second shadow box (I have three of those ugly frame things going on!) I went with another favourite critter of mine: the Common Dozy Bat.
So again, some doodles first:

 Here they are, the prototypes.

After that, again transferring them to cardboard and some cutting- this time I went for an easier option and only cut the wings and bodies. Even lazier, they only got painted with my new brushes The Man got me the other day (together with a beautiful bag of beads, am I spoilt or what?) and his good old miniature paints.

 Heck yeah, he got me chocolate, too! :)

Bob helped me to prepare the frame, which I had spray painted while the bats dried. A piece of firewood ( I had to go into the basement to get it. Not happy.), some more potpourri and a bit of string, here we go:

The final result: (sorry about the lame pictures, it was pretty late and I had to use the flash)

Closer:

CLOSER:

Love them! Honest, the pictures don't do them much justice, if I may say so myself.

Yeah, and that's 2 out of three! The next one, I hope, will be nutty. Err. Any guesses? :)

Linkin' up:

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Credit where credit is due

I have told you about The Man. Keen (hobby) cook, roll- over funny and at times just plain mad.
What I haven't told you yet is how he encourages me.
I have just had a week off work, and on the very first day, the weather was amazing, he dragged me out on a charity shop trip. The Man does not really like charity shopping. Or shopping at all. But he dragged me out on a mission. He wanted to find beads for me to use in future jewellery making adventures.
When I started the Envelope of Doom thingy, he was genuinely interested. Heck, the Travel Tic Tac Toe (see second- but- last post) was based on his crackpot idea of a mouse house bookshelf.
He even went to a bead shop with me- twice! and compared shades of red so I didn't end up buying the wrong stuff.
This lad is amazing, true to the word. When he messes up, he does it real good. ( and bless him ,he had the best teacher, me. Nobody could be messier than me!) And when he is being sweet, he is sweeter than chocolate without the toothache. How many gals come home after a ten- hour shift to a dinner in the garden with tons of candles, Mexican dinner music and a big, fat pottery frog hidden amongst the greenery? C'mon, hands up. He carried chairs, a table and pretty much half of the kitchen interior downstairs to create an atmosphere. And what an atmosphere it was.
For the World Cup, I supported Slovenia. You can kind of imagine that merchandise was hard to come by. So his solution was to "simply" make me a candle in Slovenia colours and then buy me a Slovenia flag in the Leeds market that wasn't only horrendously overpriced but also harder to find than my own backside with a torch. Geez, I was so proud.
And if you stuck with me until now, I will put some icing on the cake, just to top it all up. When I had finished Twit and Twoo (see last post), I stuck them up the living room wall to keep them safe from the cats. They were there for about an hour and I was kinda embarrassed, because Twit, the patterned one, doesn't look anything like I fancied him to. And The Man just turns around after I thought he'd just given into my latest idiocy and says "D'you know what... I'd like you to make three of them and backlight them so we might end up with owl shadows on the other wall."
What more can I wish for?
Love.letter\end

(and you know there are more owl posts in store!!)

Owlrighty then!

No envelope of doom project this time, just somrthing I've kind of had in my head for quite some time now.

Owls... don't you just love them? I am lucky enough to sometimes at night hear Twit and Twoo somewhere near my garden, and it always puts a huge smile on my face. Whats more, Leeds has owls in its coat of arms and even its own owl trail.

So, of course I had to jump on the huge bandwagon of owls going on in the blogosphere. What I wanted was a shadow box with owls on a twig, and it all started with this:

I can't help it, my owls always look either startled or displeased.

After sketching them, I went on to cut the shapes (bodies, wings, eyes and beaks) and cover them with fabric from two shirts I'd kept in a drawer for far too long.

While that stuff dried, I disassembled the ugliest shadowbox frame thing I've ever seen in my life, so ugly I don't even want to post a picture. Lets just say it combined a green frame with pink paper flowers, 'nuff said.
The frame got a nice, black coat of spray paint, the rest went over the rainbow bridge never to be seen again.

What I needed now was a twig. Trip to the garden, a ninja- like assault on a tree, job done.

The kitchen table work space during assembly:

Boys and girls, I would now like to take the opportunity and remind you that hot glue is called hot glue because it is HOT. Ouch. Don't ask.

After a bit of feeling immensely sorry for myself, trying in vain to get sympathy from The Man without looking too stupid (again: it is called HOT glue for a reason!) and holding on to an ice cube for a while, this is what I had- meet Twit and Twoo!

Clever girl that I am, I dug out some potpourri we bought at ALDI roundabout Christmas time to make the whole thing look a bit less empty. Smells nice, too :)

Here's the final result against the backdrop of my craft box.

A closer look:

For now, it's kept safe from the cats on the living room wall, but I'll find a better place for it. I might even put it away 'til September or so, since the thing looks more like autumn than summer to me. But for now, I have the owl- shadow- box- thing out of my system. Unfortunately, I had another shadow box idea involfing twigs and jewellery storage, but that will be left until my finger has healed from where it was cowardly attacked by hot glue.

Linkin' up:

3 out of 3 ain't bad!

... or: hugs and kisses vs noughts and crosses!

My third Envelope of Doom project is done. Help me Rhonda, it took three days altogether to finish, with small interruptions like watching my beloved Slovenia get kicked out of the World Cup and other minor injuries...

I mentioned that Mich had the decency to send me 2 Starbucks cards in her EoD. What the heck is one to do with them? I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. Need a reminder?

 I mean, WHAT?? But The Man came to the rescue. While I was waiting for another project (the mauve plastic flowers of doom) to dry, I was sat on the couch staring at the cards, trying to think of something other than an ice scraper to turn them into. He just looked up from his Final Fantasy game and said "Why don't you cut them up to turn them into an x or a mini bookshelf for a mouse house?" (we don't have mice. There is a cute rat family living somewhere near our garden, and the spiders in the basement are most certainly bigger than your average mouse, but that's it. He thinks in mysterious ways... )
But anyway, and idea was born.

First, I went ahead and measured and cut up an old card, a leftover from Germany which won't be missed. Measuring and cutting the bugger took ages! This is what the final result looked like:

Then, they were sanded and spray- painted (in the basement. Remember the mouse- sized spiders? I was in a bit of hurry!) Anyway, after two coats, this is what I had:

At this point, I decided to cheat. Mich, both your Starbucks cards are still alive, I decided to just stick with my prototype. I couldn't bear the thought of two more hours of cutting, running down and up the basement stairs and watching paint dry... I hope that's okay...

Can you guess where this is going?

The next day, I grabbed an old sweetie tin and spray painted it white. When dry, the card pieces got hot glued to some of that black foamy mat and attached to the inside of the lid. Then, I cut an X and an O from yet another piece of foam mat and made a very nifty, extremely imaginative stamp. C'mon, you know what is going on now, don't you?

I know, even I can hardly believe how clever I am, that's okay, folks.

This is going to be a gift for my giftee at the Craftaholics Anomymous Christmas in July International Gift Exchange, so while I was waiting for the stamps to dry, I made a pair of earrings for my giftee which I call "English Rose", so when she wears them, she hopefully feels very english :) Have a look:

What I needed now for my Travel Tic Tac Toe (you guessed it, right?) were Noughts and Crosses. And since I had The Man' s very expensive acrylic paints out anyway (he was cool about it, by the time I started this blog post, he'd almost stopped sweating!), I decided to murder an old necklace from the charity shop and turn the beads into gamepieces. The whole thing looked like this:

See the names on the paint jars? The Man used to paint wargaming miniatures. Skull white is harmless. Wait till you come across stuff like snot green, warlock purple and tentacle pink...

Here's what the game thing looks like. Crosses win. Btw, in real life, the painted hot glue is less prominent, it's the flash that makes it stand out.

 And this is what my giftee will receive, nicely wrapped up and hopefully a little to her liking:

There, you have it. I never want to talk about Starbucks cards again, in fact, I don't even want to drink coffee ever again. And should my giftee read this: I loved making it, sore hands and all. I have never made anything like this before, and I hope you'll have as much fun with it as I had creating it.

There will be more projects of Doom, this was GREAT! But for now, I need a break from paint and hot glue and will treat myself to a nice pint of Guinness.
Burp.

The mauve plastic flowers of doom

I am not the flowery type. Granted, there are pansies clinging to dear life outside the door and in my garden, but in general, I'm more of a cactus person. The Man will happily agree and nod his head wisely, probably murmuring something to the effect of "a cactus is easier to handle than her"...
Never mind, this is not about me but another doomed project I came up with while waiting for a certain Starbucks card project to dry.  Have a look at this:

Sweet and innocent, right?
It might be if you happen to have a little girl in your life or feel a bit like one yourself. No to both, I'm afraid, so what to do? Mauve plastic flower hair clips normally aren't part of my universe.

But this stuff is:

Twine and beads, the latter courtesy of The Envelope of Doom. Two birds, one stone, can't beadt it.

I cut two circles out of the black foamy mat thing, slightly larger than the flowers, and simply mod- podged the twine to it, a little bead in the middle of each one, and that was pretty much it. After the thingys were dry,one had a little beady accessoire attached and they got hot- glued to the flowers.

Bob luuurves them. I wonder if he'd let me embellish him! *evil laugh*

On second thought... naw, I like my face attached to my head, better give it a miss.

They look better in real life, you can't really see the black foam mat under them when worn.
I think I will send them to a very special friend in Germany who I haven't talked to for ages. My fault, for no reason whatsoever I kinda let the contact die down and I miss the lass a lot. She has the most gorgeous fiery red hair, which is what came to my mind when I made these. Luv ya, Martina!

Mich, it looks like you are re- uniting me with a friend, if she still likes me after disappearing for too long. There's your good deed for today!

Linkin' up here:

The puppy of doom

Okay, so I am impatient. Very impatient.

After finishing my earlier post, I pretty much had to get started immediately. And since the project is supposed to be a gift for somebody, I decided to make something for the delightful people that have invited us to come to their house tomorrow and watch the England- Slovenia match with them.

Meet Carol and Wullie.

They have the most adorable little puppy, a chap called Milo. I am in love.
Last time we went for a visit, I talked Carol into giving me a snapshot of Milo, so I could carry it around with me and drool over him whenever I needed some cuteness, but it wasn't meant to be. Thanks to Mich and her darn Envelope of Doom, I turned the snapshot into a Thank you for having us- gift... have a look at how I spent my afternoon, if you like.

 It started with a frame that somebody had given a makeover, but obviously didn't like it very much, so it ended up in the charity shop where I snatched it up for a mere 50 pence. Steal! (and I can keep the seashells for another project.

See how dang cute that puppy is?? Awww!
So off to work I went, taking it all apart with a little help from The Bob. See that ripped and torn plywood where I had to rip off the Hessian? I mod- podged a few layers of thin paper over it, and the splinters were sorted. (actually, I am too cheap for Mod Podge, I used watered down PVA glue) The frame itself had been painted in some sort of salmon colour, so it got a few minutes under the sander, and that was it. To get some colour back onto the plain wood, i stained it with dark brown furniture polish.

Next, I mod- podged PVA'd the scrapbooking paper to the front of the plywood and altered it a bit with the blue ribbon because I wasn't loving the embellishment it had on it. The snapshot of Milo got attached to cardboard, then glued to the plywood and surrounded with twine- messy business! But totally worth the sticky fingers.

Bit empty, isn't it? Good job I am a genius! (err...) When looking for the PVA, I came across a box of almost forgotten plywood letters, so the frame got the ultimate personalization... a MILO on it. Heck, it took me about a century to embellish that dang letter L! The twine wouldn't stick for nothing, and it took every bit of my (almost non- existent) patience to get it done. The M was a lot more fun, I just snapped one of the ladybirds off the rusty wire and bound it with a bit of twine. Love it!

It still seemed a bit too plain, though. So I used the rusty wire and a few faux pearls in (almost) the colours of the dog toy to make a little flower thingy. Why, I don't know, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Well, and this is the final result. Sorry 'bout the reflection, I had to use flash since the sun has moved a little since I started the project- but PVA takes a while to dry, right? Even with a hair dryer aimed at it. I DID mention how impatient I am!

 That's it, my very first crafty post ever.  Nothing out of the ordinary, but I am really proud of myself :)
Thanks for bearing with me, and a big CHEERS! to Mich for getting me started.


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