paint prints for Christmas

the boys and I found some time after Thanksgiving to do a little Christmas crafting for their grandmothers.  this holiday season wasn't feeling much like Christmas for me for various reasons, but I really wanted to make these cute penguin prints and I think this project helped get me more in the mood for festivities :)

I picked up a couple of white aprons from Hobby Lobby to decorate.  all the boys had to do was sit still for a black footprint, and I painted the details on after those were dry.  the simple footprints ended up being a lot messier than I remember on past paint projects.  maybe it was the black paint on the white surface... I don't know.  they still came out cute.

we added some fingerprint string lights for a border, which I think really helped finish it off.  this was time consuming, but easier to control than the footprints since we went one finger at a time instead of a whole foot.  I added their names and year as well.

there's still room at the bottoms to add more, so maybe next year we can add some reindeer.

painted tote

the boys helped me paint a canvas tote to give to Nana for Mother's Day.  they loved making it, and it was fun to do with them.  Leo was so cute while we were making the flowers, too.  after each fingerprint he'd say "it's so pretty!"

we did fingerprint flowers and footprint butterflies on one side, and I wrote their names and ages underneath their heels.  I used two paint colors together on each fingerprint to give the flowers more interest, which is easiest to see on the orange/red one in this pic, but it really made the bluebonnets pop.

I wanted to duplicate the same scene on the other side, but the boys ran out of steam so we just did some handprints on the two front pockets surrounded by a few flowers, and I doodled the rest to fill in some.  I really want to make myself one, so maybe I can get around to that before they get too big!

nutcracker 2011

as I was starting on my mom's nutcracker for this Christmas, I realized I never posted any pics of the one I did last year... and I remember why! I forgot to take the final pics!!! so, when my mom pulls all her Christmas stuff out I'll get a picture of it.

this year I'm doing 6 nutcrackers! but they're not really nutcrackers (not that nutcracker soldiers are really nutcrackers either...) they're nesting nutcracker soldiers. I wanted to do something like these.

I got the raw wood nesting dolls from Hobby Lobby - used a 40% off coupon and got them for less than $5. ya get what ya pay for. I had to do some sanding on them so they opened smoothly, the outsides were nice and flush at the seams, and most importantly that they fit inside each other once they had layers of paint on them. what's the point if they don't nest?

I did some sketching to get an idea of how to paint them

marked and drilled holes in the body of the main one to attach the arms that I made from dowel and pegs

made a nose and crown from polymer clay

painted the details and sprayed them all with a clear coat

added the rabbit fur for the hair and beard, glued the arms on and sanded down the dowel on the inside of the body

I'm happy with how they came out :)

toenails

I've always painted my toenails. it's very rare for me to not have polish on them. I hardly ever paint my finger nails, though. looks odd to me for some reason to have colored nails. I've been doing a lot of clear lately, though. but I've tired of the same old polish I have in my Kaboodle - yup, I still use mine from 1990! I saw a bottle of yellow at the Dollar Tree the other day and just had to get it. I can only do certain colors - blues and purple mainly - yellow is NOT a color that looks good on my feet :( what's funny, though... all the Googling I do on yellow nail polish is appealing to me, and it doesn't look different on me (the color I got is like this one), but for some reason I don't like it when it's on :\ might just need some getting used to.

then I just Googled nail polish videos to see if I could get an idea for something new to do. someone was mixing together their own glow in the dark polish - what a great idea! so I Googled the glow in the dark powder... jeez! it's expensive. being that it's not Halloween it's a little harder to find glow in the dark nail polish, but Deal Extreme had some! so I ordered that. it had one good review (by a girl) and a bad one (by a guy).. so we'll see how it goes... in 5-16 weeks! only drawback to Deal Extreme :(

so while I wait, I thought I'd try this other nail technique for transferring news print to your nails. it looked really cute, so I hope it works for me!

flip flop makeover

I had some old flip flops I was gonna toss. they were cute when I bought them 7+ years ago, but the woven insole stuff started looking really ratty (more so on the left than the right, I just noticed!) and parts would fall off every time I wore them. I figured why not see if I can change them before they go? if it didn't work out, I could still toss them.

so, this is what I started with. Old Navy flip flops - I think I paid $5 for them, and I've definitely got my money's worth over the years.

they have a woven mat on top of a foam base and there's a strip of foam wrapped around the edge. to get the woven mat out I cut the straps at the toe leaving enough so it didn't slip between my toes, and pulled the straps through the holes of the mat.

I traced and cut two pieces of craft foam the size of the mat for each sandal and did a dry fit to see what needed to be trimmed. I measured the straps across the top of my foot, cut them to size, and stitched them together with some heavy duty thread I had.

I was going to go strictly on supplies I had in my craft closet, but when I decided I didn't like the red and that it might be hard to paint on top of, I broke down and popped over to the new Dollar Tree down the road and bought a $1 roll of white foam. I pulled the red out and cut new white foam pieces, then I traced a butterfly wing pattern onto it with a pencil. I cut holes for the straps and toe post and made slits to access them. one more dry fit and trimmed the overhang.

then it was time to paint. I watered down some acrylic paint and painted inside the lines, then went over the lines with dimensional paint after it was dry. it still looked plain with just the outline, so I did some more lines and dots to fill in.

I was a little stumped on what to use for the toe post. I didn't have any buttons big enough, so I went with polymer clay. I wanted to add a domed cap to it, too, so I searched my bottle cap stash for some solid gold colored caps.

before they're domed they need to be trimmed down to a flat disc, so I used pliers and bent the edges down. once it was easier to get my scissors around the rim, I trimmed a rough circle, then followed the inner plastic ring to get a more round and flat shape.

the inner plastic needs to come out or it'll make an uneven dome, and lucky for me these peeled right out! some types are a little more stubborn and require a razor, heat, throwing of tools and swearing ;) but not the case this time :D anyway, so then to shape it. I would explain this process, but ya just hafta do it and get a feel for it. you can watch me use my dapping block here.

so then to make the actual toe post cover thing. I rolled out some yellow and brown polymer clay and used an old plastic egg to cut the circle, then I pressed the gold domes in the center and baked them until the clay was hard. while they were still warm and flexible, I pried the domes out.

for the straps I wanted a 5 strand braid, so I needed 5 different colors... but I didn't have the colors I needed, so I took an old white t shirt and painted some stripes about 2" thick across it, cut them out into 1 inch strips, stretched them until they rolled, and braided them together. the paint made the fabric a little stiff, but it wasn't going to be directly next to my skin so that didn't bother me.

once I had the length I needed to cover the strap, I sewed across the ends and trimmed the rest. I added some leather to finish the edge off and sewed that in place, too.

I used contact cement to adhere the 2 new layers of foam to the sole of the sandal. very smelly and sticky, but it did the trick! once the sole was in place I drilled some holes through the old toe strap piece and the polymer button, sewed them together, and hot glued the domes back in place to cover the stitches. then I glued the braids to the straps and she's done!

I'm pretty happy how they came out - time will tell how much more wear they'll be good for.

I know all the work of painting the wings on the insoles is hidden when they're worn, but I like knowing it's there. kinda like a fun little secret for my feet to keep :)