Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Homemade Mother's Day

In one of my earlier posts I painted a Sand dollar with a bull on it....well, using one of the sand dollars from that batch I created my next project. My mom has a cross wall in her house that I like to add to from time to time. With the extra time on my hands and Mother's day approaching I thought it would be a perfect part of her gift.
My family has a condo on the beach and it's a BIG part of our lives, we spend many weeks/weekends there and I've always wanted to tie the beach into a cross for her wall...perfect opportunity. I went simple, not wanting to overdo it.
I painted the logo of out condo on the sand dollar and painted the wooden cross with a little effect that sort of looks like the ocean. I attached the sand dollar to the cross using E6000 glue (the best blue/epoxy). Now its all packaged, wrapped and ready to be opened by momma. :-)
The smaller portion of the wrapping is the card I made. We love owls, so I used old fabric, sequins, beads, the vein of a feather, and wire to create a textured card...now all I need is a sentimental message on the inside. ;)
Happy Mother's day to all the mom's, future mom's, and grandmothers! You will forever be cherished and deserve more than just a day of love, you deserve a lifetime of love for everything you have given and sacrificed for your kids. Life wouldn't be what it is without the love of a mother.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Beaded Plaques

I'd been looking to get the girls I work with in my office a little something for Christmas...but never could think of something to buy or make. I finally came up with a great idea...I found out some of their most treasured and important aspects of their lives and created them on wood.

First was the cross. This was the easiest one for me to make, I've already made the crosses (on a large scale) so I just re0created it to fit the wood piece and used some of the smallest nails I could find to secure on each end of the cross leaving the outside wiring free.
Next is the logo to one of the girl's non-profits that she is beginnging called the "I Am More Foundation" which is a REALLY good cause, check it out and make a donation. Anyways, she finally decided on a logo, a dandelion, one of her favorite flowers/weeds in incorporated into the logo. I made the logo out of several pieces of wire and again attached to the wood at the ends with the tiny nails.
Below is a picture of her logo and the wood piece so you can see what I was trying to create.
Next were the two hardest ones to create. Two of the girls I work with are very big on the soccer world here in Tampa, one is a youth coach and the other has dreams of being a college coach, both played at USF. I knew this would be hard but decided to try. Instead of making one continuous circle I split into two half circles so I could ensure it would all stay down.
Then the inside....the center piece was the hardest, creating a octagon out of wire and beads on such a small scale was harder than I expected. Used nails at the connecting point and needed to do 2 more in either side of the beaded wire to hold it down on the other side.
Then triangles that lined up with each "point" of the octagon on the edges of the circle with a nail on each end of the wire (which many times were covered by the circle).
At the ends of the wire I made spirals so they were sort of attractive and so that the nail would be able to hold it down.

The wood blocks were about 5in x 5in and about 1in deep. Was fun to make them and fun to see them now decorating their offices. They were well recieved not just by the girls I gave them too but around the office people like them too.

My next one I'm looking to make is for myself, either an owl or a lacrosse stick....oh the options.

Enjoy!