A Handmade Christmas

2014 was an eventful year for my family. My brother and fiance bought a house, my parents sold our house of 26 years and I started grad school. So in the spirit of giving, and using my creative skills and working on a budget, I made ornaments for all.
I bought acrylic ornaments on amazon, used the acrylic paint I already have, and bought sealer from ACE Hardware.
I printed a small picture of the houses to make sure the sizing and outline was proportional to the actual houses.
These ornaments were a hit Christmas morning. As I was painting them, I even had to paint one for myself.

 This is the house I grew up in. Purple door, flag, porch swing and shrubs all included.

This is the house my brother and fiance bought...as accurate as possible. Light blue porch, white picket fence, lattice, and brick columns.

And this is the logo of the graduate program I am enrolled in at the USF Muma College of Business. "USF Sport and Entertainment Business MBA Program"

All ornaments are  hand-painted with love and TINY brushes haha.

Let Freedom Ring

Independence Day is one of my favorite holidays...it's also only 2 days before my birthday. So this year, I decided I was going to create a little decoration for my apartment to celebrate AMERICA!

The final product:

I went to ACE Hardware and got the wood, had them cut the 2 pieces into 4 even sized wood pieces.
I began by sanding the wood so there was no pointed corner or side. All sides are rounded as well as the corners, this gives it a more "worn" look than the perfect sides and corners when purchased.

After I rounded all edges, I went a head with the painting. 2 red, 1 white and 1 blue. After I got the colors I wanted I began to "wear" the red, mainly by scratching and lightly sanding in random spots to make it look antique-ish.
 

I then used a puffy paint of white to write my saying, I chose "let freedom ring" but you could use any patriotic saying or any part of the Star Spangled Banner... "home of the brave," "'Merica"

After getting everything painted I used tiny nail (smaller then the depth of 2 board but long enough to hold 2 boards together) and did 4 (in a square) into each of the 2 red and white boards attaching to the blue saying board all even at the bottom so I can sit straight up and down.

GET CREATIVE! Have fun with it!

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.

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!

Memories

My parents moved to Florida about 28 years ago. When they first moved they lived in a very small home in a "not so good" area, after about 2 years there they bought a home in a small town. When they bought it all those years ago they said they were only going to live there until by brother either started kindergarten or after he finished...my brother is now 26 years old and my parents just sold the house.
My house is the only HOME I have known my 24 years on this planet. It has always been my safe place, my home and one of the greatest memories of my life. I have seen multiple changes to the house, not only in color (the first color I rememeber was a pretty ugly peach, for the past 10-15years or so its been lime green). I've seen structural changes and additions (we converted our garage to an huge "game room," added an office on top and built a new garage in front. Added a screen to our pool, knocked down some walls, multiple bathroom updates and a kitchen update. Needless to say, it's not the same house they moved into 26 years ago, nonetheless it's still HOME.
My brother and I have both moved out and live on our own now, my parents decided they were going to "downsize" and move into a small townhouse about 20 minutes away and closer to the interstate for their traveling jobs. We took our time moving them out, not by my mom's request, but laziness by the rest of us and I think a small portion of that laziness can be attributed that we wanted to spend as much time there as we could in its last moments as our house.

I bought a medium to put a picture on in September for a boyfriend to put one of his horses on...he ended that before I even had the chance to make it. Decided I wasn't just going to let that purchase go to waste and I was going to fin a good use for it. A friend of mine suggested that I put a picture of my house on it, her family friend painted her a picture of her old house, so she passed along that idea. Turns out in all that time we lived there, we never captured a good picture of the house. We had to ask very good friend of ours to use there nice camera and take so pictures of the house. After some HDR editing, we came to a picture all of us almost couldn't stop looking at. Decided that would be the one I would use. I bought a 20x30 size of an aluminum medium from Aluminyze and after some discovering (having a high enough resolution) my mom and I were able to upload the picture onto their website. Within a week I received my picture and couldn't be happier. I have it proudly displayed in my apartment's living room right now and can't wait for visitors to comment highly about it.

Now I think I need to get one made for my mom for mothers day in May...not too bad of a gift if I do say so myself.  

Customized Tervis Tumblers

My family has this obsession with Tervis Tumblers...we have all almost converted our entire cabinet of cups to tervis'. They are some of the best cups, don't sweat, dishwasher safe, fun designs and are customizable.
They are such a hot commodity that when my parents have parties they will hide their collection in their room. They seem to either grow legs and walk off...or walk off with the person that was using them. We have lost quite a few and are always on the look out to see if we can recover them when we visit friends houses (get ours back, not take their and perpetuate the cycle).

Anyways, I had some customized for my cousin and her husband-to-be for their wedding gift. They were really creative (he works in marketing) and created a logo to use for many different facets of the wedding (Save the Dates, Invitations, water bottles for hotel guests) that I had access to electronically. Tervis does say they have approve all designs before printing/creating to keep people from altering a trademarked logo.

This is the logo they are using for their wedding.

And this is the mock that Tervis showed me when I created.

Enjoy! Some of the best cups you will have. Awesome!

Cross Wall

A couple years ago my mom got our family a Cross, to start our cross wall. Since then we have made crosses to add to it and bought some to remember some trips we have taken.

6 of the above have been made and 3 bought....looking to buy more and make more to fill that wall and maybe another.
Some of the ones that are up there are wine corks- mother's day gift- cut wine corks in half and attached to a wood base.
Wrapped beads over wood- my mom made that one- strung small beads (not quite as small as seed beads) on a THIN wire and wrapped over a wood base with a crossing pattern in the middle.
Rolled magazine on wood- one of the first ones I made, and made it in my college dorm room.

Beads and wire- this is actually one of my mom's favorites, we made this at a mother daughter night-  mom's is blue, mine is orange.

Mosaic- we bought this one in at the Ft. Worth Stockyards and it has a little bit of a Texas feel to it- second from the top in the righthand side above.
Metal with colorful design- this is the first cross to start the wall- my mom got it at some art gallery.
Porcelin- this was another mother's day gift- I bought this in Arizona and it has the southwest color and feel you often see in Arizona.

I've started my own cross wall in my condo, smaller then my mom's but working on it. Most of mine are handmade.
 
Screw cross-made from large screws and colorful beads.
This is now a additional item I have started to include in wedding gifts, still trying to find a poem that says something along the lines of build your home with Christ to incorporate the Cross part with it being made out of screws to "build your home."

Just made a new one, that my mom had now requested I make her one as well.

This is my cross wall, still a work in progress.

Most of the crosses on this wall were made by me and have "duplicates" that are for sale and will be on my Etsy page. Enjoy! :-)