Angry ray of sunshine

A couple years ago, a friend and I took a road trip to the mountains and back. It was awesome, it was a blast! And at the end, we had this long long list of quotes, things we had said while driving down the highway, or looking at lions at a petting zoo, or in a bar. One of these was "I am the angry ray of sunshine that gives you melanoma."

We both love it, and toss it at each other constantly and laugh. So I made it into a shirt for her.

About halfway through painstakingly cutting my stencil with an X-acto knife, I realized that I could probably have used my Cricut to cut out the stencil for me. But by that time, I was committed. And I didn't feel like fighting with two pieces of technology to create the pattern for the stencil. :p

I'm really pleased with how it turned out. :)

See you next time! Tomorrow, I will show you the blanket of epic proportions.

-Sylvan

Etched mirror

Long time no see!

I've been really busy this past month, working at 5 am for most of the month, and doing some crafty gifts.

First, I made my mum an earring frame. I must admit, it was my dad's idea.

I drew(free hand!) and cut the "Family" onto some contact paper. I made sure that the piece I cut would cover the entire mirror in case I globbed some of the etching cream on to the mirror. I'm glad I did it that way, but it really was a two person job to get it onto the mirror nicely. (Thank you, Boyfriend!)

A word to the wise though. Don't use contact paper and etching cream. The etching cream melted the plastic contact paper a little bit and smudged. It turned out pretty good though, you can only see the smudge from certain angles.

Now this is where having worked in a frame shop comes in handy. I had my local frame shop mirror mount the mirror in a stretcher bar frame(normally used for canvasses), then had them stretch aluminium mosquito netting over the stretcher bar. Then, to cover the stretcher bar I had a mat cut that would hide it. I tried to choose a mat that would hide minor scratches that will of course accumulate over time. Added a second frame. Beautiful.

Added bonus is, because I asked to not have backing paper put on, the mirror can be removed and cleaned.

Check back tomorrow for the Inside Joke t-shirt I made my friend! :)

-Sylvan

Oooo Sparkly!

I'm really digging this card. It's all sparkly and pretty. I'm starting to come around to glitter by way of glitter embossing powder. I love embossing. I think the glitter stays on better.

-Sylvan

The Sort Of Breast Cancer Card

I got sick of making Christmas cards, so I went through my paper and pulled out some pink camo paper. I told myself that I was going to make a breast cancer friendly card. 

Stupid camera. The 'yellow' is more olive drab, and the mat is a metallic brown.

In any case, it looks really funky and isn't all "IN YOUR FACE!". :)

Until next time!

-Sylvan

Snowflake card

This is one of those cards that I love, but worry that it looks anorexic. I have a personal rule that a card should have no more than four design elements incorporated, and that is the absolute maximum. After that, it starts to look obscenely busy, in my opinion.

I usually end up with three, three and a halfish.

I count patterned paper as a design element all on it's own. Solid coloured background paper counts as a half point, as well as any solid coloured papers that I use for matting or accenting. Dimensionals and glitter are another half point each. Ribbon counts as one, as well as any stamping. Just to give you an idea. ;)

So this is already three and a half point card. Four if we count embossing, which some people might.

But I think if I added something like a "Winter Wishes" or something it would take away from it. But it looks like it's missing something. I played around with moving my embossed snowflake around, and I ended up liking it the most right there beside the ribbon.

Opinions from the peanut gallery? :)

See you next time!

-Sylvan

Another Christmas Card. For Serious.

This is one of those cards that doesn't quite look like the picture. My card is actually a fair bit darker.

I used a clear gold embossing powder, and I'm not nuts about how it turned out. I may have overheated it, or I may have not used enough. Though it looks fantastic in the picture now that I glance up at it while I'm typing. Maybe I should give it another chance. :)

Until next time, my friends!

-Sylvan

It's A Jaunty Toque!

I'm pretty excited, I'm going to a  craft sale tomorrow with the cards I have. I have several cards that I haven't posted here yet.

I've done seven different cards this week(and planning to do more tonight!), and I'll post a new card every day for the next little while. :)

I decided my front step is the ideal place to take photos today so I could get more natural light. This is a dark burgundy card with a dimensional toque stamped in dark green on and a shimmery translucent white ribbon.

For the next time I make this card, I think I'll get a glue pen so I can put glitter on the pom pom. I think that would look cute and jazz it up a little. :)

Until next time!

-Sylvan

Christmas Card

I tried to make a man-friendly Christmas card. I'm a sucker for patterned scrapbook paper, so I used this plaid paper, and embossed the tree in silver on the green, and matted it on white. Though it seems to be a little pink in this photo...

Cheers!
-Sylvan

Jareth Pendant

For Halloween this year, I went as Jareth, The Goblin King from Labyrinth. Because who doesn't love David Bowie dancing around with Jim Henson puppets?

Anyway, I went a-hunting and found this picture of the pendant he wears. It's gold on silver until the final scene of the movie, when it switches to silver on gold to reflect the change in dominance in the labyrinth.

Hot.

I also found this picture of one a fan had made. I must admit, I wasn't nuts about it because it wasn't quite right, but it ended up being easier to use this one as a reference than the original.

I bought myself some air dry clay and went to work, this is what became to gold medallion type thing with the infinity symbol.

And this is my way too thick pendant, but I didn't want it to be brittle. If I ever do this again, there is no way I'm making it this heavy. Ever.

And this is the finished product, all painted and glued together! This picture is a little dark, but I liked the look. I got a lot of compliments on this pendant when I wore it to work, and I'm quite proud of it!

-Sylvan

Mad Scientist Cookies!

I made these to take in to work last week. I'm a huge fan of the Rich Roll Cookie from The Joy Of Cookies.

They're colourful! They're yummy! It's Mad Science!

Card

Hey all!

Made this just to play around. 

I'm horribly lazy, and know that I should mat the things I add. Next time I make a card like this, I'm matting the stamped part in black or maybe a textured marble-y brown(provided I can find said paper :p).

See you next time!

-Sylvan

And then there was workspace, and Sylvan saw this and said that it was good.

I attract clutter like nothing else. I HAD to clean off my workspace today, because I haven't gotten anything done in the past week.

See? Unusable. :p

Ta Da! Ready to make pretties!

Now to make something before going to the Corn Maze with the Sprownies. :)

-Sylvan

Earring snowmaggedon?

My apologies, this is going to be a picture heavy post.

As you may recall, I promised to put every type of bead under the sun in those pearl disc beads. Well... I did. This was the result of my efforts. I did this assembly line style and just went nuts. I now have a LOT of earrings, so if anyone would like to exchange some coinage for these beauties, I would be appreciative. ;)

The New Christmas Look

I'm tired of always seeing green and red for Christmas cards, so I decided to play with brown to create something simple and man-friendly.

I like this. I'm going to take it and run with it.

-Sylvan

Variation on the same design

I couldn't decide what colour I wanted to use for my stamping.... so I did both! :D

You can't see it very well in this picture, but there are light blue stripes on the paper.

Scrapbooking paper from Recollections, stamp from Stampin' Up's Quirky Quips set, blue ink Stampin' Up! Cool Carribean, brown ink Color Box Cocao.

If I were to do this again, I would try and find a slightly darker brown.

Happy Crafting!

-Sylvan

Tiger's Eye Earrings

I made these a little while back and started wearing them again recently.

I love Yellow Tiger's Eye. I love how the light catches it and changes the colour. My eye is instantly drawn to this type of stone.

The bottom stone is Hematite with two Yellow Tiger's eye stones above. Simple, with seed beads as spacers.

-Sylvan

More earrings!

Made some more earrings tonight. And started planning out some cards to make. Mostly masculine thank you and birthday cards. It's hard to find nice ones!

I LOVE this design. I'm going to put a bazillion different types of beads in these discs. :D

Just a simple earring with a silverish spacer and a glass bead with a twisty design inside, kind of like a cat's eye marble. I must admit that I bought these beads while thinking of a sweater I own. :p

See you next time!

-Sylvan

Earrings!

I was rather productive tonight! I made four sets of earrings, one for me and, once I showed them off to my mum, a set of each for my mum.

These ones are glass beads with teeny tiny blue flowers on them. They're really pretty.  :)

And these I'm not sure, they're a semi-precious stone but I seem to have lost the sticker I had on their container.

I'm trying to figure out what I should do with the rest of the beads. I don't really want multiple sets of the same earrings.

Anyway, that's what I did today. Happy crafting!

-Sylvan

Thank You Card

I made this the other night for a wonderful friend. :)

The only thing I had decided going into this was that I wanted to stamp the 'thanks' in white on dark blue and use dimensionals. I had wanted to do some embossing of some sort, but couldn't find the heat gun. It must be in a box somewhere. The rest I made up as I went along.

I like the design and how it turned out, but I think if I were to make it again I would do things slightly differently to make it a little easier to make. Little things like stamp the dots onto the paper before adding the dimensional element. :p

The background is a blue striped scrap of scrapbooking paper, with the dots stamped on in white. All the stamps were from the 'Quirky Quips' Stampin' Up! set. I floated the 'Thanks A Million" with dimensional stickers to funk it up a bit.

I'm loving how much this picture shows off the dimensional effect I wanted! :D

See you next time!

-Sylvan

Going to be Re-purposed necklace

I found this choker at Value Village for three bucks and fell in love with the wire beads. The moment I saw them, I knew I had to turn these into several pairs of earrings.... after I disinfect it. :p

I'm actually going to keep one or two to use as a guide to make more in the future, because I think the way they were designed and wrapped is really neat! They're not attached with jump rings, they're their own jump rings! It's like a crafty conspiracy of efficiency.

See you next time!

-Sylvan

Best of intentions of course

I was going to make a post yesterday for Talk Like A Pirate day and show off my swizel stick sword earrings, but Life had other plans. Those plans involved a trip to emerg to search my cornea for scratches. I'll take a picture of the earrings and add it later today once I locate my camera.

This was a really, really simple earring as you can see. Just ear wires, jump rings and the swizel sticks.


-Sylvan

And so it begins

I love crafts. I love most crafts, but never seem to have the time to do anything with any of them! :p

I'm hoping that by making regular posts, it will encourage me to do more crafts more often.

So until next time!

-Sylvan