Tag Archives: paint

Makeup Art

by Adel Posted on June 17, 2012
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Summers around here have become more challenging now that I have two. My oldest is getting increasingly harder to please when it comes to craft projects and activities.

Yesterday’s GAK was a success but it isn’t always that way. These days just pulling out plain old paint is “too boring” for my picky 6 year old.

Jack-Jack though is still easily entertained with almost everything I throw out there. Including some old makeup that I almost threw away when cleaning out my closet. Instead I had decided to save it for her to “play” with.

I should have led with the old makeup. Maybe then Rex would have stuck around. Instead since he had gotten tired of paints, he had moved on to his Legos and would not be enticed to return to play with makeup. Oh well. Jack-Jack of course LOVED it.

I’m still a little worried about the message I’m sending with all this makeup play. But she’s so happy messing around in it all I’ll take my chances.
By the way, I just love how she holds the lipstick like a crayon!

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Dripped Paint Glitter Ornaments

by Adel Posted on December 19, 2011

It’s the final week before Christmas. I’m happy to report that I’m pretty much done with holiday shopping, decorating and most crafting. Yay! I’m now looking ahead to plan the kid’s birthday party in January. I’m usually so behind on the planning of that little shindig because of the holidays, I’m scrambling at the last minute. Well this year he has very specific requests! *sigh* These get more detailed and challenging every year as he grows older. The kid sure keeps me on my creative toes!

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. We still gotta get to Christmas first. My photography outlet has been taking a little breather while I work on holiday gifts, projects and excursions with my kids. So this week, I thought I’d share some holiday themed crafts we’ve been working on in our home.

This cute little project was something Rex and I worked on for his classmates. He wanted to give them each a little gift at the holiday class party on the last day of school. I had to come up with something pretty simple and inexpensive since we had to make 22 of them! The school is not a big fan of sweet treats, so I scrapped any cookie or cake pop ideas.

Enter our home-made holiday ornaments.

I purchased 22 of these clear plastic ornaments at Michaels. They were half off and came out to be about $0.50 each. The only other items needed were a variety of acrylic paints, glitter and something to hold them while they dried (I used plastic cups), all of which I already had.I drew inspiration from this project from this site

First off remove all the tops. (duh!)

Next, make sure the busy-body toddler has enough markers to color the table and herself with so she doesn’t get paint all over her, you and her brother.

Rex began squeezing and pouring the paints directly from the bottles into each ornament. He turned them slowly as he squeezed. I did have to help him with some since 22 is too many to hold a 5yo attention span

The trick to getting the dripped paint look is to not put too much that it ends up pooling at the bottom. Squeeze just a little and let it slowly drip down over the course of a few minutes

We let them dry right side up first in the plastic cups until the paint dripped to the bottom.

Then we turned them over so all the access paint dripped back out of the ornament.

After it looked like most of the access paint had dripped out and dried a little, we added the glitter in. Just make sure it’s not completely dried so the glitter will stick to the paint.

Then we put them back into the cup face down again and let it dry for a few hours. I did check on them periodically to see if there was still too much paint in some. The glitter would slide back out with the access paint when there was. If that happened, I turned them back right side up for a little while and added more glitter.

He wanted to label each ornament with the name of the recipient. I used my trusty hole-punch to punch out circle tags for him

Night fell and my good light to photograph my projects disappeared. However I was out of good daylight time for him to next work on this so Rex had to continue working in less than desirable lighting conditions. Yes I know I’m a little ridiculous about my light. Anyway if I was going to photograph him writing his tags out (which I definitely wanted to because he did SO WELL remembering every single 21 classmates without having to ask me!) I was gonna get some pretty bokeh lights in the background then.

I attached the tags to each ornament with some bakers twine and we were done!

We brought them to school the next day and he proudly handed them out to each of his little friends. He even remembered to make one for his teacher!

This really was a pretty little project to make.

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Fixing Isolation With Paint

by Adel Posted on November 10, 2011

My days are filled with these two. They are the loves of my life and I wouldn’t trade what I do for anything in the world.

But lately some of my days have been filled with a sense of isolation from the rest of the world. They are filled with the everyday routine stuff that never end.

Simple necessary chores that fall on my shoulders like dressing my daughter everyday sometimes becomes just one more thing I HAVE to do. Just like the dishes or laundry. But unlike laundry and dishes, thank god I can make this one tiny chore a little more interesting. So some days you see these in my pictures. I’m not sure I know what season it is right now looking at her

Pick ups and drop-offs to and from school exhaust me some days. And he JUST started Kindergarten. How am I going to get through another 18 years??

We wait everyday at the same spot for Rex to walk out after the bell rings. She loves it. And unlike me, loves the routine of it all

We have constant battles now over the iPad, TV and Wii time.

And that’s not even covering making dinner and picking up the same toys 5 times a day every day

Even my outlet of shooting pool doesn’t keep that feeling of isolation away lately

I think mostly I just feel different than other moms. I don’t know anyone quite like me and I won’t lie, I’m constantly looking for her.

A mom.
Shoots Pool.
Photographs her kids every chance she gets.
Crafts.
Is involved in her kids school.
Loves getting dressed up for the occasional Happy Hour.
Knows who Captain Panaka is.
A gadget geek and certified web junkie.

She’s out there right? Maybe I’ll meet her one day.

I know this post seems a little depressing. Maybe I’m just in a little bit of a rut. Trust me, some days I do wish I could escape my life for a short while

Grizz is great. My kids, with all the normal difficulties that come with raising young children, are also amazing. I guess some days I get lonely for someone to connect with on my level.

I definitely don’t want to live my life feeling like there’s something better out there. Because let’s face it, what I have is pretty awesome a lot of the time. So I try and remind myself that every time a day gets too overwhelming.

So yesterday, instead of making dinner, I took the kids outside, poured paint on the side walk, pulled out a few pieces of white cardboard for canvases and told them to paint with their hands and feet

It was quite the mess, but what wonders it does for your soul to watch your kids laugh, play in bright colored paints

Activities like these always remind me of the important things in life -

Insane messes to clean up after! LOL Just kidding :)

That when I hear my kids laugh. And I watch them just revel in something simple like 3 bottles of paint and some cardboard. I just don’t feel quite as lonely anymore

So we had leftovers for dinner and Grizz had to fix his own last night since we didn’t have enough for him when he got home. But after reading this, I hope he’s ok with that now ;)

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m still looking for her. That mom like me.

Until I meet her, I guess I’ll just join my kids and paint with my hands and feet too next time

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More Abstract Wall Art

by Adel Posted on October 4, 2011

Over the weekend we worked on our third installment of wall art for our stairwell. I’m deciding I love the plywood canvas we’ve been using for the base. I love the simple, natural textures of wood.

Well with this piece I decided to do something similar to the abstract painting we made Grizz for his birthday. We raided my craft stash for interesting shapes, stickers and tape we could stick on the wood for the design.

This time though I wanted to work on our art indoors since we were only using a small canvas. That meant only Rex got to work on it. (Jack-Jack was NOT HAPPY)

As usual he worked carefully and meticulously. I noticed he has gotten much better with using regular scissors too.

He chose his paints beforehand. I had him select 6 colors

After he was happy with the placement of all his stickers, tape and letters we used the first 3 colors – pink, yellow and red

Now came the fun part. I’d seen this post on pinterest and thought it would be a cool and fun way to  lay the paint on. So Rex squirted the paints randomly all over. Pretty!

Instead of using a paper towel tube I wrapped my wooden rolling pin with tin foil and then one paper towel. We used that to roll the paint!

Then we let it dry overnight

The next day we continued with the other 3 colors he chose – purple, green and blue

Here’s what I learned – Because the first set of colors were already dried these next set of colors pretty much covered the pretty reds and oranges. If you’re going to do this project definitely use all the colors at once.  Just don’t roll too much or else it will all mix up into one dark ugly color.

So I had him roll just twice for the green, blue and purple…

And I actually had him add more red and yellow paint and gave it another couple of rolls. It turned out much more colorful!

The next day we peeled all the stickers off. Some were harder to come off than others so I worked on most of the sticker removal

And now we have our 3rd masterpiece hanging in our once bare stairwell!

And I like I said earlier, I truly love that we used the plywood as our canvas! :)

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Personalized Storm Trooper Clothing Labels

by Adel Posted on September 26, 2011

Remember my Storm Trooper Luggage Name tags? Well they worked fine for the bags and backpacks. Not so good for articles of clothing though. To keep with the same Storm Trooper theme I decided to create some personalized labels for Rex’s jackets and hats he wears to school. It’s amazing what these kids leave behind at school every day. The weekly lost and found box has at least 100 items. Every week!

My son is actually very good at keeping track of his items so I don’t worry much about him forgetting a jacket, hat or lunch bag. However, he had seen some of his classmate’s jackets had their names on them and wanted me to make some for him too. So off to my crafting stash I went.

I had a bunch of leftover canvas drop cloths (the kind you buy at at Lowes to lay out when you’re painting) from another project I was working on. I decided to use that material as my clothing labels for the project

Items I used:
Canvas drop cloth scraps (from Lowes)
Alphabet stamps (birthday gift he received earlier this year. I knew they’d come in handy!)
Fabric paint
My Storm Trooper stamp (from the Luggage Name Tag project)
Paint brush and palette
Fray Check
Stitch Witchery

I started off testing out the stamping. I painted each stamp with the fabric paint and stamped them on the drop cloth. They dried pretty quick. The letters were a little difficult to get completely straight and neat, but whatever. This is a mommy DIY home project. The beauty is in the imperfections. (yes that’s what I tell myself all the time)

I ended up using only the blue paint

I did the printing of all the labels at one go. When I was done I trimmed them all out to the size I wanted

If you notice in the earlier shots, this fabric frays VERY EASILY. Not my ideal choice, but since I like to work with what I have I used it anyway. I did however have this handy little thing on hand. Fray Check. It’s sort of like glue. You apply it to the edges of the labels and it seals it so there is no fraying. Awesome stuff!

After I let it dry for a bit (about 20 minutes) I was ready to affix them to his jackets. Now most of you know, I don’t sew. I’m sure I could if I took the time to learn to operate a sewing machine but it’s kinda low on my list of priorities these days. So I use this wonderful stuff called Stitch Witchery! Trim what you need, place it between the label and the piece you want to adhere it to and iron it on. It’s kinda like magic. And it’s supposed to withstand washing and dry cleaning. I’ll let you know if that holds true.

So I labeled everything he wears to school…

The jackets were easy

The hats a little trickier with the iron. But I got it done. Carefully.

And now my Rex has everything he uses/wears to school labeled. I can now stress less over him losing his stuff. Phew!

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Abstract Painting For Dad

by Adel Posted on September 19, 2011

So while Grizz was gone I decided to work on a few things with the kids for his birthday. Yes he came home just in time to celebrate his forty-something with us :)

I wanted to make something even Jack-Jack could help with. Up until now I have not let her play with the paints and crayons we use when working on our projects. This time though I thought I’d give it a go. Under SUPER CLOSE supervision. Plus I used washable paints.

But first things first. I started of with selecting what I wanted our work of art to say – “I Choose Us” This saying is what Grizz and I have engraved on our wedding bands. We came up with it 10 years ago shortly after we started dating so it carries a lot of meaning for us.

I used a blanks canvas sized 24 x 36.

I ordered some vinyl lettering for the piece

I carefully peeled and stuck the letters to make up my phrase

I repositioned them a few times till I was satisfied with where I wanted them placed

Now comes the fun part. After spreading out a tarp large enough to cover spills and splatters, I set up the canvas against the fence on our deck, gave the kids a bunch of different sized brushes and let them have at it. Even I had helped out :)

In order for our art to not be just one bad mixture of dark browns and blacks (since you know the kids will mix all the colors together at some point), I gave them 2 colors to start with – yellow and red. They started off painting the colors separately but after awhile it all got mixed up. Which made the piece a nice shade of pale orange. I loved it.

They had a blast. And of course started painting each other. Much more fun that just painting a boring old canvas!

We let the first set of colors dry overnight and continued the next day with a different color group – blues and greens. More painting fun. Most of it made it on the canvas. But I think they much preferred painting each other. And their MAMA!

I think my favorite part of this project is how into it they BOTH got

And how much fun they had working together

My Jack-Jack was really going at it insisting that she use 2 brushes at once. It was one of our more fun projects we’ve worked on together for sure

Well after all the painting was done I let our masterpiece dry a few nights then peeled off the vinyl lettering.

I then selected some of my favorite shots of them painting the piece and ordered some prints. I decided I wanted to create a collage of the “making of” this magnificent piece of art to be hung around the canvas. So here is the finished masterpiece

For the longest time we have not had anything hanging over our bed that we’ve been completely happy with. Now we have this

I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that when I look up above our bed in the mornings this is what I see. Happy Birthday Grizz. I hope it brings a smile to your face as much as it does mine.

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Distressed Rocking Chair

by Adel Posted on August 2, 2011

I’ve noticed that lately I have this thing for little furniture. Like the kind for toddlers. I’m always drawn to them at the flea markets. However I’ve learned that they are a pretty popular item for DIYers and the cute little chairs are usually priced at $30-$50. Which is kinda ridiculous if you ask me. If I’m gonna pay that much for a little chair I want it to be already painted and distressed exactly the way I want.

I did find this wooden rocking chair at our neighborhood kids’ clothing resale store – Chloe’s Closet, though. It was $15. A little bit above my price pain level usually. But since this was virgin wood and I wouldn’t need to strip or sand any existing paint I felt it was worth it. So home it came with us one day.

After about a month of sitting in our garage I finally made some time to work on it. But not before my kids were done rocking and playing with it first. They’d actually been using it whenever I worked in our garage. My littlest loves it!

Her brother of course tries to find any reason to get her off it so he can have a turn. Right here he’s claiming she needs to go in and put on some shoes as her feet are “filthy”!

He’s one step ahead with his slippered socked feet. You can see that this rocking chair is way too small for him and was bought specifically for his sister.

I had to take 3-4 coats of spray paint to it to get it even. Next time I know to paint with a brush for pieces that have lots of nooks and crannies I need to get into to get the paint even. Nevertheless it looked great once I did get it finished. (In these next few shots it looks blue. It’s actually a darker gray. Not sure what was happening to my white balance when I took these pictures).

However it was too shiny and new looking now. It needed some personality.

So I set to work on the distressing using a sanding block. I made sure to get all the edges since that’s where it would naturally wear had it aged on its own ;)

Since the wood below was a blond wood I decided to stain the distressed areas a dark color to give it more depth. I found a can of dark stain from Grizz’s stash and followed the instructions carefully (I’ve never stained anything before). Pretty simple. Paint on, let sit for 10-15 mins (depending on how dark you want it) and wipe off.

And here’s what we have after all the intentional distressing and stain. The gray here is a little more accurate in these shots. I’m sure it was the time of day I took the pictures.

My little model was asleep when I took these so I asked her very reluctant brother to pose for some “After” shots of the rocking chair. After much complaining he agreed to do it if I let him play on the iPad while I snapped away. Sigh…

He was very worried about stepping on the over-riped plums everywhere. But not worried enough to tear his attention from his game obviously.

But I got some shots of it that I wanted. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I like the aged look the dark stain gave it. I will say though that next time I plan to stain first, paint over then sand.

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Best $13 Spent Ever

by Adel Posted on May 26, 2011

I found this idea browsing the Pinterest boards one day. I just HAD to find me an old printer’s tray after that. I looked on Craigslist and Ebay. Nothing on CL and all the printer’s trays on Ebay were upwards of $45 + shipping! I was so disappointed and put the idea on the backburner for awhile. Well this past Sunday while browsing the Alemany Flea Market, guess what I found? :)

This gorgeously framed mirror! Isn’t it beautiful??

Haha… well besides that I also stumbled upon this old printer’s tray!! When the guy told me he wanted $15 from him I almost gave him a hug and told him I’d take it for $20! Ha! But the old chinese lady in me kept my cool, asked if he would take $10 for it and when he said he’d do it for $13 I couldn’t hold back any longer. I gave him the money, grabbed the tray (well had Grizz grab it) and skipped happily away! I was SO HAPPY I found one for $13!!!

As soon as we got home I gathered the supplies and began prepping for the project. Of course I kept my Rex as involved as I could since this was going to be his. He picked the colors (we already had spray paint on hand) he wanted and waited very impatiently for me to take these TWO pictures!

He helped me tape the side and frame with painting tape since we were going to paint it a different color. And daddy helped us hammer in the lose nails.

We used my mother’s day gift (a HUGE roll of heavyweight paper Grizz found laying on the street – he thinks it fell off a truck – that he thought I’d love so he pulled over, got out and ran into oncoming traffic to pick it up. He was right. I LOVE it! Mostly because it was FREE!) to line the garage floor  before we painted.

As much as I wanted to let him spray the red paint on, he just was not old enough to manage it yet. So mama did the spray painting. I did a total of 2 coats and let it dry overnight. The next day he helped me peel off the blue tape and we got to work on the next step.

He wanted the border to be black so he helped me paint the sides while I did the top edges. He was great at it. So careful and meticulous as always.

The one coat was definitely not enough. So we let it dry yet one more night and we came back and coated it again the next day. I finished it with clear acrylic spray and let it dry one final night.

And here is the finished piece. I just LOVE it!

He only wanted his Star Wars minifigs in the display for some reason. Don’t they look happy in there? :)

He was just as pleased with it as his mama. I love that he was part of creating it.

For now we have mounted it in his Lego area in the living room. But when he gets his own room come August it’ll be part of his Star Wars themed bedroom we’ll be creating.

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Tripp Trapps Revamped

by Adel Posted on May 1, 2011

Remember the kids’ used Tripp Trapps on Craigslist I had found for such great deals I was going on about last month? Well I decided I wanted to paint them and give them a new look since  they were different colors and really, just completely different chairs. Well painting wooden furniture is a big project for me. I have no experience in this area whatsoever. My very handy husband (aka Grizzly Dan) does. He volunteered to paint it and since I had tons of little projects I was working on anyway (and this really seemed like too much work even for me) I agreed to have him do it.

I really was trying to find the fastest way to get them painted and wanted to avoid as many steps as possible but there was no way around the sanding part. Thankfully my Grizzly already had the tools from when he built our deck so we didn’t need to buy anymore expensive equipment for the job. We paid extra for the paint and got Behr’s primer and paint in one. I think next time we’ll just prime and paint separately. It turned out the paint needed a minimum 2 coats anyway and he ended up doing it 3 sometimes 4 coats on certain parts of the chairs. We discovered having the right paintbrushes was key. Oh Mr. Grizzly also sealed it with a coat of clear acrylic spray.

After they were finally dried and assembled again I got to work on the fun part. I had found some stick-on vinyl wall art online. I ordered some silver mod circle ones in different sizes and started cutting them up to fit on the sides and backs of the chair. I placed them randomly all over. I’m really happy with the way the silver looks on the bright green!

So here’s what they looked like before. Two different shades of brown and scuffing in various places.

And here they are after! I’m SO HAPPY with the way they turned out. The bright green really pops in our house. I wish I could get a good shot of both chairs at once but unfortunately I just couldn’t find a big enough spot in our house with a backdrop where I was happy taking a picture of them. Trust me I tried. I would have had to drag them down stairs and out to the backyard. These things are HELLA HEAVY! So Photoshop it is!

Here are a couple more of them in action :)

My baby girl in hers.

And my 5yo in his. Not really. He usually sits on the seat instead of the foot rest. He was having a bad day and this was the best I could get from him that day. Oh well. He does love his *new* chair though!

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Salt Dough Lego

by Adel Posted on April 25, 2011

These days it’s become increasingly difficult for me to persuade my obsessed little boy to work on anything that is not Star Wars related. I’ve had to come up with creative ways to get him to branch out from Lego every now and then. I finally found this project for us online that met with his approval. Salt dough Lego men that we could customize!

It turned out to be more work than I anticipated spanning 3 days and 6 baby nap times! But it was fun to work on a different part each. It kept the project fresh for the little guy.

I purchased the blue Lego silicone molds on Ebay for under $10. I put the 5yo to work kneading the dough while I rocked his baby sister to sleep. We formed the men into the molds and popped them out carefully. We had so much dough so we used our pancake molds to make their space crafts. After we were done, I dried them in the oven at 200 degrees. They still needed to be left over night to dry completely.

The next day we were ready to paint! I found a whole treasure trove of paints and supplies in the garage from daddy’s former life as an artist. Score! I personally had fun with all the pastel and metalic colors :)

We spent a few hours painting our figures and then the 5yo wanted to dunk a couple of them in the dirty paint water. I still don’t know why this tickled him so but I let him when we were done.

I sealed them with clear acrylic spray and let them dry overnight. Voila! Our finished men. And of course I had to make a GIANT family for us! I’ll have to figure out a way to display them somewhere :)

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