Grosgrain: ANOTHER SILHOUETTE MACHINE GIVEAWAY!!!!

Grosgrain: ANOTHER SILHOUETTE MACHINE GIVEAWAY!!!!

Lots of Silhouette love this week!

There are a number of Silhouette cutter giveaways this week in blogland.  Check out these links to try and win one for yourself!  If you don't win, they're also doing a Cyber Monday deal. 

Thrifty Decor Chick
Infarrantly Creative
HowDoesShe
Make it and Love it
Tatertots and Jello

Thrifty Decor Chick: Silhouette Craft Cutter Giveaway!

Thrifty Decor Chick: Silhouette Craft Cutter Giveaway!

Back in Business

You haven't heard from me lately.  I've had all of these big thoughts on crafts and activites for Thanksgiving and Christmas and have been planning all of the things I can blog about.  However I've seemingly been thwarted at every turn.  I've bought clay, felt, sequins and fur and each one led to disappointment.  The last straw was my Silhouette when I broke the plastic cutter.  Ugh.

So deep breath.  And another.  And... ahhhh ok, much better now.

And then happiness!  My replacement part for the Silhouette came today.  So hopefully I'll be back with some crafts before you know it.  The silhouette is whirring away as I type!

Lost in a daze

Wow, my Halloween coma lasted over a week!  Everything is finally put away now so I'm feeling better about that.  It's a daunting task to wrap and pack all of the usual holiday goodies and then to find space for the new goodies that were aquired. 

Now my basement storage area looks like this:

As you can see I'm fond of Sterilite containers.

How about yours?  How do you store your out of season items and how much space do you allocate before you have to start purging?

Happy Halloween weekend!

Halloween is almost here, are your party plans ready to go?  I still have a to-do list but things are slowly getting checked off.

I wanted to draw your attention to this great dessert idea from The marshmallow studio.  They will make custom marshmallow treats for any occasion from their San Diego shop.  The puffy pieces are priced from $12 per doz and will ship. 

See you on Monday!

Tombstone tutorial: Part 4

So if you've been following this tutorial and are still with me, Congratulations!  Thanks for hanging in there.  Last time we finally saw a real monument coming together and it is now caulked and sanded and primed.  Now we're ready to foam coat!

The foam coat is tricky and time consuming.  You can only mix a small amount at a time or else it will harden before you can get it on.  I used Hot Wire Foam Factory's Foam Coat plus Bounce on all of the soft foam pieces like the top trim.  I used Foam Coat by itself for the middle and Foam Coat plus Boost for the bottom and top.  It took me one entire day from top to bottom.

Once that was over it was on to paint!  Fortunately this was the fast and fun part.  The first layer I used was stucco paint in a matte finish from Home Depot.  It came white and I didn't change anything.  This paint was thick and easy to apply.

Pretty and white:

Next I added marbling around the whole monument.  For inspiration take a photo of real marble and see how the lines run and change.  There are many marbling techniques shown online as well.  Remember that this is a prop, not a piece in your home, so you want it to be on the "overdone" side so it will stand out.

Then I started aging and weathering it by adding "water stains", "dirt" and so on.  I used multiple shades of grey and a hint of black for these.  Since this was an actual tombstone I mainly followed the photos I had.  However if you are going from your imagination, visualize how this piece would stand out in the rain, collecting airborne particles and being exposed to the elements.  Nooks and crannies will either get a lot of deposits, or few, depending on where they are located. 

Make sure you are consistent and it will turn out well.

This will be mainly seen at night, so make sure you over emphasize the weathering so it will show up under event lighting.

Next I tackled the verdigris on the bronze.  I used several shades of turquoise craft acrylic paint.  I wanted it to show up, but not be overboard.  On the original it runs down onto the marble, so I copied that as well.

For my final step I used Thompsons Water Sealer over the whole thing. 

And finally, we're done!!!

Thanks for walking through this project with me.  Even if you don't build this one I hope it gives you ideas for something else with these techniques.

Let me know what you try!