For the Twi-hards

I'm going to start off with some honesty. This is not my favorite piece...the creative process was very weird, but I just gave in to it and this was my result. While I don't love it I think the idea is still really cool, and will hopefully continue to try things like this until I get it right. Maybe some of you will try it, and get there before me! 

In case you aren't understanding the reference this is a copy of the cover of the third twilight book Breaking Dawn:

Start off with a canvas, mine is 16x20 and paint it black. As you can see I used a foam brush and regular acrylic paint. 

I painted all in one direction, not that it made so much of a difference since the black paint was pretty thick so you couldn't really see stroke lines anyway. 

Ta-Da! black canvas! 

Let that dry, and then go find someone who is more artistic than you and owes you a favor...in my case it was my roommate Rachel (thanks Rach!) I sat her down in front of the picture I wanted, gave her a piece of chalk and promised her chocolate! 

She drew me this: 

YAY for talented friends! 

I bought twilight at Goodwill for 2 dollars!
(which is what inspired this project in the first place by the way) and while I know it isn't Breaking Dawn, the picture on breaking dawn was just cooler than on the first book, so everyone is just going to have to be ok with it. 

I ripped a bunch of pages out and cut them up like so. I obviously used more squares than the one in this picture but I just kept cutting as I needed more. I also cut smaller pieces for the more detailed areas. 

I used Elmer's glue and pasted the paper in accordance with the sketch.

Since there is chalk all over the canvas I needed to paint in black again, so I painted over all the chalk and only slightly over the book pages

I could still see through to where the lines ended so I could do another layer of book pages. No picture of the next layer...but put it on just like the first. 

Then I needed to make the red pawn! I wasn't sure if this would work, and felt pretty great that it did! So many future possibilities!

I got this paint at RiteAid for a bit more than I would have liked to pay, but it did the trick

Mix the paint in a bowl with a little bit of water

and using a felt brush paint over some pages! If it isn't see through enough add more water. Don't be afraid to test out some pages for different looks, Twilight has about 500 pages so go crazy. 

I only did 3 and it was more than enough once I cut them up.

I wanted it to be shiny so I got some Mod Podge with a gloss finish. This was my first time using Mod Podge! Woohoo! In case you don't know Mod Podge is a mix of glue and water (that I've been told you can make at home which I'll maybe try when I am more familiar with it) it is a sealer used in a ton of crafts, and I can't wait to keep using it! 

 I generously painted it on with a foam brush. In retrospect I should have been more careful to paste down the corners of the pages, since some of them would come up when I was putting on the Mod Podge which made it more difficult. 

This is what it looks like waiting to dry (don't worry it will dry clear) 

Hang it up, and it is complete! 

Color my Collar

I REALLY wanted a collar necklace. I was inspired by this post in my friends AWESOME website Dahliasday. Eventually I found one I really liked, in this really weird pinkish color. 

I kept reading that you can paint these necklaces, so I decided to give it a go. 

The first thing I learned is that its very important not to use acrylic paint - it will come right off, and probable get your clothes dirty. The best thing to use for a necklace this is nail polish. Another option is spray paint, to create a look like this: 

Which I hope to try soon!!

I put down newspaper, because I am VERY accident prone and went to painting! 

Paint a layer of white nail polish (prepare to be patient, it takes a long time) 

Left that to dry for like 10 minutes, and then painted the colors. 

  Since I don't have a stash of nail polish I had do buy, and just went fro the cheapest brand at my local rite aid. These are the colors I used:

It doesn't really matter what colors you use as long as you think they look good together, and you try and keep it somewhat symmetrical.

After I painted all the colors I did a second coat and let it try for an hour. I put on a top coat because I felt the colors were a little dull and it gave it all some shine. 

Let it dry over night and you are done! 

Picture Perfect

 I got this picture frame at goodwill for a different craft that didn't go as planned. I wanted to use it as a regular picture frame, but as you can see it's majorly dirty!

Enter: yarn! I got this one at Michael's and specifically chose it because it changes color

With a glue gun I glued the yarn into the corner of the frame 

 Then I started wrapping the yarn around the frame

 Just keep going, making sure to tighten the yarn as you go

After an hour of wrapping it will look like this: 

Since I had so much left over yarn I wanted to add some pom-poms to the frame

Before you start leave about 8 inches of yarn on the side, for a later step. 

Then wrap the yarn around 3 fingers. This is a mini pom-pom so I wrapped it around 20-25 times

Carefully remove the wrap from your fingers and place it on the pre-cut piece of yarn from before

Then tie a tight not, so it looked like this: 

Stick a sharp scissor through the loops and cut!

Do the other side the same way

Trim it so it's even and you will have mini pom-pom! 

I made two more, that were bigger - wrapping it 40-45 times instead of 20.

Then I glued them in the corners with a glue gun, used scrapbook paper for the background, pasted the picture and presto! Picture frame!! 

It even looks legit among my other frames...WIN!

Makeup Magnet Miracle Board

This is my beloved makeup magnet board. It improves my life in so many ways.

I made this a while ago, before I even thought of starting a blog so I don't have the best pictures of it...sorry...you will have to bare with me. 

My makeup was driving me crazy! I didn't know what I had, and I was trying a MILLION ways to organize it. First I bought a small plastic drawers like this one:

but it took up so much room, on my not-so-spacious dresser and I still couldn't really see what I had. For a couple months I was looking for just the right solution...A collection of different cosmetic for different types of make-up, or maybe an old school Kaboodle?

After a while I came across this:

The perfect solution! Off to goodwill it is!    

I found a frame that I really liked that was all in the gross brown color you see in the corner

the picture inside it looked like this:

pretty, no?

I stopped at the hardware store, and asked for white and purple paint, originally planning to paint it white first, just to make sure  you couldn't see through to the weird brown, and then topping it in white. I also picked up a 1" paintbrush.  

I honestly don't know that much about paint, so in hindsight this could have gone really poorly for me but I just sort of went with it. At a craft store I probably would have been REALLY overwhelmed with the choices of paint, so my local hardware store was just easier for me.

I put plastic table cloth over my floor, to avoid stains and painted the base white (the Popsicle sticks were to mix the paint, it just looked like it needed mixing when I opened it)

yep thats the same picture as before!

As I mentioned I was going to paint it all purple, but because I was using a big paintbrush it naturally didn't fill in all the details and I just fell in love with how it looked so left it white, in those areas.

When I picked up the frame I also got this handy-dandy magnet board. I actually ran around goodwill looking for magnet so I could make sure it was magnetic! 

 I needed a fabric to lay over it and remembered that when I got my bed set, it came with pillow cases for a European Sham (those two in the back) 

Can you believe I googled "red and orange Macy's bed in a bag and mine came up third!?!

Since my bed has PLENTY of pillows, I never felt the need to get the European Shams, so the cases have been sitting in my closet waiting for me to do something crafty with them...Guess what happened next??

Overjoyed that my make-up board would match exactly with my bed (which you can't tell from the picture but is kind of its own special red) I cut the pillow case apart and glued the fabric onto the magnet board.

In this picture you can kind of see the lines, but they don't really show up when there isn't a camera flash directed towards it

OK, so that's the board. After that I went to Staple's and picked up a whole bunch of small circular magnets likes these:

I hot glued them to the backs of my make up appliques, some required one, and some required  more. My Nars blush and bronzer were both magnetic, so I didn't need to glue the magnets onto those. 

I added one magnet to hold a bunch of bobby pins and then I was done! 

It looks like I have no makeup, but I'm actually using the board as a way to put up the make up I actually use, because when I started emptying out my case I realized I have a million of each thing, so I use the good old plastic drawer to store the makeup doubles, and will put them up when this stuff runs out! 

I still have 3 cups on my dresser holding eyeliners  mascara, lip gloss and tools but it takes up way less space then it used to and is all organized so I can see!