Make a Mosaic Bean Pendant

Hi everyone!

How was your weekend?   We had a pretty quiet Sunday, but our Saturday was full of fun activity.  I attended a bridal shower while hubby and Toddler Chuck visited family.  (I'll post up photos from the bridal shower later on this week.) I thought I'd start off the week with this crapty (and slightly crappy?) pendant that I made.

I think mosaics are lovely.  There's something quite special (and dare I say, possibly mathematical?) about laying pieces of varying shapes and/or colors together so that they fit a space and create a desired image or pattern.

Wanting to make a wearable mosaic of my own, I used some household materials to create this mosaic bean pendant:


Yeah.  I know what you're thinking.  Girl, that's a lot of look.  And my reply? Girl, I know.  But really, what does one wear with beans anyway?

Erm.... I'm not sure if I like the result, but I did have fun making it.  And who knows?  If you ever find yourself trapped at home with a couple of bored children, then perhaps you could whip these up for fun.

Materials:
- dried beans
- cereal box cardboard <--crap!
- craft paint
- paint brushes
- Tacky glue (I used Aleene's)
- String
- Felt
- Scissors

It's Friday!

Hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Making Styrofoam stamps

Hello there!

I'm on a crapting roll, so I figured I'd upload two posts today.

As you can see, I'm still working on my greeting card designs for the upcoming craft show.  Here's my newest attempt at crapting stamps:

These are the materials that I used:
- Scissors
- Craft knife
- Pencil
- Tacky glue
- Cardboard
- Styrofoam (I used one that originally held ground beef-- I know... gross when you think about it, but I promise I washed it really well)

To make these crapty beauties, I used a pencil to sketch out my designs onto the Styrofoam.  Then, I used my scissors and craft knife to cut out the different pieces.  Then, I used tacky glue to attach them to pieces of cardboard.  Once the Styrofoam was stuck on tight, I trimmed the cardboard so that it was slightly bigger than my stamp.

Instead of making a sponge ink pad, this time I used a paintbrush and painted a thin layer of craft paint onto each stamp before each use.   Here are my results:

Look!  My lettering came out the right way.  Hooray!

These stamps were fun to crapt... and I feel like I'm moving in the right direction... but I definitely have a ways to go if I want to make cards that are good enough to sell.

So currently I'm going back to the drawing board and channeling the mantra of Chuck's favorite book character:  "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."