Archives for December 2011

3D Snowman Framed Art

Let it Snow Christmas Wall Art

Oh my, I am loving these paper spheres.  Here, I showed you garland made from stringing them together.  Today, I will show you how to make this precious snowman framed winter art.  This is a quick, easy project, perfect for those last minute Christmas gifts to check off of your list.  Can we say frugal?  Absolutely.  Pop on over to the dollar store and get some 8×10 frames.  Aside from that, all you need is paper, a printer, glue and some circle paper punches, or some other way to cut precise circles in 3 sizes.

Framed Christmas Art Tutorial

Christmas Paper Decorations

Instructions:

Cut out 3 circle sizes for each ball of the snowman.  You will need 12 of each size.  I used 3 circle punches: 1 inch, 1.75 inc and 2.8 inch.

Let it Snow Framed Winter Art

Fold the circles in half.  If you are using patterned paper, fold so that the patterned side is inside.

DIY Christmas Decor

Start gluing flaps of circles together until you have glued all 12 for each size:

How to make paper snowman
How to make paper snowman

Handmade Christmas Decorations

Once you have all of your snowman balls ready, print this file from Printable Decor onto 8.5×11 inch paper.  It is the “Let it Snow” text and the snowman hat and arms.  I used scrapbook paper, light blue with snowflakes for a wintery background and a snowy red for Christmas.  Keep in mind that if your circles are much different in size than mine, you will need to adjust the size of the background graphics.  I made mine for an 8×10 inch frame.

How to make paper Christmas decorations

Glue your half spheres onto the paper, lining them up with the hat and arms of the snowman you just printed onto decorative paper.  Frame and hang!  You are obviously not going to put the glass in when you frame it since you want your snowman to be 3D.

Paper Snowman Tutorial

Let it Snow Printable

Homemade Christmas Ornaments

I am so excited to send these as Christmas gifts.  They are great decor for the entire winter season!

Burlap Tag Embellished Star Ornaments

Handmade Christmas Ornaments

{Originally shared at Sew Woodsy}   Today I will share with you my easy burlap tag embellished fabric star ornaments.

Supplies:

  • White fabric; I used leftover tea towel scraps
  • Fabric scissors
  • Burlap
  • Printer
  • Sewing machine or needle and thread
  • eyelets and eyelet setter
  • string or twine for hanging
  • Pencil for tracing template

Instructions:

  •   You are going to cut 4 layers of fabric at once, so fold fabric accordingly before tracing star shape.  Print and cut template star and trace onto fabric with pencil.

Star Christmas Ornament

  • Cut out star shape from 4 layers at once.

Star Christmas Ornament

  • Sew along outside of star with machine or by hand.  I used a cream colored thread and my machine.  You could use different colors for cool effect to match your decor.

Star Christmas Ornament

  • Print words on burlap, cut them to fit your star, and stitch them in place.  If you have never printed on burlap, there are tons of tutorials out there.  It is easy.  Here are the words I used if you want to print them.

Fabric Christmas Ornament

  • For the hanging mechanism, I just poked a hole at the top, insert an eyelet and set it, then put the string through there.  If you want you could sew a loop of thread to the back and forget the eyelet.  I like the look of the metal with the fabric and burlap.

Fabric Christmas Ornament

That’s all!

DIY Painted Pop Art

Photo to Pop Art

{This post was originally shared at Infarrantly Creative}.  One of my very favorite things to do is design in Photoshop.  In fact, I picked it up way before ever tackling painting… you know, with actual paint and a brush, in hand.  Today we are going to do a bit of both, in this acrylic painting right on the glass from a picture frame.  So, grab your favorite photo, lets tweak it a little Photoshop (beginner level, I promise), and use it to guide us in painting our own Warhol style pop art portrait.

Supplies:

  • Photoshop
  • Digital image file
  • Picture frame with glass
  • Rubbing alcohol
  • Acrylic paint in white and a deep, vibrant color of your choice
  • Fine paint brush for detailing, larger brush for dabbing (sponge or stencil brush) and one in between
  • Masking tape
  • Newspaper to protect surface
  • mixing palette for acrylics (paper plate or cardboard)
  • Heat tool (optional)

Instructions:

How to make pop art

Free tutorial for Photoshop

For width and height, you want to put in whatever your frame size is, which needs to be a size your printer can print.  Here, I went with 8×10 inch.  For the purpose of this project, set resolution to 300 ppi (field shown in above pic after width and height).

pop art with photoshop

After cropping, duplicate the background layer (I don’t like to directly edit the background layer in case I need to go back to it).  You can select duplicate from the layers palette window, or better yet, hit Command (Control for Windows) and the letter j at the same time…

pop art

Now desaturate the image (turn to black and white) with keyboard shortcut Command (Cntrl on windows) + Shift + the letter u.  I removed the background layer out of habit.  We don’t need to do this since the digital image is not our final piece of art.  Just leave it in and ignore it in the painting part (which will make sense soon).  After you desaturate, duplicate (control + J) the layer and rename it “Subjects”.

pop art tutorial for photoshop

photoshop tutorials pop art

Free photoshop tutorial

Photoshop beginner tutorial

pop art in photoshop

Open the Levels adjustment window and move the white and gray triangles around to get a photo with white, black and 2-3 shades of gray.  The black triangle on the left can stay put…

andy warhol pop art

photo shop tutorials

Now you are ready to print your image on just regular copy paper.

*NOTE:  If having the final portrait in the same orientation as the digital file is important to you, you will want to horizontally flip the image before printing it.  You can do this in Photoshop by going to the top left of the screen in the horizontal toolbar;  Go to EDIT—>Transform—>Flip Horizontal.

Remove the glass from the frame and clean it with rubbing alcohol and a lint free towel.

pictures pop art

On protected work surface, place print face up, then line up the glass on top of this…

tutorials on photoshop

Tape glass to print to keep it from shifting while you paint.

tutorials on photoshop

Now you are going to paint right on the glass, in layers – one color at a time.  First with white, then your color, then a light shade of your color and finally a darker shade of your color.  You must let each layer dry completely before moving on to the next to avoid unwanted blending.  I use a heat tool fot this, but you can let it air dry if you want.

First, the white…

Painting on glass

Now the color, as is, you will shade in the darkest areas.  These are the areas that are black in the print.  Use a light weight, taper point brush and create texture where hair frames the face and at the eyelashes and brows.

glass painting

le pop art

Now the light shade of your color, which you make by adding a couple of drips of your color to about a tablespoon (really… a tablespoon?) of white…

paint glass

Reminder to dry between layers…

Warhol a photo

And now that the paint is dry…Painting portrait

Now for your final layer.  This is a darker shade of your color (darker than the light shade, but not darker than the original color), made by mixing less white, more color than you did above.

Painting with Acrylics

Acrylic painting

Finally!  Flip the glass over and check out your masterpiece…

Pop art painting

See how it is reversed horizontally from the image?  Something to keep in mind, especially if there is text in the image you are painting.  Frame it and you are done.

Here are a couple more I did with the same technique.

DIY pop art pictures

Photo to Pop Art

These are a big hit, quite inexpensive to make and work up in less than an hour (especially if you use a heat tool to dry between layers).  I grab frames to have on hand while at thrift stores and flea markets for just this kind of thing.  Photos to pop art digitally is fun, but there is a different kind of  satisfaction that comes with getting paint all over the place once in awhile, right?  I love that you don’t have to be at all skilled in painting to get a cool effect (I am living proof)!

Another great idea to do with a photo is to have a photo mug made, which you can do inexpensively and without the mess of acrylics!  Find out more.

Thanks for checking out my project.  I hope you are inspired to create your own.

West Elm Coiled Paper Ornament Knock Off

[pinit]

Coiled magazine page project return!  These little things are so easy to make, and basically free.  I have shown you the larger cross wall art, and a small cross ornament.  A sweet friend who knows how into rolling paper I can be, pointed out these West Elm ornaments

WestElmOrnamentsI had just enough strips of folded magazine pages to make the tree and the star.  All I did was look at the example ornaments and place my round coils where they did.  For instructions on making strips and rolling coils, see this post.  I glued the round pieces together, then outlined them with strips, folding them to create the desired shapes, gluing them to the coils at the contact points.

Recycled Paper Crafts

Here is the tree before outlined:

Recycled Paper Crafts
Rolled magazine page artAnd the star:

Recycled Paper Crafts

Recycled newspaper crafts

Rolled magazine page art

I love how they turned out.  So cute, inexpensive and easy to make.  I am thinking a snowman next.  What do you think?

12 Days of Christmas Printables

Free Christmas Printables

Go on over to A Simply Klassic Home and check out my free printable. It is part of the 12 days of Christmas printables that Kristin is hosting!

Thrifty Thursday Week 52







Happy Birthday, Thrifty Thursday!  It is crazy that a whole year has gone by since I started this thing.  I have met so many creative women through this linky, and gotten inspired like nobody’s business.  Thank you to all who participate!!

How it Works: No giveaways, shop or links to your main blog, please. That way we know when we come to Thrifty Thursday, we will only encounter DIY projects and not end up sifting through a bunch of other links. Entries not related, or to main blog pages/shops/giveaways will be deleted.
Other stuff:
*Please add a text link or my button to your post!
*I will choose 2 participants to feature the following Thursday, Please drop by and love on the features! Their links are in the post where their projects are featured.
*Please visit the at least the 2 blogs above you and shower them with comment love.
*Leave me a comment and let me know you were here. I love hearing from you.
*Have fun and be inspired!
*Stop by and say hello to my crafty friend Nikki and link up to her thrifty party too…
thrifty decorating 019 button 3 Thrifty Thursday Week 51

Featured Projects:

Ballard Designs CurtainsBallard Design inspired curtains at Ugly Duckling Transformations

Mixed media canvas projectCool canvas art tutorial at Design DNA

Bring the creativity!

Paper Sphere Garland DIY

How to Make Garland

I wanted to do something with the gorgeous Martha Stewart holiday patterned paper I got in the mail, so I came up with this sphere paper garland.  It is super easy to make, albeit somewhat time consuming.  All you need is some pretty paper, a glue stick, a couple of circle punches and some twine.

How to make paper garland

Instructions:

Punch out a ton of circles.  Each sphere takes 16!  I used 2 different sizes, 1.75 inch and 1 inch, so that my garland would have spheres of 2 sizes.  Fold your circles in half, print sides up (or print sides together).

Paper Christmans Decorations

Glue on back of semi circle and press it to another semi-circle’s back.  Keep connecting back to back, for a total of 16.  Glue the flaps of the first and last paper circle together to close the sphere.

How to make Christmas decorations

 

Make Paper Christmas OrnamentsOnce you have enough spheres for your garland, string them on twine by sticking it through the hole in the center of each sphere.  That is it!  I have 22 spheres on mine and it took me several hours.  Totally worth it.  I just folded and glue while watching Netflix!

How to make paper garland

Free Cloth Paper Scissors E-Book

Cloth Paper Scissors Project

Remember when I shared these paper mache shoes with you?  I had several requests for instructions, which I got from the Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine referenced in the original post.  Well guess what?  CPS has made that article available for free in this e-book, along with three other cool projects.  I know, right?!  I am having so much fun with this particular e-book.  Keep your eyes peeled for some mixed media stitching projects here at SBLC.

20 DIY Christmas Decor Ideas

DIY Christmas decorationsSew Many Ways

Handmade Christmas DecorThrifty Decor Chick

handmade christmas ornamentMy Life in Sketches

handmade Christmas decorWee Folk Art

Fabric Christmas OrnamentsSBLC @ Sew Woodsy

make your own Christmas ornamentsNest of Poisies

quilled snowflake ornamentAlways Springtime Flowers

Origami Christmas OrnamentToday is My Someday

paper Christmas tree52 Mantels

Coffee Filter WreathLove Sweet Love

burlap pillow tutorialDesign, Dining and Diapers

diy rosette christmas treeRemade Simple Blog

snowflake garland tutorialCurbly

burlap christmas decorationsThe Crafty Nest

DIY Christmas DecorationsA Blonde’s Life

paper star tree topperPrintable Decor

DIY Christmas OrnamentPitter and Glink

Mason Jar Snow GlobeBlissful Whimsy

Believe Christmas PrintableA Simply Klassic Home

DIY christmas decorationsMandi Being Crafty

A Few Favorite Paper Ornaments

There is not enough time to make all of the ornaments I want to make. Here are ten gorgeous paper ornaments, some with tutorials, some without, that make me need to paper craft right now.

Vintage Paper OrnamentsFrom Flea Market Style

Paper Christmas OrnamentsFrom Paper Tip Junkie

Rolled Paper OrnamentsFrom West Elm

Paper Christmas OrnamentsFrom Paper Pixie Crafts

paper christmas ornamentsFrom Craftaholics Anonymous

Paper Christmas OrnamentsFrom Sampler

paper christmas ornamentsBy Jen Crotty at Cloth Paper Scissors

Paper OrnamentsFrom Craftberry Bush

Paper Christmas OrnamentsFrom the Vintage Wren

Paper ornamentsFrom How About Orange

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