Christmas Ornament: Polar Bear in an Ice Cave

     This weekend consisted of a lot of experimentation with ornaments.  I had found this fantastic glitter paint that I wanted to try using to coat the inside of glass ornaments.  I thought that maybe it would be even easier than glittering.  (Boy, was I WRONG.)

     In the course of my ornament experimentation, I managed to blow up an ornament in my oven, resulting in a massive glitter bomb.  I also wasted more ornaments than I care to think about trying different techniques.

     One of those techniques was just coating the outside of the ornament.  It was successful, but what's the point if you can't adhere vinyl to it and can find them at any dollar store... minus the mess and hassle?

     While coating the outside of the ornament, I noticed that the paint dripped down in a neat way.  So I did one ornament that was completely coated to test the technique, and the other one, I added significantly less.  I WANTED the drips.  To me, it looked like a cave... an ice cave.  Awesome.  I immediately knew what I wanted to do.

And I also did the back.

     When I was thinking about the design of the ornament, I went looking for some cute polar bear artwork, but nothing seemed to fit what I was looking for.  So I made my own.  :)

     I'm really loving the Designer Edition of Silhouette Studio.  Lots of neat tricks!

     I cut out all the vinyl, adhered it to my transparency to make the bear "float" in the middle of the glass ornament, and then added Swarovski crystals to the snowflakes for a little extra pop.  Super excited about this one!

And a few pictures of my experiments this past weekend.

     The vast majority were fails... but you can't win them all!

Polymer Clay Geisha

     I watched "Memoirs of a Geisha" the other day (one of my favorite movies) and was inspired with the colorful clothes and beautiful settings in the movie.  I instantly wanted to sculpt my own version of a geisha and after a clay doodle session, I came up with this:

     These were actually taken on a white piece of paper, but with the kids jumping around, I couldn't get the color settings just right.  This is close enough, though.  :)

     I named this geisha "Hatsumomo", not after the one in the movie (thank goodness, she wasn't the nicest person in the world), but because it means "first born" and "peach".  I found it fitting seeing as she was the first geisha I've ever made, and her head is most definitely round like a peach.  Hatsumomo is it!  She is 1.75" tall.

     She was made using Sculpey Studio polymer clay and Swarovski crystals.  After she was baked and cooled, I painted her face and obi and added just a touch of blush to her cheeks before signing the bottom (which I do with most of my polymer designs, though not all) and double-glazing her.

     Hatsumomo is going to be appearing in my Etsy shop.  That is, if the kids ever stop jumping on me!  :)

Freezer Paper Stenciling on Shirts

  My friend, Ashley, over at There is No Place Like Homemade has a great tutorial for using freezer paper stencils to paint on shirts.  I loved the way her Star Wars shirts turned out and wanted to give it a shot with shirts for my own kids.

    I think they turned out pretty decent!  Still have to heat-fix the paint in place, but this is how they looked this morning after peeling off the freezer paper stencil.

     Still have a little more work to do in order to finish them up, but I'd say that this was probably one of my favorite projects I've done recently!  Scarlett's birthday is coming up, so the Tinkerbell shirt will be for her party.  Going to hot-fix some rhinestones on there to "bling" it up for her.  Also, have to make one more shirt for Kai (aside from his ninja and dino shirt seen here), and two more for Cam (who got the Harry Potter shirt).  One quick word of advice.... when picking out a shirt, keep in mind that dark colors = a lot more coats of paint needed.  That Harry Potter shirt took about 5 coats of paint.  Also, the intricate wording of the Harry Potter shirt meant that I had to be super careful to make sure that every little crevice was not forgotten. 

     I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the freezer paper stencils, which helped reduce cutting time and allowed me to get a lot of painting done in a short amount of time.  The Tinkerbell silhouette had to be completely reworked in the Silhoutte software and was probably my biggest holdup.  Even with the Tinkerbell issues, it was still a super-fun project and I highly recommend it!