Fancy Feather Markers *3*

It's back to school time! You on a budget but still want to be fabulous? Say no more, because have I got the perfect craftista project for you! Feather white board markers! AHHHH!!!!! *C* They don't take very long to make nor do you require many materials. All you need is a pack of colored feathers, a roll of masking tape with a colorful print of your choice, a roll of clear scotch tape, sequins to match the feathers (again I just recommend buying a pack of mixed colored sequins), and of course white board markers. To make them, first start by taping on feathers to the last inch or so of the marker end. Do this using the thin, clear scotch tape. After it has been feathered to your liking, wrap the marker with strips of the patterned masking tape, I'd say with at least two layers to give it an even thickness throughout. Finally, hot glue matching sequins to line the borders of the markers (see the pictures) to give a final finished look. And that's it! They're lots of fun and give you something colorful, bright and sparkly to start the school year with :-D. 

Oh So Pretty Picture Frames

Some time ago I had a number of picture frames lying around that I wasn't so sure what to do with. By now I've taken lots of photos that I would like to frame in them, but even if that wasn't the case it is still a lot of fun to think of ways to jazz up picture frames. What you see below are the results of my picture frame makeovers (well technically one of them is a mirror but you know what I mean). I painted and embellished the wooden frame on the top left and embellished the remaining three which were plastic. The pictures that follow are close ups of my hot glue gun embellishments to give a better view of the gems and buttons used. I think that the frames turned out well and are pretty enough to hang on the wall even without any pictures inside. ;D b 

Pretty Watercolors

Here are a couple of simple watercolor paintings that I did on a small watercolor painting pad. The first one is of a black cat and the second of a mountain view. After the main parts of the paintings were done I outlined parts with black marker for added definition. The cat painting I made to look similar to a much larger one that I did on canvas as an undergrad. I wasn't sure where I placed it though, which was partly why I wanted to create it again. Anywho, here they be, and I must say that they look really pretty when taped onto a window where the light shines through. 

Soft Doggie Blankets *3*

Everybody likes soft, comfortable things, animals included. From having pets, I've found that animals, hedgehogs, chinchillas and dogs alike love to cozy up to a soft piece of fabric (e.g. my hedgehog Fiona loves to ball up in some crushed velvet). So far I've made a couple of blankets for dog friends, the one in the picture being my most beloved dog friend Penny. I had made it sort of a tradition to give her pink gifts in the past, and wanted to make a soft blanket for her with the same color scheme. The rainbow hello kitty fabric I already had and used for the quilted scallops. The hello kitty fabric I found at Wal-Mart, which ended up looking great with the scallops! To give the blanket a finished look I sewed fabric tape to line the edges along the scallops. I think I can safely say that by the picture the blanket was most certainly dog approved. :-) That and the pillow that I made to match it (to the left of Penny on the blanket). 

Some Home Decor for the Craftista Part 3

Essential to any craftista is the desire to create. Couple this with other interests like fashion and home decor and you get the typical Tanya posts: embellishment projects, home painting, and pillow making! Yup ^c^ I got some more pictures of things that I made, not very recent but I'd say from the last year or so.

The shelves were originally all white. They were already painted which made painting them easier. I wanted to do something blue but with a splash of color so I paired it with some bright pink paint that I had lying around. The two colors go really well together and I really like how the pink looks on the inside. It adds a nice extra bit of cheeriness to the cute items on display. Next is a small thrift store end table that I jazzed up with the same blue metallic paint of the bookshelves and (of course) gems. I also painted the handle and the inside of the drawer gold. Following that is a really nice green plastic jewelry box that I found some time ago at a thrift store. Now what could be better than green? BLINGED OUT GREEN! For this project I simply hot glued a bunch of bright green rhinestones to the box's drawers. I just embellished the front of the drawers, partly cause I ran out of rhinestones but also cause I wanted to add a nice rhinestone touch (not overkill!). Oooooh the sparkleeee *C*. 

And let's see.... what else? Oh yeah! pillows! The circular pillow was made from a blank white cotton sheet that I colored to give the appearance of a little fish bowl. It was the perfect project for using up some plastic fish beads that I had lying around. Embellishing the sand, seaweed, and bubbled with pearls helped finish it off. The remaining pillows were made from thrift store scarves, easy to sew up since they're already perfectly cut squares. Pretty huh? They're also extremely comfortable, stuffed to the max with cotton fluff. I keep some around my house and another in my school office. I have a few more vintage scarves that I plan on making pillows out of as well. Trust that those pictures will be posted when complete! :-)

End of Summer Painting Project

I decided to end the summer with a pot painting project from my to do list. Like the other small painted pots featured on this blog, I wanted to create something pretty and personalized for my plants. It took a while trying to figure out what sort of design I wanted to paint, but eventually I settled on the idea that I would paint

something blue and white. I picked out the unpainted pot and so-called patio paints for this at Michael's. Patio paint is a special kind of paint for things like pots that you plan on keeping outdoors. The paint has been made in such a way that it will not wear or wash away from the rain or snow. Great for those like me who like keeping lots of plants out for patio gardens! After applying a couple base coats of off-white patio paint to the mid section of the pot (used blue for the lid and drainage dish), I lightly sketched out a leaf pattern over the white with a marker. Then I just lightly dabbed the leaf outlines with small amounts of blue paint and as a final touch put a little orange inside the leaves to add a splash of color. Note to self: white, blue and orange look awesome together! Now I just have to decide what kind of flowers to keep in this. :-) 

Lovely Dress Embellishment

Although it's been a while since I've embellished clothes it's something that I really love to do. Once I get into that embellishment mood it's one of those things that'll take over my whole day. I get so absorbed in my work and am so curious to see the end result that I'll usually work on an embellishment project nonstop. Then before I know it it's all done! :-) It's fun and

relaxing for me as well so it doesn't really feel like work to me. Anyway, it was recently that I got into one of these embellishing moods, which I did along with cutting and hemming a dress. The green dress that you see in the pictures was originally much longer. I'd say that I cut off at least six inches worth of material. That involved cutting both the outer cotton fabric and an inner polyester-like fabric that was used as an inner skirt for lining. I didn't want the fabric to fray after hemming so I first folded over the fabric on the outer and inner skirts and then hemmed them. Those details aren't shown in the pictures but I just thought that they were worth mentioning. Anywho.....as far as the embellishing goes, it was simple, just time consuming. I had a bunch of really pretty green glass beads that I sewed in layers of two for a couple of rows on the dress bust. After that I thought that a thinner layer of beads would be a good way to trim off the embellishment. I didn't want the dress to look like it was too heavily beaded. I also didn't want it to literally be heavy with beads to the point that it would be weighed down at the top.

You usually don't think of things like that when you start to embellish, but after doing it a few times you learn to factor in the weight of your beads against the fabric. It helps to avoid what I call "the droopage". :-) 

Cool Patterns *C*

If there is anything that unifies the end result of most of my craft projects it is the incorporation of embellishment and patterns. Whether it be the beading detail on fabric or the studding of gems and rhinestones over paintings and drawings, I always find myself embellishing to add, for my own personal tastes, that last finishing touch. Displayed here are some more crafts I've done that haven't yet been posted to this blog. Collectively they represent a miscellany of crafting projects, though all of them have that personal embellished pattern loving touch of mine. :-)



This here is a pillow made from fabric that I designed and created. Using some plain white fabric I colored over the whole thing with fabric markers to create the orange, white and brown zig zag pattern with the green border. I also separately drew out the deer-like creature on fabric with fabric markers and sewed the little guy on top. As you can see I started embellishing the orange zig zags with beads. I haven't finished partly because I ran out of the beads that I was using for that. I really do need to get around to completing that. Bad Tanya! ;D

 This bag is another fabric markers related project, using a similar color scheme as the pillow shown above. I was lucky enough to find a blank tote at a local thrift store, so the only work for me was in drawing in and coloring my designs with the fabric markers. Afterward I added some gems to the top handle area of the bag, and then added some fabric touches to the triangles and orange background to create that nice finished 3d effect.

Recognize this little gal? It's Miffy the Bunny! ;D I decided one day to sketch out her picture from an old Miffy book that I had lying around. Then again I couldn't resist and just had to add the beads and gems. I think that the bright orange pony beads do a really good job of framing the little painting.

This painting involved a lot more work than one might think. It was originally a fashion art print of a mannequin that I picked up at the dollar general store for a few dollars. I wasn't that crazy about the print but I thought I would be able to make do with the wooden base. SO... what I did was apply several layers of streamer tissue and glue to the board to create a good painting surface. After it was all dry THEN I painted the polka dot vase with flowers on top. I've used a similar technique to decorating Styrofoam balls. That is, first give the streamer and glue treatment to the surface, and then paint over it. Really good technique to use if you want to make your own custom hand painted ornaments with the Styrofoam.

And lastly is a purse that I embellished the heck out of! It used to be all black, but seeing as I had a ton of rhinestones lying around I thought to myself "Hey!!! Why not give this purse a makeover?" ;D I really like how the rhinestones create an entirely new look for the purse with the contrasting black and white. Mind you though that this was a lot of work since I literally hot glued each individual rhinestone to make the front and back of the purse look like this.

Plant Pots Prettiness *3*

Gardening has become a newfound hobby of mine this summer, sort of to the point of obsession actually LOL. I water my plants regularly, check up on them all the time, keep a journal about their daily growth, draw them, and even decorate the pots that they reside in! That brings me to this post, which features a few of the well decorated pots in my plants collection. The painted pots were done by me and my brother earlier in the summer. The one with the coral background and intricate pattern was done by myself, the red and

green one by my brother. We simply purchased a couple of ready to paint pots in the crafts section of Target and painted them together that evening. It was during a later visit from my brother that I thought hey,..., why not start growing some seeds in them? I wasn't using the pots for much else, and they turned out to be the best starter pots for sproutlings. I scattered a bunch of English daisy seeds throughout the soil of my pot, while my brother carefully placed a few red sunflower seeds in his. My daisies are growing a plenty, and as you can see by the sheer size of them my brother's flowers are growing at an incredibly fast rate. They sprouted not too long after he planted them. I'm going to have to transfer his sunflowers

to a bigger pot very soon, one which I plan on painting as well. I actually already sketched the design for that pot painting last night LOL. The third plant in the green pot is a celery that I have been growing since early summer. I am amazed by how many stalks it sprouts from the center. I'm curious to see how many it will end up growing. Right now I believe that it has 13 stalks with two more on the way. I can't wait to start using some of the celery leaves for some god awesome tempura. Mmmmmm *C* But yeah onto more crafty matters, you can see that the celery's pot is also well decorated. I chose to hot glue a bunch of beads onto the plastic pot. Although the plastic beads were quite cheap coming in bead bins from Michael's and Walmart, I think that the combination of colors is quite elegant and once again comes to show how you can make very nice looking crafts without spending much money. Awesome!!! ;D

Paintings By the Craftista

These paintings and drawing were done quite a while ago, but partly because of a bad camera I didn't take these pictures until now. Both paintings feature a character of mine, which if you look throughout the blog will recognize in the dolls that I created some years ago. I had always wanted to do paintings featuring my Louise Brooks

inspired character and often sketched little portraits of her in different costumes and settings. I was really happy with both results and have both paintings hanging in my apartment. The one with the green skin is of course the wicked witch of the west, and the one with the orange cap on is just one that I thought of sort of free style to go along with the red and yellow pattern in the background. In both cases I glued on gems as embellishment, which I feel adds a nice 3 dimensional finishing touch. I have planned on painting other wizard of oz inspired portraits, just haven't gotten around to finishing them. One portrait that I have worked on some is one made to

look like glinda of oz. When I do get around to finishing that I will of course post a picture here as well. The last photo of this post is a drawing of my girl wearing a little carrot couture costume. I've actually sketched her in various other fruit and vegetable inspired outfits. I think it would be the cutest to create little outfits for my dolls like these. The carrot couture drawing I have taped to the window of my school office. It adds a nice cheery touch to look at now and then for some eye rest from the computer. :-)

Oh the Things Modge Podge Can Do! *3*

So it was some time ago that my mom gave me a couple of black bookshelves which were nice and all, but for my own tastes what I really thought would be cool would be something on the brighter more colorful side. I had successfully painted a couple of white

bookshelves in the past, and so I thought that I would challenge myself by giving one of my black shelves a makeover. What you see in the pictures is the final result, which turned out well enough that I don't think you would have guessed that it had originally been black. What I first did was paint the whole thing over with several coats of pink paint. The paint did not have any fancy gloss finishing to it, so even after numerous coats of paint it still looked sort of dry and unfinished. That was when the idea of using modge podge came in. If you don't know, modge podge is basically an adhesive that is sold in jars in the craft sections of many stores like Wal Mart or specialty craft shops like Hobby Lobby and Michael's. People often use them as a final sealant over paintings or projects to give that final glossy finishing touch. There are numerous varieties of modge podge, some being totally clear and others having a slight tint to them. I chose the rose tinted kind as I thought it would go well with the pink base that I had already put on the bookshelf. The tricky thing about modge podge is applying it so that it dries as evenly and as clearly as possible. The thing to remember is that applying modge podge to things is basically like painting on glue, so it will dry on thick as is, often times resulting in a streaked appearance. This becomes even more apparent when you apply the tinted kind. To get around this I thinned out the modge podge with some water. When you do so you might think at first that it looks too runny, but I've learned that modge podge can never be too runny and usually the runnier the better. Diluting it with the water thins the adhesive out and results in an even glossy coating to finish off the project. The gloss definitely did make the shelf look more finished, though some areas were a bit streaky from some earlier trial runs with the modge podge. So...to give it that final FINAL finishing touch, I added a red blotched pattern with paint all over, used the same paint to

color the frame, and then spread a little bit of glitter paint all over. The result: an awesome bookshelf to proudly display your most girliest things! *3* I chose to use it for holding some of my shoes, especially the ones with more color, patterns and bling. I think that it adds a nice glamorous touch to the bedroom. <3