Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Owl Always Love You

Finished and available on Etsy!  Get your Owl pattern today.  It is a total "HOOT!"

I made this pattern up just a little bigger, a little smaller, and then included the pattern for my little midget owls shown below.

I haven't shown you those yet!  I have a cute little tree branch that goes along with them, but it, sadly, is not included in the pattern.

You can go to my Etsy site, TheBubbleBox, to find the pattern or check out my post last month when I showed off my little doorstep critter HERE.  

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

"Can't Hold It Back Anymore!"

In honor of the release of Frozen on dvd, I made these dollies to make for fun Frozen play.  I was asked by several different people what they were for.  Well...They are for me ;0}  I just thought it would be fun to make them.  Once I started painting, I began to wonder if anyone could even tell they were Frozen characters.  Regret soon followed once I discovered just how detailed their clothes were.  It has been a good number of years since I have done any real tole painting, so this little project was quite a refresher course for me.

If you haven't seen the  movie, you will see nothing special here.  These peggie dolls will only be magical to those that have been sucked into the magic of Arendelle.
Do you wanna' build a Snowman?

Pabbie!  Please Help!  

Do you have to go?

Can I say something CRAZY?

Elsa, we're Coming!

Elsa, Come home.

Sisters ROcK!

I realized about last night I need a later version of Anna, the just-before-snow-queen version of Elsa, and a kid Kristoff {working the ice}.  I thought about a sunburned Olaf.  I probably need a Marshmallow and the Duke of Weselton too.  
I guess I get to keep painting ;0}

From the left, Kristoff's sled.  Teen Anna, Queen Elsa, Kristoff, Hans, Mom, Young Anna, Dad, Young Elsa, Mom and Dad's boat in the back, Oaken {store owner}, Rock Trolls, Pabbie, Bulda, and Cliff, and just behind them, Sven the Reindeer.  Wait!  Where is Olaf!  How did he sneak out of this picture!?!

Let it go, let it go... he's in this picture  ;0}

So, that is what I did over the weekend, paint, paint, paint.  Now if you will excuse me, Target is finally open.  I am off to get my...er, I mean, Emmalee's copy of the newly released movie Frozen.  

Gotta go, Gotta go!
Can't hold it back any more.
Gotta Go, Gotta go!
Emmie dear, please don't slam the door.
No time to grab a coat.
The cold never bothered me anyway ;0}

Monday, March 17, 2014

This Little Leprechaun

This little leprechaun got a new skirt to wear to school today.

How could I resist the opportunity to make a new skirt?  Really, I couldn't.  Especially when I saw this cute fabric sporting little Irish birds in tiny cocked-hats.  The rainbow socks are just a side effect of, one, my love for rainbows, and two...we couldn't find any other leggings.  Apparently I will be folding a mountain of clean clothes once these photos are posted ;0}

I made this skirt like the Valentine's Day Skirt, but added
 the black ribbon belt and buckle for added leprechaun flair.
Emmalee thought the buckle was about the coolest thing she had ever seen and took the opportunity to show it to everyone we passed while out today.

Once again, these skirts are PERFECT for twirling. 
 I made the mistake of telling Emmers to do a little twirl...

Now I can't get her to STOP twirling!
Whatever.  Dance an Irish jig while your spinning my little leprechaun.



Your only young once.  Might as well spin every chance you can get.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Thursday, March 13, 2014

With A Little Luck

I just realized I never showed you my March Door Decor!  

As you can tell, I am feeling "Lucky" these days.  I am all the more excited for the whole shamrock theme seeing that the school mascot for all three kid's is the fighting Irish.  We could just leave these babies up all year long and the neighbors would just think we had amazing school spirit :0}

I think I was waiting until I did something else to this big guy.  I was thinking a big raffia bow in the center...and then I probably should have done the bead board at an angle to make it more exciting or something.  I really just wanted a simple, yet festive replacement for my sweet pink owl from Valentines Day.  I wanted to do a green version of the owl...

Can you tell I need more adult conversation?  I am even babbling on the blog now.

I made this little arrangement too.  I can't be held responsible for the whole button fiasco though.  The four leaf clover NEEDED something, I am just not the best at figuring out what.  

I still love my shamrock blocks though.

Just in case you need a little more St. Patrick's Day inspiration, you can check out what I made last year HERE and HERE.  The rainbow makes me smile every time I look at it sitting on my shelf in the hall.

See?  I like the rolled flowers I did last year.  I wish I would have looked at the picture earlier. 

Thanks for stopping by today, and "with a little luck" you and I both will get that adult conversation time we have been lacking!

Monday, March 10, 2014

World Traveling Kinders

Emmalee has been coming home every day absolutely bursting at the seams to tell me what she learned about England from school.  They had an airplane ride, tea with the Queen, and Emmalee even got to have her picture taken with the royal lady. 

 I had offered to change up that bulletin board a little while ago.  Em's teacher told me she would like a board where they could hang up a couple projects about the two countries they were talking about in their social studies unit, England, and them today they are starting in on Africa.  I thought for a while, then finally came up with a suitcase.

I cut the two "travel stamps" with my Silhouette machine.  The suitcase I made out of the colored butcher paper supplied by the school, but took it home so I could cut out and lightly shade the edges with a darker brown spray paint.  I have discovered, while spray paint is VERY stinky for a while on wood, on fabric and paper the smell dissipates fairly quickly.  

Emmalee came to school early with me so she could help hang up our giant suitcase.  She remarked at how ginormous it was.  I informed her that if 40+ students were going to tour two countries and only go to take one suitcase, it had better be the biggest one ever to fit all of their clothes ;0}

.PGNs For Grabs

I sat down to work on one thing yesterday and started playing around with these images.  I don't know if they will come in handy to anyone out there, but I will post them just in case.


Come Unto Christ is the theme for our youth program this year.  I tried to add the words to the image a bit...not sure I really love these couple...


But I really like this one.

While I am at it, here are some that I made last year and never posted.

Most of these images are available in .pgn format in my Dropbox file.  You are welcome to use them for any church related or personal project.  I ask that you do not use them to make things for sale.  I am missing a couple of the Child of God images in .pgn, but will try to get those available soon.

Pit Pass 2014

I went for a Nascar ID badge look this year.   This one is designed for one per photo

Here you get two per photo.  I was excited to find there is a barcode generator you can use for free.  That is how I made the Pit Level Access barcode scanner ;0}

So basically, you just put one cub scouts photo in the square provided, using whatever scrapbooking or photo editing program that allows you to layer images, save the file and repeat the process for each racer you have.  I like to use the boy's name as the file name to make things easy to name.  Then, I send the files over to the photo lab via the Internet to get them developed.  You can also load the images onto a disc and take them into the store for developing.  After that I laminate them with my dandy little laminator I bought at Walmart, punch a hole in the top and run a ribbon or yarn through the hole so the pit pass can be worn around the neck.  The smaller ones that are side by side measure 3x4 and can be inserted in the clip-style id badge cases sold at local office supply stores.  

After repeated requests, I have started including certificates in the collection.  Here is the award I came up to match this year's pit pass.  

You can access and download all of these files HERE in my dropbox.  If you want to check out any other pit pass versions or any other cub files I have you can find them HERE.  If you open your own dropbox account, you can just transfer the cub folder to your box and not have to download everything to your computer!  Score!

Let me know if you have any other questions 
vanessa.cam5@gmail.com

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Personalized Wooden Cars Sign

My cute little friend at church asked if I might be able to make a Cars sign for her son, but personalize it with his name.  I was originally thinking she wanted like Lightning McQueen with Brody's name on it or something like that.  I guess it just shows how long it has been since my little boy was all about the movie Cars. 
I was a little taken back by this symbol, but eventually figured it all out.

First stop was to make the printable.  It took a bit to get shadows and such with my measly little scrapbook program, but I was thrilled with how it turned out.  The original idea was to make the printable and just mod podge it to a wood cutout.  Once the printable was done, I started to think a wooden sign would be possible.

I grabbed a couple of handy panels of mdf and got cutting.  This sign is actually three pieces stacked together to give depth.  I used 1/2" mdf for the back piece, an outline of the whole sign.  It would be possible to just cut the v shape that is in the background, but it wouldn't be as sturdy or ...just nice, as it is when the back piece is solid.  

I then cut the whole grill front out of 1/4" mdf and then just the red name plate out of 1/4" mdf as well.  

I painted all the metal parts grey, and then with a sparkly metallic paint.  With those metallic paints you want a solid color base coat or they don't show up as well.  I painted the name plate red, then used a burnt umbery, brownish red to make the subtle chevron background.  The original image has stripes, but since the chevron is trending right now I went with chevron as the background.  Either way you go, it is really a nice touch to add that slight contrast in the background.  Having a pattern in the background softens it and adds texture and complexity to the project with little effort.  Those additions make things more exciting ;-}

I was going to cut the name out of wood, paint it and try to glue it on there, but let's face it.  I have been overcome with laziness with this long winter and I just didn't have it in me.  I ended up cutting the name three times out of vinyl.  I cut the black name above out of black vinyl and a medium grey vinyl, then I cut the grey name above out of a shiny metallic grey vinyl.  Once I had all the extra scraps of vinyl weeded off the backing sheet, I used my transfer tape as the tool to line everything up before placing on the board.  

I stuck the transfer tape to the shiny metal, bits and pieces Brody vinyl.  Once that was all attached to the transfer tape I pulled the transfer off the backing and then centered the attached shiny metal vinyl over the medium grey vinyl so they were right on top of each other.  After I had two of the three vinyl names stacked, I added the third by once again centering the transfer tape over the black, triple checking that everything lined up, and then placed the transfer tape on top of it so that the black was shadowing the grey.

Here is that picture again.  
Telling you what I did with the vinyl is way more complicated than actually doing it ;0}

I triple sprayed everything with Rustoleum 2x clear spray paint, glossy, to give it that shiny Cars shine, lightly sanded edges, then wood glued it altogether.  So fabulous!  Wow Lauren.  That was a totally fulfilling project.  I wasn't sure how I was going to do it at first, but the finished product made it all worth it.  Thanks for asking!

Novelty Print Quilt Pattern

I have had a hard time finding good quilt patterns for novelty prints the past couple times I purchased them.  I made up this pattern so tha...