Craft Fantastic Warrior Necklaces

Last year I went to Scrap Expo and learned about an AWESOME way to create jewelry without resin or anything like that. I was surprised it was SO easy and fun! The company that makes the supplies is called Craft Fantastic (CF). I was at Michaels and bought a 3 pack of bracelets I liked. That's how my idea train started lol!!   

I thought' how perfect!"..purple for my sister-in-law for Lupus. I made a "Lupus Warrior" charm with a purple butterfly. I thought it turned out really nice! 

 

Then I got to thinking...I could make a few necklaces and do a giveaway on the lupus support group I am a part of on Facebook. I made one necklace and there were like 254 comments to enter the giveaway! So, I made a total of 6 necklaces to giveaway. Here's a few of them...

I also made some other ones..Lyme, and cancer warrior. I want to make some for MS, breast cancer and ALS..there are so many things one could associate warrior with! 

The basic of the CF jewelry is a charm tray and jewelers glass. The charm tray is where the jewelers glass sits perfectly to create the domed look. Its really an ingenious way! 

Here's the steps I took to make one of the necklaces...

1. Create the saying or picture. If you print out the image or saying from your computer make sure you use card stock and let it dry thoroughly. I did a few and the used it 20 mins later and the image color bled. It's best to make a laser copy of your photo or image then the colors won't bleed at all. I don't have quick access to a laser copier so I just used my normal cannon color printer for these ones. 

2. Choose your charm tray and glass.

3. Trim your image a little. Place a small dot of glue on the glass and center the glass on the image. Press down slightly to ensure the glue spreads throughout your glass. Take a cotton swab and swab the edge of your glass piece to removed extra glue. 

4. Let your glass piece dry completely. This is the hardest part because I am impatient! But if you don't let it dry completely it will pull away from the sides when you trim and marks will appear on your piece. When its dry trim around the glass. It doesn't need to be totally perfectly exact..just close. 

5. Place a jewelers dot (AKA super strong glue dot) in the center of your charm tray. I imagine you can use a glue of some sort, but I use the dots because I use card stock and the card stock might soak up some of the glue ect. CF sells the glue dots and they are fairly inexpensive. 

6. Place the glass in the charm tray and  press down. There you go! You have a completed charm! Now you just need to choose a bracelet or necklace chain! 

I've ordered quite a few things from them..here's their link so you can start making these easy and fun charms! (No endorsement frills here..I just really like their products!) :) 

Craft Fantastic

Happy Creating! 

Melissa 

Planner Shaker Page

When I saw this paper at Walmart I knew I wanted to use it to create a big fun shaker page for my planner. Here's how I created it..

If you don't have a sewing machine you could use staples that are put close together. I sewed the page protector onto the paper and then adhered (the fully sewn with confetti) paper to chipboard. I inked it, punched 3 holes in it, and then put it in my planner. Evertime I turn to the page it makes me smile! 

:) Happy Creating, 

Melissa 

Personalize Wood Plaque with Photos and Sayings

While I was at the hardware store I saw a big bin of scrap wood for only  75 cents a peice! I thought they would be perfect for this project, so I bought a few. Here's what you'll need:

Flat Wood Pieces

Fine Grit Sand Paper

Clean Rag

Modge Podge

Paint Brush 

Printer/Computer

White Tissue Paper

Embellishments

Hot Glue Gun 

Here's how I created my wood plaque...

Print out your photos onto tissue paper. Here's the easiest way I found to get your photos to 

print out nicely onto the tissue paper: 

Cut a piece of tissue paper

Tape the tissue paper onto an 8.5X11 piece of copy paper

Run it through the printer (I have a top loading printer which worked perfectly) 

Cut the photo out from the tissue paper and set aside

 

Now it's time to get your wood piece all ready...

 Lightly sand any rough edges of the piece of wood 

 Give the wood a good wipe over with a clean rag

Arrange your cut out tissue paper pictures onto your prepped piece of wood

LIGHTLY brush your glue medium over your photos on the wood. Be very gentle as they will easily tear on the wood. Let dry and embellish with ink, buttons and ribbon. 

Happy Creating, 

Melissa 

Craft Room Projects

 I spent spring break at home with my boys. I got some great crafting time in! I got quite a few projects crossed off my "to do list". I made several things for my craft area. I SO LOVE the Simple Stories line "I am". So I incorporated papers and stickers into my projects. The first project I'll share is a shelf I altered. I bought the shelf on clearance a few months ago with the plan to alter it.

After the shelf dried I embellished and inked it. 

For the same ares in my craft area I converted a candle holder 

into a tool holder and also covered it in paper.  

My second project was a frame. I painted a brown frame black and turquoise. Then 

embellished it. 

I covered a white "M" hook and added stickers to an arrow plaque. 

My last project was altering cross stitch hoops. I started out by pressing the hoops into the paper.

Then I embellished them and hot glued them to each other. 

Once I got the paper into each hoop, I trimmed the edges and glued them together. 

A couple other things I did was a picture frame and labeled all my supply drawers. 

I'm SO happy I got a lot of projects done

my craft area is looking more like my own space! 

:) melissa 

Altered Picture Frame

My sister gave me a picture frame that I adore it. I love the picture and sentiment written on the frame. But not really the decoration of the frame (sorry sis!). So I decided to "pretty it up" a little today. Its a little pop of pinks and spring for me! I am so excited because we are starting to get nicer weather and I've got a serious case of spring fever!

 I did some fussy cutting and even used my glue gun today! 

Trace around the frame and cut out.

Measure 1 inch around the cutout of the frame and draw guide hashlines. 

Cut along the guide hashlines.

Tada..your boarder!

I wanted the boarder to be curled, so I made it slightly damp and rolled it between my thumb and pointer finger to get the edges to roll. This works best when the paper is damp but not super wet.

I painted the frame just a little bit, so the colored part wouldn't show through if I missed 

any parts when embellishing it. 

 Then I glued the boarder on and layed the foundation paper. I picked out all my 

flowers ect and arranged them out where I wanted them. I used a hot glue gun for this
 project. I like how fast the glue dries, you just need to make sure you remove
any webs that form.  

I was surprised how the fussycut paper embellishments added such an element 

to this project. It makes me look at paper in a whole new way! 

Happy Creating,

Melissa 

My Planner

This year I joined the Documented Life Project 2016. It's where Arttothe5 sets up challenges each week for you to do to your "unplanner". I do more paper and scappin type of pages now, but maybe later I will do more "artsy" pages.  They also have a FB group page. People post all of their "work" and it's really neat to see all the creative things people do with their "unplanners"!  I started off with a 3 ring binder with dividers. I covered mine with Simple Stories "So Fancy" paper. I used Arttothe5 weekly & monthly view planner pages but made a few modifications for my own planner. I need to keep a detailed schedule at work, so I modified the weekly page. I imported the weekly planner page into microsoft power point and made a grid for daily hour-by-hour time slots. I drew black lines to mark off areas and to make the sections more defined. I needed a place at the bottom of my work day for night time stuff so I drew another black line. I LOVE powerpoint..I use it for journal, editing pictures and doing planner pages. The program is great because you can place items anywhere on the page. I also created three other journal pages for each month.."goals", "reflections" and "right now" pages. I saved them on my Google Drive so you can download them. It's SO fun to work on each weekly challenge and journal about my week! I've also noticed I sure do have a lot of styles..I"m so glad I can have a different style for each week :) Here is the link to the planner journal pages I created...                                                  

  Planner Journal Pages

I added a little bit of paint, a gold arrow and cut my 

name out of my Sihouette in gold paper. 

Did I mention that I love gold? 

Here's an example of my "Refelctions" journal page.

In honor of The Walking Dead premier (I'm a big fan!)The weeks challenge

was "use shades of one color". I used brown..but it was

more fun to do TWD collage!