More Craftiness for the Wall

***Spoiler Alert for Valine:    If you don't want to see what I made for you, don't read any further!!



While I was deep into the crafty mood yesterday, I decided to make a canvas for Valine, too.  I know that she has been wanting a piece of art that is "Subway style", so I found a quote I liked and went to work.    First I cut out the lettering from vinyl with my Cricut, using Cricut Craft Room (a new free program for Cricut owners that allows you to use your computer to arrange and manipulate images for cutting).   Previously, this could only be done using the Design Studio, which was costly, but Cricut Classroom is free and works really well.    

After applying the vinyl to the canvas, I painted the entire thing and peeled off the letters after it was dry.



Using a diluted bit of brown acrylic paint, I wiped it over the entire piece, using a vertical stroke.



Once that was dry, I gave it a coat of Mod Podge to protect the surface.  )Don't worry, this time I made sure to use the Matte version).



I think it turned out pretty great!! Hope she likes it, too.

Beautiful Things---Revisited

A couple of weeks ago, I made a canvas that just didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.  I liked it a lot before I added a top coat of Glossy Mod Podge.   Unfortunately, that coat made things too glossy (I wonder why?!- duh).  It wasn't terrible, but it lost the natural texture that I had been going for.

So this afternoon, I purchased a new canvas--a little bigger than the last one--and started over.   I painted a base-coat of white paint and then dry-brushed on yellow, blue and red.




Next I glued on some lace, ric-rack and tulle.



Then, I painted the whole canvas with white paint---letting some of the colors show through.
Once it was dry, I glued on the letters.  This time I made the letters a little bit larger to fill the canvas better.




The layers of paint, left a nice crackle effect this time which I really love.  Lots of great texture and the neutral colors I was going for.  To finish it off, I glued grosgrain ribbon around the edges.





While the first version wasn't terrible, I am much happier with this one.

Mailbox Re-Vamp

I wanted to share a little project I completed this afternoon. My old mailbox was in pretty sad shape, so I purchased a new one at Lowe's. Nice and clean, but oh so boring!
Months ago I purchased the Cricut Design Studio, but have never had time to play with it to figure out how to use it, so I figured this was the perfect chance to try it out.
First I cut planned out the branches and cut them out of two different colors of brown vinyl (Oh My Crafts has vinyl packs at great prices). It was a little tricky to place these on the mailbox smoothly, so next time I would definitely use the transfer paper.
Then, after re-sizing them on my laptop, I cut a couple of different birds and leaves.
Here's the finished product---I really love it!