Make Crafts for Fun, Gifts and Profit - Art Projects You Can Really Enjoy! #Crafts #DIY

Really, I just love crafts : )  I've always been very 'crafty' - hahaha!  From these gorgeous wee 'bear beds quilts' I used to make when I was in University. They were little baby quilts, and I was all about Primary Colors for children, at the time, so I usually made them with red, blue and yellow bears, on a green background - I was always in a kindergarten class, back then, and it took having my own wee girl to finally cross over to pastel colors! hahaha!  I was all about teaching until I had my own beautiful little baby, then I was all about, What does Cara want?? And I'm still that way! hahaha!  And now Cara will be 25, this year! lol!  Time flies when you're children are growing up : )

Crystal Wire Sculpture - by far my favorite new thing to make!

I'll see if I can find a picture of them, but they were a  full yard square in green with a little trim lace around the outside for the girl babies, then a square in the center on one side made of 9 squares, no two colors together, so first row, blue, red, yellow, next row underneath, yellow, blue, red... you get the idea... each of the red, yellow and blue squares was a little bed for the bears, so I made 9 small envelops, and would sew those together, then sew them onto the green base.... and then I would make 9 little bears, red, yellow and blue, sew them and stuff them, and draw on a very cute little face on each bear.  What a gorgeous project that was - so much fun for me to make, and I loved giving them out as gifts.  The children loved to carry the bears around, they could put them in their mouths, put them to bed, match the colors, or mix the colors... was a very sweet wee toy, and fun to cuddle up with.  For a while, there, there were a lot of tiny children with their own pockets full of wee colorful bears! hahaha!

So, really, that's where I started with making crafts, although I always loved teaching Art with my students, over the years.  Just remembered - I've got some really good Lesson Plans for fantastic art projects for yourself or your students, if you happen to have some! lol!  But making crafts, or crafting, if you will, is a great way for you to relax, enjoy yourself, and create something gorgeous, or lovely, or shiny!  Whatever it is that you like, and it's a fantastic creative outlet - and then you can sell your crafts, too, on ETSY, and all sorts of venues, now.  Who knows, maybe you'll be doing something you really love and start a new career!!

I love cake decorating (really, I've gotta go and see what pictures I can find for you - but I used to be an avid cake decorator....was so much fun, and now I want to learn how to make roses in icing - I used to do it, but this is a new style of roses with a softer icing that I want to learn how to do, so I can make a Rose Cake like a bouquet for my lovely daughter, Cara!  It's all about Cara! hahaha! (And Aidan, mah' boy!!)

Hey, it's my biggest 'Art Project'! haha!  I designed and built this gorgeous house, and I've already redesigned it so I can build another version of this lovely home with the same living room you see here, but with the bedrooms up over the garage... a really good use of space : )

Crystal Trees - I love making these gorgeous wee trees, and have given these as gifts, too - and I have two of them on my dining room table - I just looking at them... fun to make, and easy to make, and very inexpensive, too : )

Oh, man, I love learning new techniques, and now you can do that online - so easy!  Or, 'sew easy'! lol!  Sorry, couldn't resist that!  Oooh, I want to know more about Cake Decorating!  And everything else! 

Go have some 'crafty' fun!! : ) 

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Blown and Painted Easter Eggs - They'll Last Forever! #EasterEggs #Easter!

Is this a Giant Strawberry??  Nooo, it's a blown Easter Egg, cleverly disguised as a strawberry! lol!

These little Blown Easter Eggs are so easy to make, and a lot of fun no matter what age you are, but will be tricky for the younger set to do without a fair bit of help.  Blowing out the eggs is really an adult job (insert jokes here for your own amusement! lol!).  The key is to use a really long nail (from the hardware store) or a turkey skewer thing... looks like a long nail, but is maybe used for holding the turkey legs together??  Lol!  Canny remember what that thing is for, I only use it for blowing eggs! hahaha!  (I'm making myself laugh, now! 'Course, you know what they say about me, I'm an easy laugh... man, I hope that's what they're saying, but you can never trust 'they'... hahahahaha!) 

So you can start with a dozen eggs, if you like, get a bowl, and whatever you've decided to use to make a hole in the top and the bottom of the egg.  It will need to be long enough to go right through the egg to comletely pierce the yolk, since that will never go through the hole intact.... silly!  The easiest way to make the whole in the egg at the top, is to wiggle the nail at the top a bit -- don't try to force it, will most likely result in a big mess, and who wants that? Nope, just take your time, it'll be easier than you might think.  Make sure the bottom hole is bigger than the top hole, but not too much bigger... maybe an 1/8", but don't despair if it's closer to 1/4"... the bottom of the egg won't be seen as much, and you could always cover it with a gem, or something, right? : )

Now, this is the fun part... Gently cover the top hole with your mouth.  Gently blow the egg out the bottom. Will seem slow at first, then whoosh, out it comes.  Directly in the bowl, if you're lucky.  haha!  Of course it'll go in the bowl, provided you remembered to put one there! lol!  

Hold the blown egg over a steady stream of water in the sink, and rinse the egg out.  Might want to use the bottom of the egg with the bigger hole for this rinsing stage.  Let some water go in the egg, cover both ends of the egg and shake it about, rinse it through, again.  The goal is for your egg to have NO smell, not even after sitting around for a number of days, weeks, months, years... you get the idea! 

Set each egg back in the egg carton, tilted to the side of each segment, so the egg can drain and dry completely.  

Once your eggs are completely empty and dry, you're ready to paint.  They will be virtually indestructible, so don't worry about them crushing in your hands when you're painting or decorating them... you should be fine, but a little care goes a long way, as with everything : )

I have decorated the blown eggs in sooo many different ways over the years.  Before my lovely children were born, I must have had a massive amount of free time (oh, and that was pre-internet, so maybe that's why I had so much free time! hahaha!), but I would go out and find all these gorgeous embroidery threads with a glittery streak in them, and carefully tuck the end of the embroidery thread in the bottom hole of the egg, then wind the embroidery thread around and around the egg, no spaces, until the whole egg was covered in the thread.  They were gorgeous.  I would make up baskets of these lovely Embroidery Easter Eggs for all the people I really liked (if I like you, you will know it by the amount of stuff I make for you! lol! Baking, crafts, babies... no, wait, that last one is not the same thing... hahahaha!)

Painting the Blown Easter Eggs is by far the easiest, and a lot of fun for the kids -- a great gift for parents, if you're still allowed to acknowledge Easter in your school, and you're still allowed to teach Art in your class (this part is for the teachers! lol!)... but you can decorate them with glitter, just rub the egg with glue, carefully sprinkle with glitter... that tiny, tiny glitter is pricey, but, man, is it gorgeous, and the kids will go crazy, they'll look so lovely.  A great gift for Mom.  Oh, hey, you could make these for Mother's Day -- there, pretty sure they can't stop Mother's Day! haha! 

You can paint anything on your eggs... the strawberry was particularly easy, since it's all red, green for the leaves, little black dots for the seeds, and voila, a giant strawberry!  I have standard painting for eggs, ones that I do on every single Easter Egg I've ever painted (um, well, errr, that's a lot of Easter Eggs, over the years!)  I'll link you to y other Easter Egg page, in case you'd like to try Rolling Your Eggs at Easter... signifies the rolling of the stone from Jesus' Tomb (this is my favorite Scottish Easter Tradition!)... plus, is a lot of fun! 

Okay, have fun with your Easter Egg Decorating!  Be creative, you'll love it! 

Oh, and if you want to hang your Easter Eggs, say from a tree, the window, your Flower Tree (should that catch on! lol!), just use some yarn or embroidery thread, make a small knot at the bottom (small enough to go through the bottom hole in your egg, but big enough not to come straight through the top hole in your egg...!)... use an embroidery needle for this step... then either make a loop and go back through the top hole and tie off at the end, or make a loop and tie it at the top (much easier!).  There you go, Easter Eggs that will last for years! 

A closer look at the Easter Egg, blown by piercing each end of the egg, the bottom a little bigger than the top, pierce all the way through the egg so the yolk breaks (and your jaw doesn't! lol!), all decorated up! 

Marshmallow Bunnies for Easter

Oooh, this is my standard picture I paint on my boiled eggs every Easter!  The other side is a mountain scene with evergreens, a mountain lake and 2 deer at the side of the lake and a sunset over the mountains -- have no idea why those are my two 'go-to' pictures! 

Oh, maybe a bit silly, or, as I prefer it, sweeeet,  but this is my Christmas Tree turned into a Flower Tree, and there's my wee Strawberry Easter Egg hanging in the middle! Cute, right? Those are just flowers I've collected, many of them clips for my jackets, sometimes I pin the flowers to my purse, and mostly I use the flowers to hold the top of my dresses closed so I show less cleavage... man, the amount of cleavage that is normal in Los Angeles, and the tiny amount of cleavage that seems to be okay in Canada... especially in this little conservative area... hmmmm, perhaps this area is not for me, 'cause I gots'ta be free to be me, if you knows what I mean! lol! 

Decorate your Hard Boiled Easter Eggs for Easter... Rolling your Easter Eggs down a hill : ) (Scottish Easter Tradition, and a lovely Family experience!

Happy Easter!! Ailsa xox

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Beautiful Crystal Mobile You Can Make at Home : >

Beautiful Crystal Mobile You Can Make at Home

You know how I love to make my little Gem Tree Sculptures, right?  Well, I had picked up some new 'crystals' the other day, and had some 22 gage galvanized wire left over from Christmas, and I just thought, well, I'll see if this will work, so I just pulled the wire, which comes in a small roll, straight up, then used my needlenose pliers (they have a little cutting edge at the base of the pliers) to cut it at varying lengths, but this time, I didn't measure anything, just cut the pieces of wire at random lengths.  After I cut each piece of wire, I put one of the little crystals (they had a little hole at the top for threading the wire through) on each piece of wire, then pulled the wire in a loop to hold the crystal in place, leaving a fairly loose loop, so the crystal will hang loosely, not be held in place....

Anyway, so I make a ton of these -- okay, not a ton, but about 18 of them, letting the wire maintain the curves it comes out with... stretching some a little more than others, so each one is unique.  So normally I bring all the end together to form the base, right? But when I went to lift the first wire that already had the crystal on it, it flopped forward, so I thought, hmmm, what to do, what to do... so I hung it upside down, and added another spiral wire with the crystal at the end on it, holding them both upside down, then I thought, wow, that's gorgeous, and so unique, so then I just kept adding the wire pieces at the top, arranging them artistically, until I thought, oooh, that's juuust right, then I cut a smaller piece of wire, but still maintaining the natural curve of the wire, and wound that wire around the very top of the wire, where I was holding it together... and the last bit of the wire is used to hang the Crystal Mobile... easy, right?  And really fun to make! : )  These Crystal Mobiles can hang in a window, or outside on your balcony or porch -- they'll be lovely in the sun, where they can sparkle and cast beautiful rainbows all around! Pretty, right??

The whole thing took about half an hour -- who knows, I was watching Jimmy Kimmel (who is my Celebrity Crush, by the way! lol!  You know on Millionaire Matchmaker, Patty always asks her clients, 'Who's your Celebrity Crush?', Well, for me, my Celebrity Crush is Jimmy Kimmel -- he's just sooo funny! And cute! It's late... after 2 AM... I guess this is when I feel like crafting?? It definitely seems like a time when I think about Celebrity Crushes! hahahahahaha!).

Okay, let me get the photos for you... now, remember, it's the middle of the night, so I'll take photos in the daylight, too, so we can all see how shiny these Crystal Mobiles are! And I ended up making two Crystal Mobiles from the 18 wire pieces with one crystal piece on each... and I would say the cost on these would be about $3 each! hahahaha!  Cheap AND easy, much like meself!! lol! (Noooo, if you actually know me, you'll know neither one of those is true!! You gotsta have a beautiful house to get wit' me!! hahahaha!)(Or, truth be told, something else that I really like! hahaha!)(Okay, this is getting silly... I'll have to head to bed soon!) Night night!!

And for all the teachers out there, this would make a lovely and inexpensive Mother's Day Gift... I used to always make amazing things with my wonderful students (oh, I miss them so much!) in California.  Craft Items like this are great if you are teaching your students how to run a business, since they can learn how to decide on an item that will sell easily, go and purchase the items, make and sell them, do all the math and develop their money skills, and tons of experience in developing their social skills, too (being super-friendly when you're selling their products. : )

Crystal Beads for the Crystal Mobile... you can buy them at Michaels, but I happened to find these crystal beads at the local Dollar Store (teachers love Dollar Stores... great place to buy stickers! lol!) for $2. Sweet deal, right?? lol!

22 Gage Galvanized Wire, you can buy it at Home Depot for about  $3.

Carefully lift the wire straight up, then cut at random lengths, stretching the wire  as you like it.

Another view of the Crystal Mobile, with my favourite Cross behind it... it has my favourite Blessing, too... "May the Lord Bless You, And Be Gracious Unto You, And Make His Face Shine Upon You, May The Lord Give You His Peace."  Beautiful, right?  Makes you feel nice just reading that! :  )

I thought thse earrings were soo pretty - I love Swarovski Crystal - gorgeous! and what a phenomenal deal! : )
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