French Drawers!

Hey all,
So I'm bad at writing blogs! and I am sorry! however, I have done some super cool drawers that I want to share with you guys. Okay, so when I was in Paris and just before I came home I picked up some French newspapers. Whilst reading them I had an amazing idea! This amazing idea goes as follows, get the newspaper and decoupage my wooden set of drawers at home! and here it is.

All I did to get this lovely effect is cut up the papers into columns and with PVA or Elmer's (or so my American friend Sammie thinks its called) glue stuck down the bits of newspaper onto my drawer. After it was dry I did an extra layer of glue to seal it and voila! Beautiful drawers.

Au revoir for now 

<3

Halloween

Hey all,
So Halloween and Bonfire night has been and gone now however, I wanted to show you guys what crafty things we did as a family on these awesome nights.

Okay, so one of the things we did was cut out witches and monsters for the windows. We did this by using black card and then once we had placed it in the window we used orange tissue paper to back the images to give them a halloween-y effect.

This witches over cauldron cut out was in the living room window.

 This one was in our spare room and got most the attention. The kids loves the crazy monsters.

 This monster was in our staircase window and I do believe one young child even ask if it was our cat! ^^ (so cute)

 Ahh the pumpkins, this year we tried something a little different! we used the top of the pumpkin or the stalk as it's nose and well you can see how awesome it looks! ^^

This photo is what I looked like on Halloween courtesy of my mother's fab dia de los muertos make-up skills!!! Scared a few kids though!

Anyhoo!! Watch this space for more on Christmas Crafts!!!

Loves!!!

Beth <3

Six

Hey all!!

Sorry again for the long time between post been real busy at the preschool, getting ready for the summer holidays!!! This week was a bit plain and simple I made a nice charcoal grey beanie hat with a circular knitting loom. However gang this is my first attempt with a knitting loom so it's not great,  good but not awesome hahaha ... Anyhow I'll show you the pictures and you can tell me what you think.


This is the steps I took to make the hat. Tie the wool/ yarn around the peg that is on the edge of the loom. Then holding the loom in front of you pull the wool to the inside of the ring and begin to wrap the wool anti-clockwise around each peg, (make sure each peg is wrapped). When this is done all way around push the wool  to the bottom of each peg and go around again. This is casting on. When the second row is complete use the loom hook to pull the BOTTOM row of wool over the top row and over the peg and keep going all the way around. Once that is all complete begin the process again until you get the length you desire and then cast off. Now I'm not going to lie I needed some help casting off so I went to you tube and watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX1xZtFdXYM ... It helped me and I'm sure it'll help you guys!

Yep, so this is my hat ... it's funky ... Shame it's summer

Thanks for reading guys!!! 

Beth 

The Cloud

Hello All 

 This weeks Blog post I've dedicated to the Cloud. Now I began making the Cloud a few weeks ago before I even started this blog, however I encountered some problems but finally it is finished!!! AND my lucky fellows I'm going to teach you how to make such Cloud ... And I'll even tell you how to avoid those mistakes. 

First of all I think I should tell you how I made this Cloud ... You guys are probably thinking "wow this girl is crazy" and well you are nearly correct. The Cloud is made from balloons, paper,glue and cotton wool.  Firstly I blew up the balloons, I used around 6-8, then I taped them together in a kind of cloudy shape. When that was done I Paper mached or  Papier-mâché the balloons with a newspaper and some glue (/water to make a paste)... This was quite a long process as I did several layer to keep the Cloud from collapsing on itself.  After a few days of waiting for that to dry and adding more layers I painted it white with acrylic paint so none of the words from the newspaper would show through when I had finished it. Finally when I had done all that I added cotton wool balls to create an awesome Cloud effect. It sounds simple and it is but its quite tedious and it takes a lot of time and patience. 

Now my dumplings some of the mistakes I encountered whilst doing this project, bearing in mind its taken me about a month to do all this (mistakes included). 

• First mistake: This is the silly one I promise ... I got very impatient and rushed ... I got the balloons blown up and in place ... Then went straight for cotton wool, which was a great idea until one of the balloons popped and I was left with a shrivelled hairy balloon skin. 

•  Second Mistake: I put too much glue onto one of the layers of papier mache so it took almost two days to dry. 

• Third Mistake: Well do you remember the desk I painted in my first blog ... Well I stuck the cloud to it because I didn't put anything underneath, so make sure you have something down to protect your furniture.

Now I didn't do this project with any of the children, it seems we ran out time at work. But please feel free to message me with anything, questions, tips on how to do things and if you have done these project tell me how they went. 

That's all my friends, cheerio 

Beth

Ooo and just before I forget, you could add glow sticks to your clouds to make them look like thunderclouds. 

http://pinterest.com/bethyork385/ 

Post Four

Hello All 

Hope you are all having a good week, first of all I just want to say sorry for this been a little late. What I'm going to show you this week is pretty sweet, first it'll be my re-painted candle holder; painted in Dia De Los Muertos theme, Second will be the re-painted and styled book shelf and third will be awesome moon sand. Fun Week.

Dia De Los Muertos Style Candle Holder 

Well this is an old candle holder I had laying around the house and I decided to change it up and a bit so it looked a bit fancier! This is how I did it. I am a terrible drawer and painter so I drew in what design I wanted on the holder. Then I began painting As you can see I chose bright colours and I used acrylic paints and painted the flowers first then the sides and working down to the last detail. To finish it off I mixed PVA glue with black acrylic paint to make the windows darker. That is all I did, I think it took me about 3 hours to complete which I guess isn't that long. 

Re-painted book shelf

So my mother and I was doing our weekly charity shop shopping (sings thrift shop song), when we came across this lovely book shelf. Now lovely as it is I found that it was too dark for our house so I suggested that I paint it. After many discussions we bought it for a wonderful price of £4 which is AWESOME!

Soon as I got it home I go to it. The first picture on the left was the shelf just after I sanded it down. Second photo is the painted version, I painted it sky blue with satin wood paint from B'n'Q (English hardware store) and finally when it was dry my mother added all her crafty books.

Moon sand

Now this is an AWESOME craft that I got from Pinterest. All you need is flour and baby oil, LEGIT that's it!!! Now I used 4 cups/ 200 g of all purpose/ plain flour and 200 ml of baby oil mixed it together in a bowl and it made this awesome sand, which is really nice for the kids to play with and its easy to clean away (plus it makes your hands really soft). 

I try and find the easiest way to do craft and have fun, and to be honest I'm not very crafty/ artistic but I am in belief that anyone could do these crafts. That's all for this week my friends!!! Have a great crafty week

Beth <3

Third Post

Hey All 

This week I will show you how I did  awesome melted crayon art and friendship bracelet to mark my year anniversary with my best friend Sammie. 

Crayon art

Okay so this is my first crayon art which I did on my own and here is how it was done. First I selected the colours I liked. I chose blues, greens and purples simply because they are my favourite (I did also add a few lighter colours in with it as well just to brighten the piece). I then took the wrappers off the crayons, lined them up on my canvas and stuck them down with duct tape. Like so. 

From there I used my hair dryer and pointed it toward the crayons, make sure you have something for the canvas or paper to stand on wax is pretty hard to get out of carpet! I also figured out (the hard way) that if you point the dryer straight at the crayons melted wax goes everywhere, so I pointed the dryer downwards. I then did this till most of the crayons has melted and the wax was down the canvas. I then removed the duct tape with the remaining crayons and let it dry. I also saved the unused and half melted crayons for another project.

Sammie and I also did this project together, I did it the same as before but only used reds and black. Sammie did the rainbow picture (as seen on the photo below) however she super glued the crayons to the canvas giving it this awesome effect.

Friendship Bracelets 

This week marked the anniversary of  the first I met Sammie! I left England for America and three months working in a lovely camp (as Sammie's co-barn counsellor), Thus the start of a beautiful friendship. To mark this occasion we made friendship bracelets, we will show you what we made.

Sammie's Bracelet

Beth's Bracelet

That's All This Week Folks
Ta Ta For Now!!!!
Beth

Second Post

Hello Guys!

Like I've said before I'm from England which is pretty awesome (apart from the rain) however most my friends live in America, including my best friend. So My best friend Sammie and I use Skype and Whatsapp to talk, share gossip and do craft. Because we can't be together as often as we like and we both have awesome (usually crazy) craft ideas, we do them on Skype! So I'm going to show you guys the crafts we do and hopefully it'll give you some inspiration. 

Glow in the dark jars

Okay so this is our glow in the dark jars and what we did to get this effect was to buy or find  Jam/ mason jars and we cracked (dollar store/ pound shop) glow sticks into them put the lids back on (or in my case which is the blue one I put my hand over the top) and we shook the jars to create this crazy glowing effect. So after doing this you can use them just like this or you can add candles to give a brighter glow. Sammie and I both said we would use these to light a drive way on a party night or just general use around the garden. 

So this is the one we did for this week we shall be doing more no doubt! Just keep Checking back!

Thanks, Beth