Photo Collages

A few photo collages from college and beyond. The first five are complete. The last three are from my travels. I have to add in Boston and a couple others. The middle three are incomplete in terms of captions and I have one more collage of group photos to create, but that'll come later.

Coffee and Cards

I made a coffee bean holder for my coworker.

Here is the empty container.














Here I'm putting on the stencil.















The final product. Customized with her name. It's kinda hard to see.















My newest set of birthday cards. I later wrote in names for each person I was sending a card to. The hard part was using a silver, white or gold gel pen. The ink in those things dry up quick!

Inspiration

Every now and then I hit a road block on creativity. I do the same things over and over again. I found this through another blog and thought it'd be helpful whenever we're looking for some ideas.

http://www.ihanna.nu/blog/?p=1005

The Lei-test

I, along with my trusty friend and assistant, Susan, made a giant lei for homecoming. It's supposed to fit over the nose of the plane. We used plastic table cloths cut into strips, then tied around a cord. It ended up being pretty easy. Everyone's getting excited!

Shells, driftwood, and a drill

Hawaii has brought a whole new inspiration for me. As well as some cheap supplies! I'm working on wind chimes, welcome signs, jewelry and wine charms (thanks Colleen!)

(Which do we like better??? paint or wood burner???)

Door Decorations

 

This is all my mother's doing. The nutcracker is hand made entirely from styrofoam, then hand painted and pieced together. My father was able to get her some large styrofoam pieces from some manufacturing place but I am not sure where. The nutcracker is the first in her set as she has also made a witch for Halloween and an Uncle Sam for the national holidays. They are huge neighborhood attractions and many neighbors have thier kids' photos taken in front of her door.

The fruit display is also her creation - using plastic pieces, hot glue and foliage on a piece of plywood. This year she added the banner. Again, it's just a nice piece of plywood that she cut out and hand painted.

I think it's awesome personally.

Fancy Apron

 

This picture was the inspiration for my project. I found this shirt at a little shop in the mall and guess what, it was $60. While I love my mother dearly I couldn't afford to spend $60 on a shirt. I knew this was right up my mom's alley though since she is a fan of wine. So I took a picture of the shirt with my phone to keep the idea fresh and started thinking of how I could do something myself. I came up with an apron and invested in the heat tool that adheres rhinestones to fabric. (It costs about $15 and the jewels come in all sorts of varieties).

 

I found the above picture on the internet and used it as a pattern for the wine bottles and glasses since the shirt was a lot smaller. I added my own flair to the design based on the original shirt and ended up with this! It was a lot of fun to make. The work is a bit tedious and I had to do it at times when the kiddos were no where around.

 

I'm really excited to have this heat tool now and tons of left over rhinestones. I'm seeing a lot of different crafts in my future - especially for nieces.