Birdies

Here they are...all 16 of them. Some of my students helped me make a few of them while they were waiting for some of their own things to dry. I love them all. My mom is going to make a tree so they'll have a home. When she gets that done, I'll post them again. Mom is pretty crafty herself, especially with floral arrangement type things.

I racked my brain about what to make for the boys who come to SB's birthday party and finally decided on something. I am going to screen print a t shirt for them. I just got the supplies to screen print and need to learn the process anyway.

I often consult with my students for good ideas because they genuinely have some...sometimes. One of my Freshman girls said that a good idea would be to put the iPod logo on a t shirt but add an extra "o" in it. That way it would say "iPood" which is humorous, but I'm not sure all the parents of these boys would find it as amusing as I did. One of my high school boys suggested I make a buzzard on a shirt because that still stuck with the bird theme, but was more masculine (...and grotesque.)

Since I'm trying to stick with the bird theme, I ended up with a pretty cute little owl with a caption under it that says, "I'm a hoot!" It's not too original, but why reinvent the wheel? I completely drew the owl on my own, with constant critiques from my students. They really do have good things to say, but they can be brutally honest too. In the end, I liked it and I plan to share the process in a later post for those who are completely new to screen printing.

Morning Hair

Unfortunately Sarah Beth takes after her mommy when it comes to morning hair. She's cute enough to photograph with crazy hair. I'm not gonna punish myself by posting a photo of my morning fro.

In the photos above she had been awake for about 5 minutes and it was about 6:30 in the morning. What a happy baby...and a happy daddy!

Great Party Favors

Ten Worst Party Favors:

1. Plastic frog with tab on butt that makes it jump.

2-10. Anything that makes noise or stains or is sticky.

I was trying to come up with party favors for SB's birthday that went along with the BIRDday theme, and I just thought I'd share my idea with you. The party favors will be part of my party decorations until they are taken home by the guests.

I'm a big fan of hair clips for my baby girl's hair, and I often get comments/compliments on the ones in Sarah Beth's hair. My bright idea - hair birdies for each of the girls coming to the party. They are much cuter than those birthday party dunce caps that used to be popular when I was a kid.

Something I say a lot is, "I could have made that for nothing!" after seeing something that would have been easy to do myself. Mind you, making 13 birdies is quite time consuming if you want them all to be unique. It's just plain fun and worth doing if you'd like to save a buck... or 50 bucks. Anyway, here's how I did it.

1. Get some Sculpey clay at your local craft store.

2. Roll into a ball and knead it into a slab the thickness of 10 playing cards. Hint: If you place 10 cards on the table under both ends of your rolling pin, you'll get exactly that thickness.

3. Cut out your shape. I like the tear drop shape for my little birdie and I made mine out of a piece of copper foil. If you don't have access to a stash of copper foil you could use an Xacto knife or pottery tool or a even cookie cutter.

4. Bake it in the oven according to the instructions on the pack of Sculpey. (I think it's about 15 minutes on 275 degrees.)

5. Find some stuff around the house and decorate to your heart's content!

6. Hot glue a clip to the back. You can get a pack of 100 from Sally's for about 5 bucks.

7. Take a picture to remember it.

When they're all complete, I will clip them onto a dead branch that I plan to spruce up and use as a tree. It may sound a little glum, so when I get that far I'll post a picture.

March of the Tools II

Here is another one of my favorite tools. The Wacom Bamboo pen tablet. I like to use it to draw in Photoshop but mostly to have my own handwriting on things. I also really enjoy the pressure sensitivity of the pen. I am by no means using this baby to it's fullest potential.

Drawing on paper with a pencil is much easier to control. Just think about when you sign your name on one of those electronic signature thingies at the grocery store. Your John Hancock looks more like Jackson Pollock tried to use an Etch-a-Sketch. Until you get used to the pen tablet, it's like your learning to write your name for the first time.

I keep my fingers on Ctrl/Alt/Z (undo) and press them almost instinctively even if the result is pleasing. That keeps the process organic. I expect that most of my strokes are going to be duds. When a good one comes along, I'm pleasantly surprised and head for the redo button. It's kind of like throwing spaghetti noodles on the wall and seeing which ones stick -which ones I want to stick.

Check out my birdie here. I plan on using something like this for SB's birthday invitation. It's simple and possibly could have been done with a regular mouse, but the pen was way more fun. I really like the position of Birdie's feet. She's saying something here, like... "Come to SB's BIRDday party. It's this way," or, "I'm tired of standing on this left leg of mine."

March of the Tools

There are two things I feel are "must haves" for any artist/crafter -something that rends and something that mends.
Here is my trusty rotary cutter. Once I was purchasing some fabric in a local quilting shop when the clerk cut my yardage with one of these babies. I was sold at that moment. It has only been a resident of my toolkit for the past 6 or so months. I don't know how I ever got along without it before. I find it so much easier to cut straight edges especially on large quantities of fabric. If you've never used one of these, I think you'd find plenty of uses for it even if you're not a sewer. You'll need a cutting surface and a nice straight edge to make the most of it, but those aren't so expensive and can be found in lots of craft stores, even in WalMart. Replacement blades are between $5 and $10.

One of my other favorite tools is my glue gun. Once when I was teaching science in private school, I asked parents if the class could borrow some glue guns as I was in need of about 6 of them for a roller coaster project. One of the parents bought me 6 glue guns and told me I could keep them. They are still in my arsenal. I use them for everything from making hairpieces to adding texture on paintings, to burning holes in plastic things - thus the burnt tip.


This is my first "March of the Tools" post in conjunction with Heather Bailey's month-long blog feature. Click on the March of the Tools graphic on the sidebar to learn more.

Let them eat cake!

Mom's birthday cake.

Disclaimer: I am not a cook or a cake decorator.

I made this cake for my mom for her birthday. (It was good practice for SB's birthday which is coming up in May.) This was my first attempt at decorating with fondant...decorating period. Turns out I'm not so good at it. I have no prior experience and have only read one book about using fondant. (It was mostly pictures.) I figured it would be like working in clay. Not so!

Hidden (or obvious) flaws in the above cake:

• The round disks on the bottom are covering the worst attempt at blending the fondant into itself. There were a lot of excess folds left over and I could not get the seams to merge...so I covered them with dots.
• The clumpy round balls on the ledge of the second layer are there to fill in the large gap that would not close. I tried covering the entire cake instead of one layer at a time. Unfortunately this kept the fondant from clinging to the sides and making corners. I decided to fix it by scoring the corners and pressing them in the creases. The fondant began to pull away and left a large gap around the whole bottom of the second tier. Thus the round clumpy balls. Tasty! (A thought...Tasty and Nasty are one letter apart.)
• The corners are not all at right angles.

What did I learn from this?

• Practice more with forming the fondant around each layer before attempting anything for public viewing (and eating.)
• Cover each layer one at a time.
• Draw a sketch before sitting there for hours trying to figure out what to practice.
• Wear a back brace. One cake puts ten years of wear and tear on the back.
• Start before 8:00 pm.
• Pay someone to do SB's cake if the next practice one turns out as bad.
• Appreciate those who decorate cakes well.