Keeping Sexy Time

Remember the Tu-Clock I made for Gaby? Well, I decided to make a Prince clock for my husband.

You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a poster for Purple Rain nowadays. At least I was. I ended up ordering this (gigantic, expensive) Japanese Iris print:
We were a little concerned about it being an Iris print and not a glossy poster because we wondered if the mod-podge would cause it to run. I ran some tests with some other stuff printed off an inkjet. The tests did not run, so we went for it, and it ultimately worked just fine.

I definitely wanted to concentrate on Prince's handsome visage, so I traced the wooden plaque right over the spot we wanted. I cut it out and decoupaged it onto the plaque.
After it dried I painted the outside edge black, because the gold paint I have is really transparent. Also you can kind of use the black to clean up the edges if they are rough.Then when the black was dry I painted two or three coats of gold.
Time to pour the EnviroTex Lite Pour On High Gloss Finish! (I have exactly one half of the 16 oz package left over from the Tu-Clock.) Which is horribly messy business, and your piece has to be perfectly flat on a raised surface (I put a block of wood under it), and you have to cover everything in a one-mile vicinity with plastic, and monitor for drips, and keep the temperature right, and be in a non-dusty area (which does not exist in my house), but is TOTALLY WORTH the payoff.Behold the drips. It pretty much keeps dripping the whole 72 hours. Do not worry about this, as there will still be plenty of acrylic on the piece. Even though it doesn't seem like there will be. Just trust me.

So he dried beautifully (except I got a gold fingerprint on the windshield before I poured the acrylic and it wouldn't come off that mod-podge for anything) and then sat around for about 3 months while I waited for my husband to do his part which was to sand the drips off the back and drill the hole for the clock kit. His desire for Sexy Purple Time in his office finally won out over his procrastination.

When he drilled the hole for the Tu-Clock there were absolutely no problems. He drilled a small pilot hole and then the real one while I cringed in the living room and tried not to cry. It came out perfectly. This time the acrylic did something weird -- there is a strange halo around the hole. I decided to make the best of it and used the halo to lay out the adhesive numbers. You can see it in this finished photo:The first photo I shot was totally a picture of me reflected back at myself. This baby is the very definition of "high gloss." Sexy high gloss.

The husband is very pleased. Now I just have to get him to hang it in his office.

More Shit for Gaby: Birthday Edition

This year for my dear Gaby's birthday I decided to paint up some of the blank nesting dolls I ordered from Golden Cockerel. Behold the Wu Tang Clan:
I used gloss spray varnish and shot these at night because I am a dumbass, so the flash pretty much blew out all the detail. Here's a closer shot of the big ones:
You may have noticed a little white girl in there. That's Gaby. She's always wanted to be in the Wu Tang, and I aim to please. Here's the back:
I purchased the 5 piece sets of nesting dolls, so this is two sets put together. They are all handmade so there is a slight variation in size between the two sets, which makes it look like maybe it's one big set. Do not be deceived.

Here's what Gaby got for Valentine's Day. I took an empty heart-shaped candy tin and spray painted it black, then decoupaged romantic stuff on it. The front:

The back:

Inside:

I made her a bracelet out of skull beads from Oriental Trading and a voodoo doll and some hearts from scrap fabric. Project: Fill Gaby's House With Love Offerings continues unabated.

Here's the one I made for my husband. Same deal, I spray painted an empty gigantic Altoids tin and then decoupaged it. Outside front:

The text reads "This time staying awake won't help you." I like to keep him on his toes. The back:

And inside:

Unintentional Moby Dick reference here. I just liked the image of the tortured whale. It seriously did not occur to me until my husband pointed it out. He was pleased.

One last item, since I've got Flickr open. While wandering around the Publix one day, I noticed that they were selling zip-up hoodies for $10. Why was the grocery store selling hoodies? I have no idea. Apparently Publix had no idea either, because the next time I saw the hoodies they were half off. $5 is a pretty damn good price for hoodies. So I bought the last three they had, which were baby blue, pink and black. If things go as planned, the blue and pink ones will probably appear in a future "More Shit for Gaby" post. But here's what I did with the black one:I don't have enough crap with skeletons on it, right? I painted this on with regular old acrylic paint. I almost didn't take this photo because I wanted to wait until after I washed it to get the pencil lines out. I'm glad I did, because this is what happened when I washed it:I have never had this happen. I paint on fabric all the time. I certainly didn't have this problem with the octopus sweatshirt. Maybe it's because I turned it inside out, or maybe I didn't let it dry long enough before I washed it, or maybe I angered the craft gods. In any case I think it looks even radder this way, and no paint got on anything else in the washer, so I'm going to put this under the Happy Accident column and tell everyone I got it at Abercrombie and Fitch.

That's it for now. I have to go order more nesting dolls.

Surprise! No "Before" Shot.

I swear to Christ I really thought I had taken a before shot of this painting. For over a month it's been hanging on the wall where I take my before shots. I naturally assumed I had taken care of this when I started altering it. Then I went through my photos and didn't have one. So imagine this without the skulls washed up on shore:

Here's a close up of the left bank:

There's a tiny skull peeking over the reeds in the middle, but you can't really tell here. And I forgot to measure it. Do as I say, kids, not as I do!

The next Church of Craft meeting looks really promising, so I'll come back later when I have more to report. Also we're getting really close to being ready to maybe finish that Prince clock. We had to wrap up some things in the garage before we got back to it. And I started another one of those log cabin blankets, this time in blue since I have tons of it.

As for these confounded before shots, as my friend Wilson likes to say, "I can't promise I'll try. But I'll try to try." That's apparently the best I can do.

Some Stuff I Forgot

Last Xmas my husband's sister-in-law requested that I make her the log cabin blanket in Mason Dixon Knitting. It took a year, but here it is:


(My husband suggested I be in the photo for scale or it would just look like a potholder.) Boy did I burn through some yarn. I'm working on a blue one now because I have a ton of old blue acrylic yarn. If I can stomach working on a yellow one I might do that after. Then I will have a lean, mean stash pile.

Here's something I just made for fun, hoping to foist it on someone as an Xmas gift. I somehow ended up with an old bamboo tray that had some horrible watermelon print fabric glued to it. For some reason I saw potential in this. First I spraypainted it black, then I decoupaged a bunch of space shit all over it:

I just recently bought a matching bamboo tray, sans watermelon fabric, so I'm going to make another one. I think it's rad as hell but I have absolutely no use for it. So why not have two? Am I right?

I'm fishing through my Flickr account to see if I missed anything else, but I think that's it. I still have to prep the photos from one last project, which I will do sometime this weekend, and that should be the last of it.

Is It Over Yet??

I thought the holiday season was NEVER GOING TO END. I have handed out all the crafted gifts, so I'm going to call it done.

Let's start slow with something that's not very impressive:

My sister has done her dining room in a Tuscan theme. So I bought a mirror at Big Lots because I liked the frame, then smashed the mirror out of it. I painted the backing board with chalkboard paint, then googled some suitable Italian words and painted them on.

I love chalkboard paint. LOVE IT. The idea of liquid slate intrigues me. But there were a few light spots after I rolled the paint on, so I touched them up, and you can totally see where I did that. I am not pleased. I did about four coats on this thing, so I guess next time I would do even more than that. I would have just re-rolled it but I'd already painted the words on by then. But she likes it, and other than those spots I like the way it turned out. And there's an assload of paint left so there will be more chalkboard projects in my future.

Remember these?
Inkblots I-IV were last year's gift to my psychologist friend, so this year I did V-X. Ask me if I took a photo. Go on, ask. Nope. Moving on...

Here's another craft project that didn't quite turn out like I planned. I asked my 6-year-old niece what she wanted for Xmas. She shouted, "I WANT A SIGN THAT SAYS "ANDREW AND BUD KNOCK" TO PUT ON MY DOOR!" I said, "Okay, sure. Do you still like Bratz?" She responded, "Yeah, I want a Bratz sign that says "ANDREW AND BUD KNOCK!"" I got one of those blank wooden door hangers at Hobby Lobby, painted it purple, printed some Bratz off Google Images and decoupaged them on, added her message, then hit the whole thing with a can of spray glitter I had in my garage for some reason:

On the back of this I wrote, "I think I put too much glitter. Love, Diana." My husband argued that when Bratz are involved there's no such thing as too much glitter. Perhaps he's right. My niece had no complaints.

Okay, here's the one I'm most proud of. During one of my weekly stops at the Goodwill, I discovered a ceramic elephant cookie jar that was primed with gray paint. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but it was $3 and it was primed, so I bought it. I stared at it for a couple of weeks and then decided to make it into a zombie:

Unlike me, my husband actually paid attention before he dropped out of art school. So he helped me mix the colors to maximum rotting effect, and had me do a nice yellow wash over the whole thing to make it more sickly. I like it so much that I hope to stumble over more primed ceramic junk.

I also did one more painting and failed to take a before shot. Just imagine the car's not there. It's 19 1/2" x 23" with frame:

Seriously, how big is the photo allotment on Blogger? Oh, and I've been making out with this effigy of Dani Filth which is actually almost life-sized:

[EDIT: Looking down below, I see that I already put the damn pig on here. So I'm pulling her off. Nothing to see here...]

In other news, the Prince clock needs to have a hole drilled for the clock kit, and then that will be done and I will post photos of the whole messy process. Also my friend sent over photos of her Xmas present that I failed to take pictures of, and I need to get those ready for posting. Otherwise that's it for now. Smell ya later.

The 2-Headed Croc and the Pig

This is how I found it:
I decided it needed some wildlife, but not just any wildlife.... It needed a two-headed crocodile. Here's a close up:The frame is pretty awesome too, but it gives me splinters. 21"x27"

This next thing isn't much of a craft. I had a red plastic piggy bank that I gave to charity. Right after I dropped it off, I realized that if I had painted the eyes red, it could have been that ghost pig from "The Amityville Horror" named Jody that floated around outside the house. I was PISSED. Luckily while I was out thrifting last week I found a blue one. I quickly colored the eyes with a red Marks-A-Lot, and voila: She's living over the dryer now to collect all my husband's change. He pays off like a slot machine.

I have decided that I really need to get busy on some decoupage because my case is getting awful heavy. I'll get back to you on that.

Gill-Man and the UFO

"The Creature from the Black Lagoon" is hilarious, and if you haven't seen it put it on your To-Do List. In tribute to the creature, I decided to add him to this painting:

Here he comes!

Feel the fury of the close up:

The second painting needed something, but I didn't know what.
Luckily a passing UFO lost steering control and smashed into the snow bank, providing just what I needed:

Close up:

"Gill-Man" is 19 1/2" x 23 1/4" with frame, and "Snowed In" (that's what it says on the back) is 21"x27" with frame.

I have been busy lately with things not related to crafting, so not much has been going up here. Next month is not going to be much better I'm afraid. But with Xmas coming the crafting should pick up. I have two more paintings lined up, some more etching planned, more sewing, more shrinky-dink experiments, and two more blank sets of matrioshka dolls. Also I have a pretty cool lampshade that may or may not get decoupaged, depending on the flammability warnings on the Mod Podge label... In other words, bear with me - I have more things piled up in my head than I have time for. Save me a seat at the crafting table!