Monday, February 23, 2015

Little Red Shadow Box

Since Tell a Fairy Tale Day is coming up of February 26th (this coming Thursday), I decided to post this.  I made this little shadow box after finding my really old book of children's stories. I never used it or read it and I wanted to use it for painting but I decided to make something different. 

I don't have a tutorial on how to make this but I will soon. This box in particular took about 1.5 - 2 hours but that is mostly because I drew Red Riding Hood and painted her with watercolor. Getting her to be the right size was the biggest issue. I made her much too small the first time. 

The only reason why it came to my head was because my sister and I saw these birch straws in the craft store. Then I remembered something I saw on Pinterest a long time ago. I don't have a link to it. I don't even have it on a board but I remembered seeing it all over the place. They aren't exactly the same but it was the inspiration for this project.

Anyway, in honor of the random holiday, I present this to you. Soon, I'll have another one up, with more details on how I did it. This was just a practice shadow box and it was fun. Not to mention, it was relatively cheap. The most I spent was on the shadow box and I used a 40% off coupon at Michael's for that. I will also be using a different story, not another Little Red box.

Monday, February 16, 2015

Pink Popcorn

The girls and I made Pink Popcorn for our craft last week. I don't normally do a lot of food crafts with them but for Valentine's day, we tend to do a lot of food. It turned out great and even their parents loved it. 

Making it is simple. Super simple. We used three things to make this.
  • Popcorn
  • Wilton Chocolate Melts (Pink colored)
  • Sprinkles
That's it. I bought popcorn that was light in salt and butter but you can probably use anything.

The steps are simple.
  1. Pop the popcorn and then lay it on a baking sheet or pour in a bowl.
  2. Melt the chocolate (we used a bag for two bags of popcorn)
  3. Pour chocolate on the popcorn and mix around lightly. 
  4. When the popcorn is coated put it on wax paper (this makes the clean up easy). You could also put the wax paper on the baking sheet to make it a little easier.
  5. (Optional) Decorate with sprinkles
  6. Let the chocolate harden
*Do no put in the refrigerator to cool. 

The steps are simple but I thought I would tell you that when it hardens, they stick together. If you don't want them to turn into a giant block, spread them out a bit.

Also, this is how we made it. There are probably several ways to make this so experiment and try something different if you want. You can color this any kind of color so it's a versatile treat.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Heart-Shaped Pie Pops


Last Wednesday, the girls and I made these awesome little things for our craft. We made some mistakes along the way but when I remade them, they turned out great because I made sure not to make the same mistakes twice.

Anyway, these Pie Pops are extremely easy to make but they do tend to get messy if you overfill them. Just a warning. Also, I found these while browsing pinterest. I don't know if I did it the same way since I never actually followed the link but if you want to see the directions go here. I'm not doing step by step instructions as much as I am going through my process and where we went wrong. It was such a mess with those girls too.

I allowed the girls to roll out the crust, which was my first mistake but I let them do it until they thought it was good. I really should have checked on the 4-year-old's work before slapping them on. It was just a bit too thick.
They cut the hearts out with a heart-shaped cookie cutter I bought just for this project. I think this was their favorite part but the oldest did get a little too excited while doing it and had to start over.

Ta-dah! But it was too thick. You wouldn't think it was if you were there in person but it was way too thick. I didn't want to tell her we needed to do it again because she was very proud of her work so, I let them go with it. When you roll out crust, you want it to be extremely thin especially for this project.

After I let Brynna prep the baking sheet, we placed the bottom half of the hearts on it and put the stick in the middle. You don't have to do this. I didn't the second time because I thought they looked cute but I also used a bigger heart-shaped cookie cutter when I made it without the stick (in the photo with the post title in it).
We used actual pie filling for these because it was just easier and I was going to use it for something else later. We learned that only one cherry can fit inside, the rest needs to be the gel stuff (I have no idea what it's called). I'm sure there are other things you can use for this. I went the cheap route.

Then we added the top and Brynna went to town. She understood exactly what we had to do even though I didn't tell her. I know they don't make pie like this very often or at all so it threw me off guard but she did an excellent job with this part.

We gently brushed some melted butter on the tops before sprinkling it with brown sugar. I do mean a gentle amount of butter. We only used it to make the sugar stay in place and to help with the crust. I had to explain to the girls that they only needed a little bit of brown sugar because some little girl (Brynna) went a little crazy with one of them.

After they were done, we threw them in the oven for 10 minutes (or when the crust was golden) and took it out. The minute I bit into the pie, I knew what was wrong with it. The crust was too thick but they weren't bad. 

I went back and made them during the weekend and it turned out wonderful.

***Note - I used a pie crust mix because everything had to be quick and the girls would have made that an even bigger mess. Normally I wouldn't care but we had things to do.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Sketchy

Just recently, I got a new sketchbook and watercolor paints because mine Koi watercolors are packed away in a box somewhere. Anyway, I wanted to get back into sketching. Just a bit of doodling here and there. My goal is to practice some urban sketching. I've been playing around a bit and I know that I just need to practice a bit more before I get the hang of it. 

So, here are a few page in my sketchbook. Well the first few pages and my only sketches so far.

Page 1 is just me testing colors of the watercolors to see what they look like. I had a set like this but there were less colors. I'm not sure if I would use all of these colors but it's good to have.

Page 2 - Naturally, I have to draw a tree first. It started off as a bit of a blob, and it's still a bit of a blob. A blob with color. I was just testing out my colors with this. And trees are one of my "go to" drawings.

Page 3 - An eye. I didn't know what to do. I just decided to play around with things.

Page 4 - A flower. My other "go to" drawing. Not really anything special about this. I really didn't know what to draw.

Page 5 - Just some buildings. This was fun and very redundant. It's not perfect and I like it that way.

Page 6 - I just did this one this morning. This is a quick practice sketch. I think I did most of it while on the phone with my best friend. It's pretty flat looking. Again, just a practice sketch. I don't normally do things like this.

Eventually, I'll improve.