Dark Harlequin Mini Top Hat

It sure has been a bit since I made a mini top hat. I have been itching to design a new one. With a new challenge at Mix It Up, I figured this would be a great time to get started! I didn't use the twist of Paper Piecing but the stencil sure was pieced together!

I started with my usual craft foam and drew out the template. Then I painted everything with red acrylic paint (2 layers) and grabbed a Tim Holtz Harlequin stencil. I used black texture paste through the stencil.

Once the texture paste was dry, I cut out the different pieces. The hardest part was waiting for the texture paste to dry! I didn't use a heat tool because the foam will change shape. 

I glued all the pieces together with contact cement. That is the ONLY glue that will hold this hat together. Nope, don't try hot glue. It doesn't work well.

I grabbed some metal pendants and such from my stash and used black alcohol ink on the pendant hanging on the front of the hat. The skull is from Emerald Creek and I applied Snow Cap AI to it. 

The "ribbon" around the base of the hat is leftovers from another project. I also made a little bow out of it.

The skull lady pendant is from Tim Holtz. The feathers were glued together and shaped with the back of my dull scissors. The skeleton hand is leftover from Halloween and painted black with white highlights for the bones.

The top of this hat has a Creative Embellishment rose chippie. I used Emerald Creek Classic embossing powder-Candy Red and adhered it with Tombow glue. Ta-da! Sounds easy but this took me awhile to create. Carpe Diem! ~Niki

I want to share this design with these wonderful challenges:

Stamps and Stencils-Technique School

My process is the making of a hat from scratch. Try it! You won't be disappointed. 

Emerald Creek Dares-Anything Goes

Creative Artiste #29-Anything Mixed Media

Love to Create 16-Anything Mixed Media Goes

Saying I love you with wood

Hello and welcome to my little blog. Hopefully you all have had a wonderful holiday with Valentine's Day. I decided to make my DH a wooden sign. The numbers on the sign are very special to us and one of a kind.

I started with some leftover pine boards and stained it with MinWax. I let that dry overnight and then printed out my latitude and longitude. These coordinates are the location of where Kyle and I first met. Awwww! I printed just the outline of the numbers to save on ink.

The next step was to "weather" my boards. I applied some watered down DecoArt chalky paint. After that was dry, I dry brushed some of the same chalky paint over the boards. Viola! The easiest way to make new boards look older and weathered. TIP-You might also want to take some random objects (metal works best) and beat the boards. This technique makes some interesting intentions for your stain to seep into. I've used a tire iron, chains, an axe, hammer and such on past projects. It's awesome and fun. 

The time consuming part came when I outlined all of the numbers and letters to show the coordinates. Yes, some people use transfer paper, others remember to flip their image before they print it and trace that outline but I plum forgot and had to transfer paper. So, I taped my "template" to the board and used a pen to trace the letters. Using a bit of force while tracing I was able to get the font onto my board and then use a pencil to make it even more apparent. 

Once my outline was done I used DecoArt titanium white and painted the letters and numbers. 

After everything was dry, I used a hand sander and lightly sanded parts of the boards to create even more of a weathered look. Below is a closer look after the sanding. 

All done and ready to hang up. I nailed some shims to the back of the boards and some hooks. This was a gift for my husband for Valentines Day and I just got it hung today. Whew! Here is a look at it on our wall.

Please don't mind my wall color. Our living room has not been painted yet and this brown was there when we moved in. I am so very tired of living in brown houses. Haha! But that is another post for another day.

Hugz and Carpe Diem! Thank you for stopping by! 

~Niki

I would like to share this design with these challenges: 

A Bit More Time to Craft #38-Anything Goes

Creative Carte Blanche-Love

Rhedds Creative Spirit-February Challenge

Elements of Nature and Guest Designer

Hello y'all! Happy day to you and what a good one it is so far. I am happy and excited to share some news with everyone. I am a guest designer today over at Stamps and Stencils. Hehe! The very talented team has been challenged to design something inspired by the Elements of Nature! Hop on over to check out what they have created, you'll enjoy looking at everyone's creative talents. I decided to make something that features moss, bark, sticks, rocks, butterflies, paints, and a secret door. Here is my mini garden top hat.

If you would like to see more details and close ups head on over to Stamps and Stencils where I do a step out about the process. 

I used so many materials and tidbits from nature, even some coffee beans for the dirt. The hat is made from crafters foam (that's how all my hats start out). 

And here are some pictures of the sides of the hat. The door was made with polymer clay that was stamped into. The brow edging around the door is leather and the door itself was painted with about 3 colors of brown paint, a white wash and some Emerald Green Viva Decor. 

I wouldn't mind living in this hat! The "feather" looking piece in the picture above is made with polymer clay and an Iron Orchid mold #6. Then it was distressed with the same paints that were used on the door. 

Thank you to the entire team for letting me share in such a wonderful challenge theme! You all rock! Carpe Diem!

I would love to share this top hat with these lovely challenges:

Always use Rubber Challenge #2-Winter/Spring
I used Spring. Flowers blooming, gardens growing, butterflies out and about.

Creative Artiste Challenge #19-Anything Mixed Media Goes

Mixed Media Place #21-Paint the Sky, Make it Yours!
I totally enjoy making mini hats and this design is my new favorite. Anything mini makes me smile and laugh.

Mixed Media World #19-Assemblage/Altered Art

The Birds and the Bee's

Hello lovelies! What a whirlwind May was! Whew. Thankfully the warm weather is finally here and I can sit outside and enjoy hearing the sounds of Spring although I don't care for getting stung by wasps. Seems like those critters set up a nice hive in my outdoor umbrella and my dog and I were both stung. Ouch! We are better now and got rid of the hive so everything is good but this helped inspire my design and the theme for this month at Anything But Cute!

I am the hostess this month at Anything But Cute and the theme is: The Birds and the Bees! With the lovely warm weather in my neck of the woods, I am seeing so many wonderful birds and bee's, so I would love to see those in your mixed media makes! Pull out those bird stamps, think of feathers and maybe some honeycomb. Or you could even go for a non-traditional interpretation like a family crest that has a bird emblem on it. The sky is the limit but NO BUTTERFLIES please!

I started with an old red book (I bought a bag of books for $1) and lathered some modeling paste to it, then waited for it to mostly dry then I grabbed a stencil and used a brayer to push the stencil design into the modeling paste. It worked for the most part. I painted it with DecoArt paint then added a layer of crackle glaze. Once the glaze was dry Raw Umber antiquing cream was added then wiped with a damp baby wipe.

Then I traced out my shield pattern onto some thick matboard and played with some chippies until I like the layout. The picture below is what everything looked like before I went to town with the mixed media part. Hehe! 

All of the chippies were painted with white acrylic paint then a layer of DecoArt crackle paint and when that was dry and the cracks showed it was time to apply a layer of Raw Umber antiquing cream and wipe it with a baby wipe. The shield was painted with Tansparent Red Oxide, a layer of crackle glaze and then Raw Umber. 

While the book was drying I worked on the spine piece. I used paper leather and ran it through an embossing folder then used multiple Distress Inks to age it. 

It took me a loooooong time to find an eagle I liked and so this metal pendant was antiqued with alcohol inks, crackle glaze and antiquing cream. The metal  axe looking swords behind the bird were fringed up with alcohol inks and dirt. 

I applied the chippies with Tombow glue and added bronze brads to the shield and built up the bird nest then glued the bird and the axe things with glossy accents. 

The picture above shows the dirty bird with some rusty goodness but I had to change the design because it didn't feel "done" to me. You all know how that goes. So I used the white alcohol inks and paints and was finally satisfied. :)

Thanks for stopping by and have an awesome sauce day! Feel free to see what my lovely teamies have designed as well. Hugz and Carpe Diem! ~Niki

I would like to share this family crest book design with these lovely challenges: 

Emerald Creek Dares-Dearest Daddio

A Vintage Journey-Texture or Embossing paste

The Dark Attic #2-Anything Goes

Creative Artiste Challenge #15-Anything Goes

Southern Ridge Trading Co-Anything Masculine

Our Creative Corner-A Beautiful Mess

Anyone that works with red paint knows how messy it gets! My red acrylic paint bottle exploded to top everything off. Hehe! Oops. 

Love to Create #11-Anything Mixed Media 

Celebrate You!

Hello lovelies! Today is a super special day because it is our 1st Anniversary over at Anything But Cute! We have an exciting challenge in store this month and want to CELEBRATE! I wanted to create something that I have never tried before and also use one of my favorite movies as inspiration so I came up with this design. Meet my version of Jack Skellington and his dog, Zero!

As we celebrate our First Anniversary at Anything But Cute, we want you to celebrate what you do best...mixed media! This is your chance to do it your way, in your favorite style...so pull out those inks and paints and show us what you're made of! You can make anything you want, in any theme you want and any style you want, just as long as it has some mixed media products on it and no cute images. HAVE FUN!

We have some special treats for you this month. Along with our design team projects, we have invited our Favorite Artists from last year to come and celebrate with us. You don't want to miss the incredible line up of inspiration they have provided for you!! We also have a wonderful line up of prizes from some amazing sponsors...lots of chances to win some goodies, so don't miss out!

I started this design by sculpting Jack. He has a wire armature inside him because I wanted his arms to move and they do, although I did accidentally break his arm off, and had to fashion it back together! Sorry Jack!

I then added his legs, his bat bow tie, his eyebrows, his hands, and got to painting with acrylic paints. 

Zero was easier to sculpt and his collar was painted with red acrylic paint and his nose is orange acrylic paint. Yes, I added shoes to Jack. Hehe! 

I then started on my background while everything was baking in the oven. I tried a tag background with different designs but wasn't feeling it so I decided to create a tombstone. I drew out my shape on regular paper and used it as a template to trace onto thick matboard. I wanted the tombstone to be one sturdy piece to hold all these wonderful elements (I even add a kickstand to the back of the tag so it would stand on its own). The edges of the tombstone are made from a mold (I only used a section of the mold). You can see in the picture below what the stones and bricks are made from: I hoarded some of these foam pieces but for the life of me, I can't remember what art supply they came with. It's left over packaging of some sort. Any ideas? I think it is from dies.

I cut the foam and made my bricks/stone and glued everything (including the molded boarder) with TomBow Multi. Then at this point everything was painted with black acrylic paint. The texture sand in the picture below didn't end up showing up because of where I placed Jack. Oh well. Hehe! 

I used so many different paints and daubers to get the stones/bricks the color I wanted, then I applied white acrylic paint in certain spots to highlight areas. The inside of the tombstone was inked up with a stencil just for some depth. 

Then I started adding all the pieces together one little detail at a time. Some Spanish moss.............

A new clock mold and the pillars are new molds as well. All three were painted grey then antiqued. A few pumpkins, and a black branch looking thing. 

Some pumpkins and art stones that were painted with acrylic paints, a few bats...........

And finally some closeups of Jack and Zero! I did paint Jack's name on the bottom step of the tombstone but you can't really see it. 

Jack's head moves, as well as his arms. 

I know this was a long post and thanks for reading until the end. Don't forget to check out what my lovely teamies have designed! Hugz and Carpe Diem! ~Niki

I would like to share this design with: 

The Dark Attic #1-Anything Goes

Dream in Darkness #13-Anything Goes with a Spin to use paper dolls

My "doll" isn't paper exactly but he's a sort of doll. 

Left of Center #128-Goblyn Workshop

I went LOC with a Halloween design. 

Altered Eclectics-Anything Goes

Rhedd's Creative Spirit-Anything Goes

We Love 2 Create #9-Anything Mixed Media Goes

Non traditional Easter Basket

Well it is almost Easter, and I really wanted to make something for Easter, but not anything that's typical. I knew I wanted to create a centerpiece so this is what I came up with. A non-traditional egg basket-box tray. Hehe!

I found this on clearance at a local craft store and automatically had a vision. Love when that happens. It didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped, but very close. 

I painted the entire egg holder with Walnut Stain DP, then a layer of Distress Crackle. While that was drying I set about determining what to do with the eggs. I knew I wanted to stay with a limited and earthy color palette. I painted one with Walnut Stain and applied the Distress crackle to it as well, then set it to the side to dry. Two of the eggs were painted with Picket Fence DP and then covered in tissue paper. 

I used some Tim Holtz stamps and stamped with Ranger Archival Ink-Coffee onto some tissue paper then used Ranger matte medium to adhere the tissue paper to each egg. Then I watered down some Walnut Stain DP and used it to create splatters on the eggs. 

The Walnut Stain egg was "painted" with Picket Fence DP and I heat set if for a sec, then wiped it off with a baby wipe so the Picket Fence would get into the cracks. Then I used a scrap piece of tissue and wrapped it and a twine bow around the egg. Some of the crackle came off but that's what I wanted, kind of a vintage feel. The splatters were created by adding water with Archival Pearl and PF and flicking my brush.

The last two eggs were altered using moss and twine for a nature feel. Then I used the Picket Fence and baby wipe for the outside of the box. I swipe some Distress glaze around the outside of the box before I stamped. I added the Tim Holtz stamps with Ranger Archival Ink and added the chit-chat sticker last. The sticker was edged in Walnut Stain as well. 

 I really enjoyed how this turned out and the Reese's bunny is my DH fave so of course I had to add it. He also gets other Reese's candy as well. 

 Here are a few different views of the box. This was a bit hard to photograph and capture the true look of the design. The sun was gone today and it's raining so that doesn't help. 

Finally stopped raining for a bit so I took these pictures outside. No sun, but at least it wasn't raining.

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend and live in the moment! Hugz and Carpe Diem! ~Niki

I would love to share these eggs with these amazing challenges: 

Emerald Creek Dares-Easter Parade

Ranger Ink-Easter Egg Decorating

Happy Little Stampers-Water

I used water to dilute my paints for the splatter effects. 

Word Art Wednesday-#222-223-Anything Goes

Addicted to Stamps and More-Anything Goes

Crafty Gals Corner #64-Easter or Spring

Stars Stampz-Think Spring

Mod Squad Challenge-Spring time!