My Recent Art Project

I'll just preface this with a disclaimer:  My first time working with a dremel. This piece is far from perfect and my design instructors would cringe. I couldn't figure out how to get the polycrylic to NOT goop up in the knotwork, so... I kind of want to just hide this in the closet and chalk it up to practice. So maybe it's a good thing he wouldn't come get it today.

Laying down the gridwork and learning how to do celtic knots. My very first time doing celtic knots.
I looked at a lot of tutorials. Threw in some steampunk gears for fun.

Finalized the knotwork, added the raven, and decided on a lunar theme for the top

Starting to dremel. This took hours. and hours. and hours. A - because I was learning to dremel as I went, B - because I was trying to figure out which bit worked best, and C - Because there's a lot of work to do.

At this point, I took it down to my father-in-law's house and we routed the edges. It was also at this point that I decided it was in the best interest of my elbow, thumb and forefinger to only dremel the knotwork.

Onward to the next stage:

Sanded, stained, and raven outlines inked in. The raven looked like a chicken at first, and I was mortified. 

Inked in gears and added the lunar phases

Finished. Knotwork painted so it stands out, gears highlighted, raven done. The zeppelin specs were not part of the original idea, but the feather pen I painted on looked terrible. I probably should have darkened the ink on the specs and weathered the edges to make it fit in better.  The raven was done with Acrylics over the ink.

I hope you can pardon the poor photographs, but I committed art!  Poorly, but it got me through yesterday, so that counts to me for something pretty big.


-- Do you know how many layers of yellow India ink it takes to actually make something look yellow instead of the color of whatever was under it? At least six. I kept inking and inking and inking until it looked yellow instead of brownish green. Note to self: In the future put a white background under anything I want to ink yellow.

Dollhouses from boxes!

 Making a dollhouse. Now, just for the record, I do not claim to be the craftiest person. And while a perfectionist in some areas, when it comes to stuff the kids are going to destroy, I just don't bother. So, today we spent a few hours making a toy that hopefully will give them a few hours of play time before it's destroyed.

The rest of the Easter Pics

 The crayon method: Take your eggs hot from the boiling water (adults do this, cuz they are HOT) and then let the kids put wax shavings from crayons or use sharpened crayons to decorate the eggs. The wax melts and creates really fun rainbow designs. And if you're 3, you practically create your own egg-shaped crayon because watching the shavings melt is so much fun

On the left are the eggs done with a Volcanic Paint technique - baking Soda painted onto the egg then vinegar food coloring added. All the kids loved this technique, too.

Dragon Eggs!!

My kids all have Hand, Foot, and Mouth virus for Easter. Yay. Sooo... we are doing crafty things since we won't be going to visit family.

this is the link to the tutorial we used. Although we used Tempera paints and an acrylic varnish from Golden instead of spray paints. And the kids didn't have the patience to distress the eggs, so we just played :) It was fun!

 Mina mixing her paint

 Jada's hot-glue design

 dad and beau's designs

 Sir Wil's egg :) Not bad for 3 yrs old

 My Ostrich egg.

 the green egg is mine

 it doesn't look the same in person

I will distress the egg another time. I'm still looking for my metalic gold paint to highlight stuff.

Craft day with kids

 Quinn was mixing colors really well! Look at how nice her "Pallette" plate looks!

 Sir Wil was just having fun using a brush with paint

 Mina was practicing her washes

Ms. Quinn with the butterflies she traced with sharpie and cut out all by herself.