Sharpie Mug

For my birthday recently, I received Paint Sharpies. These are the best. They actually hold up with the whole sharpie on dishes thing. They are great. I've been trying to find a project to use them on and I finally figured it out. I am making a batman mug for my husband. I found the idea on Pinterest, and I'm totally stealing it.

Photo from Pinterest

To start with, you will want to refer to my prior blog about how to use your own images. I got the Batman image off of the internet and used that, but the method is still the same. To check that out, go here. 

I'm not using the same font in the picture above because I want it to look like a font found in Batman. In order to do this, I am using dafonts.com and the Batman Forever font. I had to download the font, so I did that and then I closed my Silhouette Studio (so the new font could be included in Silhouette Studio). Once it was open, I went to work. 

After I got all the font and the image on, I sized it to fit my mug by measuring the mug and highlighting the whole image and text to be sure that it was all the right size. Once it was all selected, I could shrink it or enlarge it as necessary. Once that was completed, I cut out the image into vinyl and removed all of the images that I was going to be filling in.

Be sure when you do that, that the insides of the letters stay in place. I then, using the transfer tape, moved the vinyl to the mug. This was very challenging for some of the insides of my letters, so it wasn't as perfect as I would've liked, but the Batman logo looked good!

It was very hard to get the vinyl to lay flat on my round cup - that is something I am still trying to master, but I made it work just the same.

I then removed the transfer tape and went to work stenciling in my design. A normal sharpie will not hold up after being washed (even if it is "sealed" in the oven), so I got these fancy-schmancy sharpie pens: Water Based (although I hear oil based is even better), Sharpie Paint Pens. These actually do work. I've tried it, so I know. You can get these online or, occasionally, find them in craft stores. I found some primary color sharpies, but I went with these fun glittery ones. Because nothing says "manly" like a little bit of glitter! ;)

From here, I followed the directions for the Paint Sharpies and begin stenciling in my image and text.

And so began the waiting game. Once the stenciling was completed, I stuck my mug in a corner for 24 hours to let the ink dry. After it was dry, I removed the stencil. This took quite a bit of time because (since I used vinyl) the surface was very sticky and I had trouble removing it.

However, once it was all removed, I was ready to stick it in the oven. In order to make your mug dishwasher safe - you must bake it. I placed my mug in the oven (upside down so it wouldn't fall over), then I turned my oven on to 350 degrees, making sure that the mug started at room temperature and warmed up along with the oven. Once the oven reach 350, I started my timer for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, I turned my oven off and left the mug inside. I left the mug in there until the oven was cool. Thankfully, it was a chilly day so I just opened up the oven door and let the house warm up while the mug cooled off.

I then was able to take the mug out of the oven and it was ready to be used!

This was definitely not the cleanest looking design, but it was creative. I think in the future, I will stay away from the fonts and just do the image. The font got a little botched because it was hard to stabilize it. Also, I would recommend taping a piece of thick paper onto the mug as the stencil instead of vinyl because the vinyl was so sticky, there is still residue on the mug that I'm working to get off. But, for a first try - I'd say it's not too shabby. :)

Fabric Painting

A while back, we found out we were expecting, so I went right to work creating this shirt for my son. It was a great project that I am excited to share with you all.

I started by getting my toddler a shirt and (using my Silhouette Cameo machine - which is the most amazing machine on the entire planet for creative-type people) I printed out what I wanted his shirt to say onto vinyl. Then, I weeded out the negative that I wanted to be sure to paint and stuck the vinyl on the shirt.

Using the Silhouette brand fabric paint, I then laid down some paint onto the shirt.

The finished product was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. I thought it looked pretty cool.

If you don't have a Silhouette Cameo, you can also go to this blog that I got off of Pinterest, and she'll teach you an alternative way of creating a shirt similar (or whatever you desire the shirt to say). Check it out, here.

So...all of this to say - big news in the Kravitz household!! Baby #2 is on the way!! I apologize for my lack of posts, and hopefully I will be feeling less zombie-like in the coming weeks and will be able to do more posts (and better yet, more tests!) yet again, but in the meantime - I'm excited, enthusiastic and even more so because I was able to share the news with you in such a way that I still did a Pinterest project too! WOOHOO!

Here's to more blog posts, more babies, and less nausea! Yay!

Days Until Sign

Wow...I'm actually writing a post that's not a craft with kids, not cleaning and not cooking related. This is actually a craft I did for me. Just for fun. And, yeah, it was fun!

A while back, I made a "days until" sign for a friend for Christmas. Well, I didn't actually make it - I helped my friend's daughters make it as a gift. Yep, I love crafting with the kiddos. Anyway, I decided I should make one for myself. So, here we are, more than a half a year later and I'm finally getting to it. It's ridiculous that I have such a hard time crafting for myself. I enjoy it, I should do it more often. But, I generally think I should be doing it for someone else if I'm gonna be taking the time away from cleaning or napping (hehehe). I'm glad I did this one for me, because it makes me happy. I didn't actually follow the blog very much, but for those of you who don't have the amazing Silhouette Cameo machine or a Cricut, check out this blog for details on how to do this.

Photo from Pinterest

 The first one I made, I think, turned out really great. But, I changed my mind on how to do this next one and made it a whole lot smaller and added some colorful edging instead of leaving it one color.

The original

I started out this time by painting the whole board in my accent color, letting that dry and then painting the top with the black chalkboard paint.

I let that set overnight, sanded it down a little bit and then cut out my vinyl using my fancy, super-fantastic cutting machine. I decided, since I am a Disney fan through and through to use my Disney font. Even if the countdown wasn't Disney-related...it's always fun to think of Disney, so I thought it was a good choice. I'm still happy with my choice.

To stick the vinyl onto the sign and make sure that it was straight, I used the saran wrap cling wrap stuff - you know, the kind that is sticky. Anyway, that helped to get the vinyl in just the right spot without too much hassle of it being crooked.

And there it is! My sign is complete! The chalkboard wipes off really easily with a wet washcloth and it took very little effort. I was worried that after wiping it with a wet washcloth that it would be hard to write with the chalk, but I still had no problem with it.

I am enjoying looking at this each day and counting down the days until our baby girl may be here - give or take a few days or weeks and I look forward to using this board more for other things like birthdays, vacations, anniversaries...oh what fun!

In summary, this is a fun, quick, easy little project that I think just about anybody could do and it makes a terrific gift...for yourself. HA! Or for someone you love, I suppose. hehe.

Signs For Christmas

I have been busy crafting my little heart out and thought I'd show you my two latest creations. One idea I got from Craft Warehouse, where I saw this cute little sign.

When I saw it, my initial thought was "I bet I could make that!" And, by golly, I could! (Not surprisingly, seeing as how they make these for folks to find their inspiration. It's how those craft stores grab ya!)
Supplies that I purchased for this project:
A wood frame that they sell at Craft Warehouse. You could probably find a frame of just about any kind and make this though.
Red Paint (which I actually already had at home)
Ribbon for the border
Some bling or ribbon or whatever your little heart desires for the inside
Vinyl for the words
Mod Podge to secure the ribbon

Here it is, a blank piece of wood just waiting to have something gorgeous applied to it

I originally started out with red paint, but it was much too bright, so I got a slightly darker red and repainted it. I liked the end result. And, obviously, you don't have to use red...I'm just not creative enough to come up with my own color scheme. After the paint had dried, I mod podged the ribbon to the border and waited for that to dry.

Instead of blinging up the sides like the Craft Warehouse example, I used some cute snowflake ribbon that I found and just placed it on the bottom of the frame, again using mod podge. I thought about applying it all the way around the frame, but I think it would've been a little overkill. After all was dry, I went to my amazing Silhouette Cameo and created the text for my copy-cat masterpiece. Once it was applied, my sign was complete and I was quite pleased with the results! The ribbon is a little long and I didn't cut it down quite enough and some of the vinyl is a little cockeyed in spots, but I am settling for the time being because crafting with a two year old and an infant means you have to settle for a while from time to time.

My other project was for an online auction that my MOPS group was putting on. I have actually made a few of these and I love them. A friend of mine made one and I just had to copy her idea and make it my ownself, plus I found it on Pinterest so I was determine to make it too.

Photo from Pinterest

 I did this little project on a deep set canvas that was 8x24 in size. (Well, my original was 8x24, this one was 12x24, but my preference is the 8x24).

So for this project, you just need:
A deep set 8x24 canvas
Paint color of your choice
Paper or vinyl
Mod Podge

I wasn't crazy about the red background, so I changed that up a bit this time (I'm a rebel!) and went for a dark night sky blue. I painted the entire canvas including the outside edges.

After that was dry, I took the paper that I had purchased (sparkly silver paper) and cut it out, again, using my fancy cutting machine - the Silhouette Cameo! Seriously, that machine is AMAZING! After it was cut, I placed the cut-outs on the board to my liking, then I mod-podged them down on the canvas. Be careful not to use too much mod podge as it can leave a little white glaze on the top of your canvas, but for the most part that doesn't happen.

I have actually made this sign a number of times as gifts and I used a different technique each time to see which way I preferred. So, here is what I learned: Once I used glitter spray paint and painted with that first, then I applied a vinyl of my cut-outs, painted over the top and once it was mostly dry, peeled off the vinyl. This I wasn't as excited about as it left the print looking a bit sloppy or unkempt, in my opinion. (See bottom sign in picture) Then I've tried applying mod podge to the entire canvas after the cut-outs have been applied. This leaves a nice glaze on the sign, but the glittery paper isn't quite so shimmery. If you had nothing to compare it to, you'd never notice though - it still has plenty of shimmer. (See middle sign in picture) and then I've just used glue or mod podge for the cut-outs and left the rest alone. This works well, though sometimes the glue leaves a bit of shine if it's outside of the cut-outs. (See top sign in picture) Either way, I prefer the second or third method over the first.

3 different examples

In the end, I just think this is a beautiful Christmas sign, no matter how it is made. But, just so you can choose your preference, here is the 8x24 sign vs the 12x24 sign

8x24 Sign

12x24 sign

So, there you have it. All the beautiful signs I've been making recently. I know there are ways to cut vinyl without the fancy silhouette cutting machine, but since I have it, I will continue to use it. I love it. Happy crafting and Merry Christmas!

A T-Shirt Of Your Own Design!

Recently, I had a friend ask me to make her a shirt using a design that she had created, so I thought I'd walk you through the process of how to do this for yourself! Here is what needs to happen - we need to get this design onto this shirt.

First thing's first, scan in the design and save it to your computer in jpg format. Once that's done, import it into your Silhouette Studio. To do this, open up your Silhouette Studio,

Once it's open, drag your scanned image onto the page.

As you can see, the image is much to big as is, so we need to reduce the size. To do this, you will zoom out 2-3 times so you can see the entire image. To zoom out, press the minus sign magnifying glass.

Once it is zoomed out enough to see your whole image, scale it down by clicking on the image and then grabbing a corner of the image until you get it to the size you want.

After that comes the fun part - tracing the image! First, click the "fit to window" button (which is the last button on the right from the zoom out button.) This will bring your image back to a more easy-to-use and see size.

Now, you are going to trace your image, to do this, go over to the right side of your silhouette studio program and select the box with the blue "x" in it.

After you get there, your right side bar should look like this:

Click on "Select Trace Area." Then, select the area you want traced. The area you want traced will be highlighted with yellow. Unselect "High Pass Filter" (which is in the toolbar on the right.)

Once you have unselect "High Pass Filter" your image should look like this:

At this point, you will want to select "Trace" from the right hand menu. There will be red trace lines around your image and you can then move the rest of the image away from what you have traced. This is also a good way to confirm that the traced image is how you want it to be.

Go ahead and delete the original image now and measure your shirt to see how large you want the design to be. A lot of times, I just measure the shirt without the image, but my friend wanted this image to be fairly true to size that she made it, so I didn't necessarily need to measure the shirt.

After you have the image at the size you are wanting it, you are going to need to mirror the image. To do this, you will right click on the image, and select "Flip Horizontally."

Your image will flip and look backwards. Something similar to this:

Once you have your image the size you want it, and are ready to cut your vinyl, lay it on your cutting mat shiny side down. I have read that you don't need to use a mat at this point - but I prefer to, just to be on the safe side. 

Be sure your image is the size you want it to be, and then get ready to cut! I bought this vinyl from www.expressionsvinyl.com and they have a reference page for what settings to use on a Silhouette or A Cricut for cutting the vinyls they sell. To see their settings, go here. Once you have your settings right, do a test cut to be on the safe side if you like - or, if you like to live life on the wild side, go ahead and cut. 

After your image has been cut, you will want to weed out the parts you don't want. 

To see a video on this and the ironing on, you can check it out here. After you have weeded out the vinyl you don't want to use, you can set your image on the clothing you are wanting to apply it to. 

With the vinyl that I used, I just left the clear top on and got to work ironing.

I ironed for 15-20 seconds all over the shirt and then peeled off the top clear layer. If it doesn't come off easily, keep ironing.

Voila! It's done! We made a masterpiece shirt of our own design! Ok...it wasn't actually my design - it was my friend's design. Ten points if you know what her design is in reference to! :)