What 'cha workin' on Wednesday???

In my quest for a less cluttered studio, I came across these paintbrushes so I decided to make them up and put them away for my fall shows.  I have already written a tutorial on how to do this (look it up in the archives by date:  October 2012 or simply type paint brush into the search bar at the top of the blog)  But I thought I would revisit it by showing you my pics;

These are easy enough for kids, but there is some hot glue involved.  You could use a tacky glue if you want, but you then have to allow time for the glue to dry and set up.  The mustache could be made of teardrops or squares, or triangles, etc., but I had a load of these little hearts, so rule #1.....use what you have.  You can really get creative with these too, different colors, different designs, trims, etc.  You could make them more primitive or more modern.  Have fun with them.

A little tip.  If you make ornaments for craft shows like I do, store like items in baggies.  For these large ornaments, I store them in gallon zip lock bags.  If you start mixing items, they are harder to find when you are restocking and they tend to tangle. 

Have a great day, my peeps.  Sis is taking me to breakfast for my bday tomorrow.  Can't wait!

Birthday Week!

This, my peeps, is my birthday week.  No big celebrations planned, just excited to have made it another year.  Before my daughter Brandi went to Heaven, she and I always celebrated birthday week.  We always did little special things for each other each day.  I miss that.  Its times like this when I miss her most.

Over the weekend, I was going through some of my stash (I listed some doll making supplies on Etsy) and I ran across some chair spindles that I saved from the trash last summer.  They were from a couple of chairs that were sitting on the deck and were being ruined from the rain.  I tore them apart and threw the badly damaged pieces in the kindling pile and salvaged the spindles.  I really didn't know quite what to do with them but here is what I came up with:

Here is what I did:  I drilled a hole into a large wooden ball that I had on hand, just big enough to fit the dowel end of the spindle.  I cut the spindle off so that the widest part would be on the bottom (for stability)  I freehanded the wings and cut them out of very thin plywood (I had the scrap)  I painted the ball flesh tone, the wings and base (a scrap of 1 x 3" cut into a square) white and put a coat of crackle over the already brownish colored spindle.  I recoated when dry and where needed.  Paint white over the crackle but make sure it is really dry before you do that.  Add glitter to one side of the wings.  I use modpodge to adhere the glitter.  Assemble.  I screwed the spindle to the base and put wood glue in the drill hole on the head.  I glued and screwed on the wings.  Then trim.  Moss and tiny grapevine wreath on the head, draw in eyes with black sharpie, blush cheeks.  I put pearls around the "neck" and glued on some rusty bells.  What do you think???

I have a bunch of spindles, so I am going to try some shorter ones, and vary the wings a bit.  Any ideas?  Let me know.

I also finished one of my big angels:

I added a candle box and a hand tipped silicone bulb.  I really like her but I worry about transporting her to my shows.  Any ideas???

Better get to work.  I have so many projects in the works.