Peaceful Waters

Good morning everyone! Welcome to all the new followers, it's great to see this little blog of mine growing and I can not tell you how much I appreciate your support.

Continuing the month of Miriam's Crafting Blogs 8th Monthly Challenge, we are still working with the flower theme. Earlier this month I showed you a lotus flower made with embellishments form Miriam's store. If you missed it, check it out here. I also said I would be using it in a future project, so here is what I made with it complete with instructions for the project.

Supplies:

Dip n Etch by Etchall (currently on sale for 15% off!)
Plastic bowl
Blue acrylic paint
Water
Paint brush
Heat gun
Matte finish clear spray paint
May Arts leaves ribbon
Green nail polish
4 Copper embellishments
4 Flower bling buttons (loops removed)
Glue

Instructions for bottom section:

1. Remove the top of the jar from the bottom. 
2. Place your bottom section in a plastic bowl and fill with water to desired height for your frosted section.  
3. Remove your glass piece and dry.
4. Mark your line on the outside of the bowl where the water stops. Remove water from the bowl, dry completely.
5. Pour Dip 'n Etch into the bowl until it reaches your marked line.
6. Place something inside your glass bottom piece to weight it down and then place in the bowl  of Dip 'n Etch.
7. Allow to sit in solution for 15 minutes. (see next section for working on top while this is in process)
8. Remove from solution and wash well, then dry.
9. Mix a paint wash of water and blue paint. Apply in sections and use heat gun to dry these quickly to avoid drippage and give you that water wash look.
10 When you are happy with the water look, spray with a matte finish clear paint to ensure it is sealed and washable. Allow it to dry according to manufacturers suggestion for spray.
11. Glue May Arts ribbon around the top edge of the "water" section.

Instructions for top section:

1. Remove plastic seal from top of jar and turn top upside down so that you are working in the inner part of the glass.
2. Pour green nail polish into the very top section, just until you reach your desired level. This is to make it look similar to a lily pad. Let dry completely.
3. Wash the inside of the top with the same paint mixture you used on the bottom of the jar and heat set quickly again. I made my paint slightly darker blue for this section so it looked like it was shadowed from the flower.
4. Reattach the plastic seal.
5. Place lid on bottom section.
6. Slightly bend your copper embellishments so that they have a curvature similar to the outside of the lid and then glue them on. Mine are slightly overlapped to fit evenly. You will need to place yours according to the size of your jar lid. BE SURE YOU ARE GLUING ONLY TO THE LID so that you can still open the jar.
7. Remove loops from buttons and glue over where the copper embellishments meet.
8. Glue your Lotus flower to the top of the lid.

Fill with whatever you like or leave it plain and enjoy as a decorative jar. That's up to you. You could even etch or put vinyl lettering to say something on the clear section. Your imagination is your companion with this project! I'm going to use mine in the bathroom to add to the spa factor.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and we would love to see what you create with flowers. Link up at Miriam's Crafting Blog for a chance to win $10 to spend in Miriam's store. Believe me when I say $10 will get you a TON of stuff from her!

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon!

Love ya,
~Deb~

Pinterest Hot Pick!

I'm sure all of you like Pinterest like I do. Today I wanted to show you my very favorite pin. It's an inexpensive way to store your markers (copic, spectrums, or whatever you use). So here it is:

Go here ---> Deb's Pinterest page - Craft Tutorials  to find out more about it. Simple, inexpensive, and convenient. Who could ask for more? While you're there, look around the page you might find some other interesting pins!

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope this pin is useful to you.

Love ya,
~Deb~

A Challenge for You!

Miriam's Crafting Blog is hosting her 8th monthly challenge. The theme this month is flowers as I mentioned in my lotus flower post. As a design team member, we get to provide inspiration for you all to help motivate you for the challenge.

Since I was having so many issues with my ISP I kept my project for this post simple. I created a tag.

I also did a video on the process I used.

The supplies are as follows:

1 Bronze tone flower embellishment
1 Wooden button
1 - #8 Shipping tag
Ivory Satin Ribbon
Image from Gecko Galz
Pan Pastels
Glue
Feathers
Baby Wipes and other applying tools
Stamps

I really hope you will head over to the Challenge Blog, see all the inspiration from my fabulous DT sisters and enter..the rules are simple:

1. The project must have something to do with flowers.

2. You may enter up to four projects for the month.

3. You must tell on your blog or Facebook page that you are in this challenge with a link back here to Miriam's Crafting Challenge. If your entry is on your Facebook page rather than a blog the privacy of the picture MUST be set as Public and shared to our Facebook page.

4. Sorry, but no back linking.

5. Use linky tool to link up by the end of the challenge, this challenge runs through December 31st at 11:55pm.

6. Like our Facebook page and you can get an extra entry into the challenge (make sure to let us know you did this).

8. Become a follower of our blog by clicking the RSS feed link on the top right.

9. Have fun!

Love ya,
~Deb~

The Beauty of Lotus Flowers

I love Lotus Flowers, also called water lilies. Maybe it comes from my obsession with water and its calming affect on our minds and bodies.Maybe it's just the shear beauty invoking a guttural response. I don't really know why but I love them. So when Miriam asked us to use the theme flowers for this month's challenge at Miriam's Crafting Supplies, I knew my first project as a member of her DT had to be a lotus. I needed to figure out how to use her supplies to make this happen. Well that wasn't hard! Her metal embellishments are flexible and can be manipulated in so many ways to create differing effects. I took her flat metal embellishments and an acrylic crystal and I was off and running. I created the first video tutorial of 2014 for her team so please watch it below, and after read on for some important things I discovered after making it.

So after trying this for the first time, I discovered that hot glue just doesn't hold well on these. I think because there is no porousness to them. The E6000 worked great but you do need to let it dry 24 hours so I ended up using glossy accents for stability while I waited for that to dry because glossy accents dries faster. Glossy accents isn't element proof though so for maximum impact and staying power use both.

I can't wait to show you the next project that I will do using this gorgeous flower. I'll publish that Wednesday so stay tuned.

I also think I'm going to make one and paint it so it really resembles the whole look of a lotus. Have to get more supplies first though. 

Head on over to Miriam's blog so you can see the challenge rules and create something beautiful of your own to show us. It's all about flowers this month and what could be simpler?

Love ya,

~Deb~