Question: What do you do with a glaringly blank wall...

.... and an irrepressible urge to cover it?

Answer: Take your foam trays collected over the last three and half years and a roll of masking tape. And stick it up there.

Obviously.

♥M

Foam Tray Landscape

The foam tray etching and painting experiment continues... I couldn't help myself. HAD to try another one. Gobs and gobs of fun, hee heeeeee...

Find the original instructions HERE.

♥M

Tutorial: Foam Tray Sign

Yes, indeed. It's a sign made from a foam veggie-slash-meat tray! The kids might even like to join in on this one 'cause it's quick, it's easy, it's messy, and fun as pumpkins.

Tutorial: Foam Tray Sign

Step 1: Gather supplies. For this craft you will need: a clean foam tray, pair of scissors, pencil, ruler, ball-point pen, paper, tracing paper, paint, paintbrushes and a toothbrush.

Step 2: Cut off the raised edges of the meat tray.

Step 3: Use your pen and ruler to draw a rectangle on the remaining foam rectangle. Cut along the lines to create a lovely squared-up rectangle.

Step 4: On a piece of paper, draw yourself a sign design. It can be a reminder, a short inspirational message, a name plate, or any crazy word or expression that takes your fancy! Fill the area around the word with a filler design. Anything from cross-hatching (as I've done), wavy lines, zig zags, loops, a pattern of dots... etcetera... will work!

Step 5: Transfer your finished design onto a sheet of tracing paper. Place the tracing paper over the foam rectangle, and then gently re-trace your design so that it is transferred to the foam tray. Once you've transferred the entire design, remove the tracing paper from the foam rectangle. Re-trace your entire design directly on the foam rectangle with the ball-point pen. Firmly re-trace around the main lettering, and gently re-trace the filler design.

Step 6: Now you're ready to paint! Choose a bright, saturated colour for the bottom layer of paint. Fill your brush and apply the paint while holding your brush almost horizontally. This way you'll avoid filling in all the grooves with paint allowing the tray colour to show through. Allow the first layer of paint to dry completely. Apply a lighter second colour of paint in the same exact way. You don't have to completely cover the bottom layer of paint. Let some of it to show through for a nifty contrasting effect. Let this layer dry as well. Now go over your letters only with a third bright paint colour. And finally, age your sign with a little spatter-painting using a toothbrush and some watered-down black paint. 

Well lookee there, you have signage!

Go ahead now... Be bold and try it yourself!

♥M

Prior and future versions of this craft live here and here.

Lost and Found

I tell you. When you tackle a heap such as the heap that overwhelmed my basement workroom for so many moons, you unearth some good stuff...

See the yarn basket above? The Boy and I made it together, oh, probably about 4 years ago now. I dug it out during the recent clean-up. Still going strong, eh? I think I'll use it to store zippers.

I also happened upon this little fellow below. An inuksuk stamp designed by The Boy, and used to make homemade invitations for his birthday a couple years ago. We carved it out of a foam meat tray. It made the sweetest invites. I can't believe I still have it...

And of course, there's the obligatory unfinished toilet paper roll craft. This one's been patiently waiting its turn in one of my numerous piles for... um... ever? I've brought it down to the workroom now where it stares at me incessantly. Maybe the crushing guilt will actually move me to complete it... One can only hope... I'll give you one guess as to what it might be.

And best of all, the newly-rescued "Giraffe with a Fork" mini-painting by my sweet daughter Dia! I love this quirky little painting. I could swear I had carefully stowed it in a safe and known-to-only-me location (under the printer) while it awaited framing. But when I went to retrieve it... gasp and double-gasp... it was gone! And it stayed gone for months despite my many searches. Needless to say, I was ecstatic but befuddled when I found it in a completely random spot (under the scanner) during the purge. I'm becoming convinced that the house centipedes moved it. I really wish they'd stop touching my stuff.

I can hardly wait for the next clean-up, almost. You never can tell what lovely lost treasures lie about...

♥M

Saturday Morning Sowing

Remember my little video for making newspaper plant pots? On Saturday morning, The Boy and I actually put our pots to use by gum.

We smooshed moist potting soil into them..

Wrote-up some labels using old cut up mini-blinds...

Snuggled them up nice and cozy into a couple of deep foam meat trays...

Sowed some seed...

Sprinkled a little soil and water on them. And finally... placed them in a sunny window.

Now for the hard part... Waiting.

Hrm.

This is a true test of my patience. I like to cheer them on whenever I walk by that particular window. A little "You can do it! Grow babies, grow!" never hurt, am I right? I'll keep you posted on their progress...

Edited to Add on 3 Apr 2012:  Please note that I've used black and white newspaper to make the pots as black ink is made of soy and safe to use around edibles. Coloured newspapers should be avoided as the ink may contain some toxins.

You have a great day now.

♥M

Question: Should Blogging Be Fun?

Have you ever clicked on the "Next Blog" button way up there in the navbar of most Blogger blogs? Try it. It's pretty interesting. You get to see a huge variety of personal type blogs. What really struck me, though, was the number of abandoned blogs. Blogs that hadn't been updated in months, even years.

It just goes to show. Having a blog, and keeping it updated and vibrant, is harder than one might think.

I was responding to an email last week and the following thought sprung to mind: sometimes I am just elated by something bloggy like a comment I receive or a good post I've written; yet hours later, I'll find myself struggling to even begin to write the next post. There's a tension between loving what I'm doing and NOT loving what I'm doing. Does this spell the end to my blogging? Am I doomed to become one of those blogospheric casualties? I don't think so. I certainly hope not. I mean, think of any good marriage. Do you know of any happily-married people who smile incessantly and live in a constant bubble of bliss? Neither do I. Sometimes there are moments of doubt and strife. This is common and normal, right?

And so it goes for blogging. It's not 100% ferris wheels and picnics.

Take, for instance, my newly-designed Tutorials-At-A-Glance page. My husband was showing my blog to someone a while ago and noticed that when you clicked on the thumbnails on my old page, you got an error message. He sent me a concerned email telling me my Tutorials page was broken (I guess he cares...)! It wasn't broken... It just wasn't as straightforward as it could be. So he made some suggestions for improvements. Now I knew it would take a ton of work to change. But I heeded his advice and began making those changes. Yeah... And what a nightmarish hell-job that was. It took me days and days to get a grasp on the html, start a fresh page from scratch, re-organize, and get it up and running. And there's still some tweaking to be done. But it's essentially there now.

Did I enjoy this task? NO! Not even one iota. Am I glad I did it? Yes I am. Because now I have a more navigable, better organized, easy-to-update Tutorials page. I learned something. I pushed my boundaries. And that feels good. It was worth it after all.

I think the time has come to be realistic. Blogging can be darn hard. Especially if I care at all about my content and about making my site any good. It takes time. It takes a hell of a lot of creative energy, effort, sweat, maybe even a couple tears now and then. I love it. I don't love it. Welcome to something worth doing, Michele!

So. In answer to the title of this post: Should blogging be fun? Yes. Darn tootin'. Absolutely. No question. But ALL the time? No. NO! And it would be silly to expect it to be.

Note: The above "tiles" are recycled foam meat trays which I have etched with designs originally created by my three children - Elle, Dia and The Boy - when they were little, and painted with layers of liquid acrylic paints.

Futuristic Construction with The Boy

I'll get directly to it today. Visitors are on their way and my abode needs an overhaul NOW-ish. I'm going for the "illusion" of clean. Wish me luck. Here's what the boy and I got up to yesterday!

Tutorial: Kids' Futuristic Construction Set

You will need:

• Cereal box
• Foam meat tray
• Egg carton
• Paper bag (or whatever paper you have on hand)
• Wooden skewers
• Pair of scissors
• Wax crayons
• Pencil
• Sharpie
• Hole punch
• Assortment of round things to use as templates
• PVA glue

Take your cereal box, open it up and draw out a goodly amount of circles and rings using round things (bowls, cups) as templates. Trace them all with your Sharpie. Colour them in with the wax crayons. There are no rules here. Let your child go colouring-mad!

Cut out all the circles. Use a hole punch to punch out several holes in each piece.

With a paper bag (or whatever paper you happen to have around) and PVA glue, make paper beads by rolling your paper up into long tubes and cutting the resulting tubes into sections like so.

Cut the cups out of an egg carton.

Using a foam tray as your base, poke the wooden skewers down into it, pointy end down.

Your little architect now has all the elements necessary to construct his buildings of tomorrow!

Go ahead my little one, build to your heart's content.

Look at him. He's happy. He's busy. This is the life.

We had fun with our simple construction set. I said we, yes. I'm not ashamed to admit that I played with it too. That's right. You're jealous, aren't you? Well... go on then. Make yourself a whole glorious set, and go to town creating some nifty, state-of-the-art edifices!

Alrighty, must clean now. You have a lovely day, and I'll see you again on Friday!

Juicy Little Gift Boxes

I confess. I couldn't leave well-enough alone. I just had to do it. I just HAD TO make full-size frozen concentrated juice container gift boxes. You see, I'd made these out of them. And the boy and I had made this. And Christmas is just around the corner. And I needed some little gift boxes. So that's what I did! And I know the whole juice-container thing is getting out of hand... Can you ever forgive a girl her repetitious-cum-obsessive behaviour? I certainly hope so. Besides, it was a very merry little time I had making these, and I am actually surprised with the results!

Have a look-see! I used pretty much the exact same method described here, and just added a few extra embellishments!

For example for this green gift box, I glued some ribbon on the bottom edge and then topped it off with a pretty circle from a National Geographic page (from a 1987 issue, when I was still a teenager... sigh) and one of my egg carton flowers. Those old National Geographics are a crafter's gold mine, a gold mine I tell you!

And as you can see, for this little yellow one I simply used a tiny bit of vintage lace to pretty-up the container and then covered the metal top with a hunk (a hunk? really?... hmm...) of white wrapping paper and then affixed one of my foam tray flowers on top. Yep.

And lastly but surely not leastly, the pink one was a repetition of the green one, what with the ribbon-thing on the sides and the National-Geo-slash-egg-carton-flower-thing on the top. (This egg carton flower is from a different post however. You can find it here.)

Now that is some kinda pink. Wow. Festive, ain't she?

And because I love me some photos, here are a ton more!!!

So simple to make, and perfect for those diminutive treasures you will no doubt be giving!

Well you know what to do now, don't you? Go have yourself a fabulous day, that's what!

Tutorial - Zebra Foam Tray Storage Box

Every now and then, every crafter needs a no-brainer kind of a craft. You know, the ultra-easy kind that you can do with your eyes closed while dancing to some fine fine tunage, preferably something from the 80's. Maybe some Prince and the Revolution? Yeah baby, that's pretty much my idea of heaven right there... Now just crank it, and let's do this!

TUTORIAL: Zebra Foam Tray Storage Box

You will need:

• Clean styrofoam meat trays
• Shoe box
• Foam glue
• Pair of scissors
• Pencil
• White/black or gray acrylic paint
• Coarse paint brush

1. If your shoe box isn't gray like my little box happened to be, you may want to give it a few coats of black or dark gray paint.

2. Cut the edges off your cleaned foam trays.

3. From your foam trays, cut several square and rectangular shapes. You need enough to fit the entire surface of the box. Obviously, the larger the box, the more you'll need. Okay, you knew that...

4. Glue the rectangles on with special foam glue. A friend of mine gave me this glue, but you can get your very own at any craft store. Or you can ask your friends to buy you some...

5. As previously mentioned, cover the entire surface of the box. Let one covered side dry before moving on to the next side.

6. Using a blunt pencil, mark your foam with zebra stripes. Just go for it! There are no rules in zebra land! Once you have your pattern, go over it a few times to make your lines wider and uneven.

7. Take some white acrylic paint and your coarse paintbrush and gently paint the foam surface white. Use only a little bit of paint at a time so that the zebra lines stay free of paint. I only did 1 coat of white. You may want to apply a coat or 2 of varnish to protect the surface.

And you are done! Just like that! Here is the finished product!

Use it to store those gajillion pencils you've collected...

Or fill it with all those little sewing notions you don't know what to do with...

Or even better! Hide a chocolate stash in there for when you get the urge... And don't tell anyone. It's all for YOU!

Hee hee.

Have a fantastic day!

P.S. Here's another way to recycle styrofoam trays...