Home made Mother's Day Gift.

Good Day Everyone,

I had a brain storm for Mother's Day.  I am the worst person in the world to remember dates and sending cards.  I however, love to make hand made gifts.  I seem never to find what I want to give or if I do I alter what they say and look like.  How many of you have been in this spot?  I love Pinterest, I call it my personal brain fart notebook.  I hate trying to remember where I saw the last good idea that I can make.  My computer was getting bogged down with "my favorites" and before you knew it was so out of control that I would role my eyes when I had to scroll through it to find what I wanted.  

My brain storm was, "wow I would love to have a picture of all my kid's hand prints."  Now my girls are 22, 14, 9, 1 1/2.  I was only successful in getting one baby foot impression out of all my kids.  Yes, I have great ideas but then procrastinate in doing the project, as my husband will say.  So off to Michael's I went and to my luck there was a sale on canvases 2 for $4.  Wow can't beat that.  But wait I only need one.  Well then I thought what about my mom, mother-in-law and step-mom.  My kids are not theirs but I am and I know they would love this and too it was coming from me and my husband so that counts as a Mother's Day gift.  LOL

I will post step-by-step of the Sunflower hand prints.  

1. This is what I started with.  A blank Gessoed canvas.  It is very important that the canvas is Gessoed,  as it keeps the surface semi smooth and your acrylic or oil from bleeding into the material.  Don't worry if you are saying "what", your canvas should state that it has been primed with Gesso. 
   
2. I bought acrylic paint 4 for $2.  (I hit the jack pot), I just kind of sat on the floor in the isle and put together all the yellow paint to get four different shades that would help me get the visual effect I was looking for.  
   
3. I used a pie pan I had because it was big enough to put all the paint in.  Now i started out with all of the girls putting their hand flat in the pan and then putting them on the canvas.  Found out later that was not the affect I wanted, so I switched things up and started to paint the fingers to get the finger prints I wanted to make the petals.  
   
   
   I liked this better, left the center clear to paint the center of the flower.  I did not paint the thumb.  
   
   
   
   
   
4. I estimated how big to make the sunflower, so that called for a bigger canvas, (you may not need one so big if you have less than four kids). DON'T FORGET to paint a stem on your canvas.  I did forget on my first flower, but that turned out ok.  I painted the stem and estimated where I was going to put the hand prints.  Now you want to paint the fingers and place them on the canvas in a repeated circle. You can over lap them.  I DID NOT PAINT THE THUMB.  Over lapping I think made it look fuller.  (I started with a dark color first and then worked to the lighter color and then reversed the colors on the other canvases.  I liked both ways.  LET THE PAINT DRY BETWEEN APPLICATIONS OR USE A HAIR DYER, BETTER THAN THAT GO OUTSIDE AND ENJOY THE WEATHER).  
   
   
   
5. Now the second child do the same and estimate just 3/4 or more down the petals of the first child and repeat pattern around.  YOU MAY HAVE TO GUIDE THE YOUNGER ONES.  
   
   
   
6. Now to the third child and repeat step #5. 
7. Now you are looking at this and thinking, "what! this is a mess", trust me it gets better.  Now with a brown paint you want to use your finger and dip and dot the middle of the sunflower to get that sunflower look.  
   
   
   
   
   
8. Now at this point I thought "Ewww I'm not liking this".  I added a little lady bug and had my girls figure out where to put it and used their fingers in red paint and made a dot.  Woo Hoo.
   
   
   
   LET THE PAINT DRY AND TAKE A BLACK CRAFT MARKER TO ADD DETAIL TO THE LADY BUG.  cute cute cute
   
   
   
9. At this point you may like the way it looks and that is great, but being an artist, I felt the flower needed more depth.  I got out my black acrylic paint, watercolor pencils and my paint brushes.  I started with  stippling black paint in the middle of the flower on top of the brown to give it the sunflower seed look.
   
    
10. Next I took my watercolor pencils and used a reddish brown and black to shadow around the outer edge of the center of the sunflower.  Then took my other colors and tried to match a shade darker on all the petals.  I then started out lining the petals and putting some color between the front petal and petal behind it to give it some depth.  
    
    
    
11. After getting everything out lined and colored, I took a little bit of water and wet the brush, patted semi-dry and started spreading the watercolor pencil marks.  At first when you get started the color seems dark but it dries lighter. If you step back and take a look you will see where you need to add and take away.  You can also use a paper towel to blot if you need to.  
    
    
    
    
    
    
12. Now I'm done with the flower and I wanted to add the lyrics of the song "You Are My Sunshine" to the borders of the picture.  I then found a font I liked on my Microsoft Word and sized the type as I wanted it and printed it out.  I unfortunately did not have any carbon paper, so I used a graphite pencil or you can use an ordinary pencil, to shade the reverse side of the printed strips so it could act like carbon paper to trace on the frame.  I will say I wish I had carbon paper. 
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
13. I taped the pieces of paper back to the frame and took a blunt tool or embossing tool to trace the words around the frame.  Once that was completed, TADA, it was transferred and I used a fine tip craft marker to trace the words to make it permanent.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
14. Now you pretty much are finished with this.  You can paint the outer part of the frame on the canvas or leave it white.  I put a little personal touch on  mine by putting my daughters initials or names on the petals that were their finger prints so my mom, step-mom and mother-in-law new what print where who's.  

Now looking on Pinterest I saw another cute thing to do. This will be a neat God Mother gift with a little poem on a canvas.

  

Hope you liked this.  Happy painting and crafting and Mother's Day to you all.  I'm enclosing a video from Youtube on blending your watercolor pencils.-------->  Sunflower Mother's Day project

I love to crochet, but......

Good Morning Everyone ~ 

I had a crafting epiphany over the weekend.  I love to crochet, knit, cross stitch and all the things that are fun to do.  But my hand, thumb, wrist, and elbow begin to hurt and swell.  So needless to say I have countless of started crafts that take forever for me to finish.  I suffer from carpal tunnel in my hand and elbow that eventually ends up as tendinitis in my shoulder.  All started many, many years ago in my dental assisting days.  

I have been crocheting for years dollies, blankets, slippers...etc.  I was so frustrated that I could not finish a lot of my Christmas gifts this year because of how bad my hand and elbow would start to hurt after a while.  So I looked online and you can buy crochet hooks that have bigger handles and comfort fits but the problem is that they were not big enough to relieve the stress in my hand and I had a collection of needle anyway and did not want to put out the cost of $6. and over for new on some of the products.  So I started storming and I realized I still have tons of polymer clay that I use every now and then.  

This was my crafting epiphany.  I got out my polymer clay and started working with it and rolling it into a tube, then pressing it flat.  Took one of my many crochet needles and placed it where I wanted the cushion to be.  Now you ask, "you cover up the size of the needle," you say.  Yes, you do but I wrote the size down and made an imprint in the clay after sizing it in my hand.  Now sizing depends on how thick or thin you want it.  I like bulky, it relieves that stress on my hand.  The really neat thing about this is that you can adjust the size and you can bake it in your oven at manufactures directions.  Let it cool and TADA! 

I did over 10 crochet needles and this is some of them 

now don't forget to put indention of where your fingers will go or make grip marks.  I chose not to.  And as you can see on one of them I have #1 indented in it so I know what size it is (as noted above, you will cover that part of your needle up.) 

I hope you enjoyed this little tidbit.  I hope this may help my fellow crafters.  

Here are some of the products I used to make these and they can be found at any crafting supply place.  The crocheting needles are samples of what i was looking into.