Fun Friday Crafts Sponsored by DecoArt

Last Friday I made crafts with the students at the school where I teach, Chapin Middle School. We used DecoArt DecoPage and Americana Enamel Gloss to decorate glass jars and recycled cardboard ornaments. The students used the DecoPage to adhere patterned papers and die cut snowflakes, trees, and stars to the jars and ornaments. Some also used DecoArt Enamel Paints to paint their glass jars. A huge thanks to DecoArt who generously donated DecoPage for us to use at this event.

The students had fun decorating the glass jars using die cut shapes and DecoPage

Some of the students used DecoArt Americana Gloss Enamel Paints

to paint their glass jars before adding their die cuts. 

 They also created some beautiful ornaments made from recycled cereal boxes, 

patterned papers, and die cuts. 

These were a couple of fun and easy projects that used recycled materials and allowed the students to use their creativity. They are perfect projects for kids to work on over the holidays. If you are inspired to try projects like these, please let me know. I would love to see what you make.

Happy Holidays!!

5 for 5 Halloween: Haunted House

Welcome to Day 3 of our 5 for 5 Halloween Blog Event. Today our theme is "Haunted House". We are all sharing a project where purple is a main color. Each day our 5 Designers will post a Halloween Inspired Project based on a theme. Some of us are offering prizes, so be sure to visit all the links below and leave comments.

I'm offering this prize package full of Halloween embellishments. I think you will love it. To be eligible to win, just leave a comment on every day of this event and be sure to follow me. I will announce the lucky winner here on Saturday, October 17. 

I made this Haunted House canvas. I painted the top of the background with acrylic paint and the on the bottom I used a stencil with modeling paste then painted it with green acrylic paint and later I blended some darker ink on the grass area with a Big Brush pen to darken the area. I added stars with a stencil and modeling paste on the sky and painted them with gold paint. I cut the witch and moon from a piece of DCWV Halloween paper. 

The bat and tombstones were also cut from patterned paper. I made the house out of 3 pieces of patterned paper and added a Tim Holtz number 31. The door is from Maya Road. I used Black Soot Crackle paint on the door. The fence is a Martha Stewart punch I used with black paper that I covered with Sparkle Mod Podge. The raven, ghost and pumpkins are from the Tim Holtz Halloween Ephemera pack.

Our 5 for 5 Halloween Designers

Donna (me) 

Rachel

Lynn

Karen
Kris

Christmas Card Challenges #34

It's time for this week's challenge over at Christmas Card Challenges. This week our Challenge theme is everybody's favorite "Anything Goes".  Get a head start on your Christmas cards and come join us this week. We now pick a weekly winner and honorable mentions! Thanks for stopping by!

I made a simple one layer card this week. A perfect card to make multiples of. I used PaperArtsy JOFY stamps and colored them with my new Zig Clean Color Real Brush Water color markers. I used some bright non-traditional colors to make it more fun. 

Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #13 - A Year of Choices (And Some Changes)

It's the first of the month. That means it's time for another challenge over at The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge. We are celebrating our 1st Birthday!! It's been an awesome year and we have lots of fun things planned for our birthday celebration. Be sure to check out this month's challenge post for some amazing inspiration.

We are also implementing a few changes to our challenge rules, so be sure to remember the following when creating your June post.

1. You must include the challenge graphic.
2. You must comment on at least 3 design team member's blogs to be eligible for prizes and recognitions.
3. You may combine with 4 other challenges.

Also, our sponsor this month is Maya Road and they are offering 2 prizes filled with Maya Road Goodness to our 2 lucky random winners.

Our theme this month is "A Year of Choices." You can pick out any theme we have done over the past year. How fun is that? For my project I used several themes: Spray Inks, Around the House, Stamps and Flowers.

I made a very Patriotic American Shadowbox. Since Memorial Day was last week and the 4th of July is coming up and I bought an awesome new Unity Stamp Company Patriotic Stamp set, I was in the mood to make some thing red, white and blue.

Michaels has had these 7 Gypsies Shadowboxed in the Clearance section a while now and I finally picked one up.

To create the background I brushed on some Decorate Twinkles Glitter Paint in Blue Galaxy.

Then I sprayed on Decoart Spray Ink in Primary Cyan and Maya Road Spray Mist in Strawberry.

Here's the final project.

When I was trying to decide what to do, I thought my big Unity Flag Stamp would fit perfectly in the big opening - and it did!! I also used the smaller round star with stripes Unity stamp. I used Decorate Media Matte Medium to adhere the stamped images to a piece of thick chipboard before I adhered them to the box. I stamped Let Freedom Ring on a Maya Road Ticket and stenciled a red star on the ticket with Decoart paint and an Andy Skinner Stencil. I attached it to the shadowbox with a Maya Road Mini Clothespin in White.

In the lower left corner of the box I added a Maya Road Kraft Flower that I colored with Stampers Big Brush pens in red and blue. Then I added a wood 4 and 3 blue Maya Road flowers. For the rest of the embellishments I used stickers from various companies. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you will play with us this month!!