Gift for my boy/Long time Craft project

For the past couple years I've been promising these paintings to Chico.  I showed them to him a LONG time ago but kept telling him I had to finish them first.  I kept putting it off and putting it off. Finally the night before his birthday I finished them so I could give them to him on his birthday. For how excited he HAD been about them, the toys were much more exciting and he practically blew me off when we opened the box. Oh well.  I hung them on the wall a day or two later and he was so excited to see them up there finally.

If you're interested to know how I made these, here are the not so clear instructions on how to do them:

So I sketched all of the images out on my own with some referencing from google images.  After I sketched them out, I traced it out onto good quality white paper which I then cut out.  Then I mod podged it to 8x10 canvases that I had painted beforehand.  Then for the temple and the handcart I painted in by hand the areas that needed to be filled in (the wheel and the details on the temple).  I also painted the paper white so it would be the same texture as the rest of everything. Then I modpodged back over the entire thing.  It worked out pretty well I think!

Crafty-type stuff

The curtains in this first picture are my pride and joy. Hours were spent on this project. Hours have been enjoyed sitting in my recliner looking at these curtains instead of the ugliness that is usually on the other side of that window.

Want to know how I made those curtains? Well, this is our comforter and I wanted something to kind of match it.:

So I drew the design on ironing paper. (Remember I was an art major in school, so that was the easy part). Then I ironed it onto the green fabric. Then I cut it out while watching The Biggest Loser with my family while Brent was in a night class. After hours of cutting it was finally ready to iron onto the white fabric. Then I hemmed it and put it up! ALL BY MYSELF! I was so pleased with how it all worked out. The curtains have been done for a while. I don't know why I didn't post sooner!

These next two are of the boxes I mod-podged. They've been done for a while too.  I had a bunch of free scrapbook paper given to me and since I do digital scrapbooking I put the paper to good use.

This box below was the first one I made and I covered every inch of that box.  I originally made it for Chico but after seeing the contention it would cause between the two of us (me yelling at him not to get in the box or draw on it) I decided I should just put some of my craft stuff in it. I gave myself a little area in our big closet for crafting.  I need to use it more often. Oh, and  you get a little sneak preview of my next craft project in the background there. I'm really close to having it done.

This box is bigger but didn't take me as long.  (I didn't do the inside or bottom). I patterned the tow truck off of one of Chico's toys which seriously just happened to be in the background when I was taking the picture! How funny is that!?

And lastly I made this wall hanging for my bathroom. It didn't turn out as well as I had hoped because you can see the wood through it but it's nice to have something on the wall finally. For some reason I'm not big into having pictures of people in a bathroom. I don't know why, maybe because my bathroom growing up never had pictures of people. I think it's fine when other people do, it's just not my thing.

Anybody else notice I've got a distinct color theme going on in these pics? And also, I used a different uploading company instead of Photobucket. Any problems with being able to see it anyone?

artsy craftsy week #1

Remember in my new year's resolution how I said I want to work on some kind of artsy craftsy thing at least once a week? Well... I've been obsessed. I had this idea to have a bunch of pictures pinned up somewhere in my house. The idea kinda stemmed off an idea I saw on a neighbor's blog and off of nie nie's blog. Both of them had them only in black and whites but I just am too in love with the color in a lot of my photos that I couldn't do that. So I had to come up with the WHERE to pin them and the HOW. My fun old roommate gave me a cork board/white board for Christmas one year. I decided to turn it around and spray paint the back all black. You can pin things into the back of both sides. The spray paint worked well and I was able to hang it in my kitchen!

* the only problem with the location of these pictures is that chico learned how to climb up onto our table the VERY same day I put these up. He loves to try to pull the pictures off. I don't know what to do. :( For now, we decided to just keep the chairs away from the table, though he's learned to push those around where he wants him to go too. sigh.

here is the close up view the picture isn't the best...

The next two pictures are of new cute things I got for decorating. (My house was in serious need of a woman's touch, I have been neglecting that part of my creativity).

I got these baskets from Michael's half off. They are perfect for chico's diapers and books and I had this cute blue frame that I've been meaning to hang up to go above them. I love how it turned out, but now I want to paint the handles on the bookshelf white or something. Brent told me it might cost more to paint them than to just go and get new handles. We'll have to check into that, because I'm really not digging the red. I can live with it for now though. :)

Lastly (for now) my mom gave me this cute collage frame for Christmas. I love the design and I love how my black and whites look in it!

And then lastly, I'd like to end with a funny story:

Last night my knee was hurting pretty bad from twisting it as I slid down our icy steps (in case you were concerned, it doesn't hurt anymore, no worries :). So Brent went to go get me ibuprofen and a glass of water. He comes in to the room with the water and then all the sudden his eyes get wide as he realizes he mindlessly took the ibuprofen he had just gotten for me! Oh man, we laughed so hard!