International Charm Day 2012

This year I will be missing International Charm Day.
The reason is that I am taking a trip with my husband to Namibia for a few days.

My mom and dad (which are both 86) will be going with us.

So instead of hosting a class on the day,
Benice and I decided to make and share our charms this year
- just the way Amber Dawn had intended when she started this initiative!!

Remember those stretched canvas stabilizers?

Well this is what we are turning them into.

 

 

 

 

Prrrrretty little charms!

To all our followers in South Africa:
Send us an email with your vital stats and postal address,
and we will send you one of these pretties.

(We hope to get them out by May 15th!)

For our blog followers from abroad, I am really sorry that we cannot send

you a little charm, but here are a few tips on how to create your own.

 

 

Paint the wood with gesso and the paint colour of your choice.

Then use gel medium to adhere the tissue paper to the wood.

Sand off the extra overlapping tissue paper, once your gel has dried.

Drill a small hole with your Dremel in the top corner.

 

 

Choose a small stamp and your Archival ink to stamp an image onto

both sides of the charm.

Paint the sides and add some dangles or silver charms.

I will be back in May with a few photos of one of my favourite places, Namibia!

The perfect size.

Hi everyone

Yes, I am still into the soy wax candles.

All the candles were sold out during our class on the 14th.

WOW! Thanks girls.

This winter will be a bit kinder on your hands and feet with the help of your candle.

Last week I needed a gift for a friend and the obvious choice was a candle.

Searching for a suitable container a little bit bigger than the ones we have,

I came across these beautiful cream and blue ramekins.

I bought four of them and filled them with wax.

Now when she used the candles, she will have

four ramekins that she can use.

They are just the perfect size.

A Malva pudding and some custard will be perfect in these!

A candle making factory

This weekend I turned my studio into a factory to make soy wax candles.

The smell of the candles are mesmerizing.

I poured 36 candles and now almost half of them are packaged and decorated.

I still need to do the rest before Saturday!

Soy wax turns into an oil when heated. It is a wonderful moisturizer

and can be applied directly to the skin. Unlike a normal paraffin wax candle.

The soy wax also melts at 39° C. It is warm when melted in this way, but never hot.

Benice designed the labels, which looks very elegant! I still need to

punch out some more labels to cover the candles.

OK....

(deep breath!)

These Winnie the Pooh little honey jars will be filled with hot chocolate and

other goodies to make a wonderful bedtime treat after a long cold day.

Benice and Jaclyn are working on the kits for Saturdays class.

The Spa Package and Recipe Folder.

Jaclyn has a wonderful prize from Fiskars

which will go home with one of you lucky ladies. 

We are all excited to see you there!

Easter Postcard

My grandmother lived in Pretoria before she got married and moved to Stellenbosch.
That was in the early 1900's.

This postcard was send to her in 1913.

She worked at Law's C. College.

 As you can see her cousin Charlie lived in Johannesburg and
the fast way of corresponding was by mail.

The postcard's date is in October, but Easter is in April.

 OK....

Anyway, the images are pretty and you are welcome to download both.

(Just do the double click, copy and paste thing.)

I have not mastered the border or border less thing with my Picasa,

but hopefully you will be able to reuse the images.

Happy Easter everyone.

May you be blessed.

First attempt.

Yes , everybody has a first attempt.

Some are so lucky that the first attempt is a masterpiece!!

But for most of us it is a learning process and the start of something that can develop into a masterpiece. Even if it just a personal masterpiece.

This year you will create your own masterpiece on a tiny piece of wood.

(I had to frame the picture, because I downloaded the new

version of Picasa and had to try the "fame thing")

In the meantime the creative process has evolved

and as I said yesterday,

stamping, painting, decorating and much more has now

become part of these little treasures.

International Charm Day

Like I said... I like to gather stuff, sometimes you just know you

can do something with these things that you have gathered.

This time it really happened!!

I did find a use for these...... I don't even know what you call them?!

Canvas stabilizers!?

I used a scroll saw and some sandpaper to transform and alter them.

Now it is time to paint and stamp and spray and doodle and drill and glue!

 

I am sure you can also now see the potential........ !!

Nature's Findings

Sometimes we find beautiful things in nature, but we put it away
somewhere and after a while it gets lost within our stash.
We also gather "stuff" because of it's sentimental value.
I do that quite a lot.

 Then one day you find the paper that can bring it all together.
The only thing you then need is the time to create something.

When you have everything ready and you mix it with a friend
that knows where to find some more stuff and knows
how to combine things, you end up with something very special.

This is a sneak peek of one of the canvasses that we created.

All together there are three canvasses. Two smaller ones and a larger one.

We have mixed something old, something new, something borrowed

and something blue.

These canvasses are featured in the new the Bead Book.

So girls... sometimes you do need to clean out your stuff,

but be careful, rather find a friend and some paper and create something special.

Thanks for stopping by and tomorrow I will share

some of the charms we will be making this year on

International Charm Day.

ELNA