Winter Break Crafting

Probably my favorite thing about college is that the summer and winter breaks really are breaks.  There aren't any assignments given, there's no extra reading that I have to do, and I finally get to sit back and do things that I want to do.  And, since it's me, I made things.

When I was little, my mother made little wooden tiles that helped us young'ns to learn to read.  She made tiles with different words, settings, and actions on them.  What made them special though, was how she also made tiles with a lot of family members' faces on them.  A few years ago, I noticed that with my cousins now having children of their own, the size of the family had almost doubled.  The younger bunch had found the old tiles and had a grand old time making their older cousins do silly things.  I found a bag of the leftover tiles, and made another batch, adding in those who had been born since the first set was made.  I consider myself very lucky to have such a large and ever-growing family, so this Christmas, I decided it was time for yet another batch of tiles.

Using one of the originals as a size reference for the heads

I added a lot of different settings and verbs in the last group, so this time, I mainly focused on making tiles for all the new babies that had been born since then.  I decided to go for a New Orleans theme this time around.

The finished tiles

I'm really proud of my crawfish.

In the background, you can see Christmas presents in the works for the rest of the family.  I decorated glass ornaments with oil based felt pens.  The red one is a Sharpie brand, but I used another brand for the other colors since a pack of those is about the same cost as one Sharpie.

Six out of 25 that I made.

The reason I had those oil based paint pens in the first place is, you guessed it, to make Sharpie mugs.  My mother is the type of person that no one ever knows what to get for her.  She really doesn't ask for much more than a nice quiet afternoon nap, Netflix, and a large glass of iced tea.  I couldn't think of anything to get for her for Christmas.  Luckily for me, she cleaned out our pantry and found a large pack of assorted hot chocolate mixes.  She started drinking those every night, which gave me the idea for the mugs.

Dollar Store mugs.

I'm not going to go into detail as to how I made these, since they're all over the internet right now.

 The one with the fleur-de-lis was mainly a test one so that I could get the feel of the markers on the ceramics, but she uses that one the most.

When I was at Michaels to get the oil based paint pens, I noticed a pack of canvases for a very good price.  Being as weak as I am, I bought a pack.  My boyfriend had mentioned something about wanting more art for his wall, so I thought about making a series of canvases that resembled the surface of the planets.  The pack only had 5 canvases, so I decided to do galaxies instead.

Sketching the nebula

I based it off of this nebula.

Almost finished

In retrospect, acrylics would probably have been a better choice than watercolors, but hey, I like how it turned out.  I used an iridescent color in the center which doesn't show up too well on camera, but it looks much better in person.  I still need to put the other stars in the background.

And that's about it.  In the meantime, I have a show to direct.