Pumpkin, Pie, Painter: Of Crafted Leaves, Painted Cows, Grape Vine Wreaths, and Menacing Sneezes.

The Christmas season is nearly here.
Working on crafts for the craft sale always puts the Christmas fun into my life a little early.

My brain is on slow speed today because my son has the ability to sneeze 15 feet in all directions,

even when he covers his mouth;

so we all now have colds.

Because of this,

I thought I'd show a project I just completed.

But first, I thought I'd update you on my leaf cutting.

After letting it dry in a book for 2 weeks,

I Modge Podged it,

2 coats on each side

(thoroughly drying between coats).

I then used photo sticker tabs to adhere it to some archival cardstock paper

and carefully put it in a frame.

This was the other I did that turned out well.

And here's a project I did for the craft sale.
I keep several old children's books for their illustrations;
when I see ones with great illustrations, it's really hard for me not to buy them.
This one is from the late 1800's and is falling to pieces.
(I really need to laminate the pages somehow before they're completely disintegrated).

I was looking for a cow picture for an old milk jug I found at a yard sale.
It was an ugly light blue with chipping paint.
I wish I had taken a before picture, but sometimes that just doesn't happen.

I first base-coated the milk can with Kilz primer
so that my acrylic paint will stick to the metal can.

I painted 2 coats of black paint on the whole thing.
After that dried, I painted a white square on the front, using tape to mask off the area.
When this was dry (after applying 2 coats), I then sketched the cow onto the white.

I measured the white square and printed up a variety of the words I wanted to write, so I could see how each looked in the space and pick which I liked best.

After I chose, I cut that set out
(no, not necessary to use decorative scissors: just all I could find at the moment
because my organizational skills need fine tuning,
or maybe just a complete overhaul.)

Anyhow, I'm sure you know where your scissors are so if you ever use this technique, you can just use them.

I flipped the words over and on the back side, colored on some soft drawing pencil.
A charcoal pencil also works
(as does graphite paper sandwiched between, and this would eliminate the need to color on the back of the lettering).

I taped this to the white section where I wanted it to be
And yes, thankfully, the scotch tape had been found at this point;
no duct tape, like I had to use to mask the white section off.
I don't recommend duct tape.
But that's all my husband had in his tool box when I needed tape and had to go to desperate measures til the scotch could be located.
Duct tape found in a tool box: surprise, surprise.

I traced the words carefully,...

removed the paper with words
carefully,...

traced them lightly with a fine permanent marker,
and then painted them in.

I used my fine tip manual calligraphy pen to pen the cow in.
If you chose to try this, please be certain to buy water resistant calligraphy ink.
Regular ink will wash off when you try to paint on it.
I know this as a very sad fact.

I then painted my cow with acrylics and put a border around the white box.

I followed the painting with 2 coats of polyerthane,
letting them dry in between coats, of course.

Here is a picture of Lillie enjoying Levi's fish.
This has nothing to do with the milk can.
It is solely for my mom who wants at least one picture of the kids in every blog entry.
There you go, Mom.

And I leave you with what I'm working on next.
I trimmed part of the grape vines and made up some wreaths.

So far I've spray painted them white.

And when the residual paint on my contact lenses clear after doing this on the windiest day we've had,
I will proceed
with something on it.
Glitter?
Some glittery artificial flower pieces?