Kitty Tea Cups

Hello! When I first moved out of home I brought, like I'm sure many people do, a big box of plain white plates, bowls, mugs, and tea cups. But, I never really used the mugs or tea cups because I had cuter options. Let's be real: things taste better when they're drunk out of awesome cups. This is a fact. ~____^ But, this seemed like a huge waste so I decided to get out my porcelain paint pens and cute-ify these babies up!

I saw this super cute French kitty by Brave Moonman and was totally inspired so I spent a while scribbling out some dressed up cats ^____^ I started out by painting the cats entirely in black (my pen is getting a bit worn out now!) but then decided they needed a little something something so used my other pens to add some pops of colour ^___^ Anyway, let's meet the kitties!

Library Cat is wearing an outfit that is inspired by an actual outfit I have worn to work. Polka-dot blouse with pussy bow (appropriate, no?), pearls, glasses ... what could be more libraryesque? ~___^

Piano Cat is looking swish in her Peter Pan collar and stripes, plus a cute little daisy tucked behind her ear.

And Sewing Kitty has a pair of scissors tucked into her belt, a pin-cushion attached to her tail, and a couple of rolls of fabric with which I'm sure she'll be creating something special!

 

Scott's favourite cats were the Baking Kitty (suggested by the lovely Sam on Instagram) and the Lumberjack Cat so I painted them onto the larger mugs (he's not really a tea cup kinda lad).

Lumberjack Cat makes me giggle every time I look at him; that beard! 

And Baking Kitty is pretty cute too - somehow that expression just looks so satisfied at the mess he's made! ^____^

I've painted a couple more cats, but they're gifts so they're secret for the moment ^___^ I think I need to get some more mugs though - Space Cat *needs* to be painted!

- Lisa xx 

P.S. Find more kitty mugs here!

Rainbow cloud ribbon hairbow holder

Hello! As you probably know, I really like hair bows. I like wearing them, and I like making them and this has resulted in me having *a lot* of them! I was keeping all of my hair things in a plastic cauldron on my dressing table but it was really getting much too full and so I decided to make some hair bow storage.

I've had clouds on the brain for some reason lately so I pretty quickly settled on a cloud shape with rainbow ribbons to attach the bows to. I went and visited my dad a couple of weeks ago and while we were doing some shed work (this is code for mainly drinking cups of tea while looking at blue prints and throwing the ball for the dog) I explained to him my idea. Despite seeming somewhat confused why a grown woman would want, let alone need, a hair bow holder, dad dug out a scrap piece of wood for me to use.

I drew out a cloud shape with a pencil, and then used my jigsaw to cut it out. It looked a bit rough though, so dad and I used some small files to shape the puffy bits (that's the technical term) a bit better and then I sanded down the whole thing so it was nice and smooth.

 

I gave the cloud a coat of flat white spray paint, added a smiley face, and then used a staple gun to attach ribbons to the back of it. I also added a hanging wire by hammering in two small nails and wrapping picture wire around them. 

I used about a metre of ribbon for each colour; my collection has definitely got room to grow now! Please excuse my small bookcase butting into the photo here; it's made of jarrah and is therefore waayyy too heavy to move. 

I made most of the bows on here; but the clover and cupcake clips at the bottom are made by Twinkie Chan, the Catbug, BMO, Bee and Puppycat, and LSP bows I brought from Oz Comic Con, and the white and black polka dot bow was made for me by Bec ^___^

 

It looks good next to my hoop wall, and now I can actually see all my bows at once which I think will make choosing them to match outfits much easier ^___^ I will admit that this project would also look pretty at home in a little kid's room but, hey, there's no reason why grown ups can't have rainbow clouds too, right? ~___^

I'm so excited for Halloween this year, I've got a project planned for each week of October and I can't wait to get started on them and share them with you! I'm thinking zombies, witches, vampires, monsters, bats, skulls ... no wonder this is my favourite holiday! ~___^

Until then!

- Lisa xx

Time to play video games! An upcyled BMO clock

Hello! As you probably already know, I really like Adventure Time. In fact, I'm watching it right now. And getting very distracted from writing this blog post. Ahem, anyway, turning my back on the plight of Tree Trunks, I was hunting around my craft room for inspiration and found an old metal clock that was truly crying out for a makeover. I didn't take a photo of it before, but it was browny beige and very ugly. I gave it three layers of white spray paint as a primer and then I got to work with my acrylics!

I drew my BMO based on my tiny action figure, but I think the button placement is a little off. Ooops! Nonetheless, BMO is very cute and I like how excited he is! I used Kaisercraft colours for the entire painting; BMO's case cover was made by mixing together "Sea Breeze" and "Spearmint", his face is a mixture of "Spearmint" and "Lime". The buttons are the aforementioned colours, plus red, yellow, and black, and the background is "Hot Pink" mixed with a lot of white. I also gave his screen a coating of glow in the dark paint, so I'm hoping that this evening I will be able to see his screen glowing like he is a real computer ^___^

"Video Games" is written in Lobster font and "time to play" in TallAndSkinny font (which I can't find a link to unfortunately). To transfer the fonts onto the painting, I printed out the phrases and coloured in the back of the paper with a lead pencil. Then I placed the paper onto the painting, and traced around the letters with the pencil. You just have to make sure your paint is really, really dry before you do this, otherwise you might get some smudging around your words >___<

I saved the original hands from the clock and while they don't totally match the rest of my painting I think they still look ok. I am not sure where I will hang this new clock up, but I think it will be best in the lounge room, where Scott and I *do* spend a lot of time playing video games. The great thing about this clock is that it means that every time is video game playing time! ^___^

I'm really happy with how this clock has been transformed and it's great to have another Adventure Time piece in the house. There are so many great characters in Adventure Time, there are plenty of future projects left to create! 

Do you have a favourite Adventure Time character? I've done three Lumpy Space Princess crafts so far (including a cosplay!) so I should continue to craft tributes to some different characters now I think! ^___^

- Lisa xx

Glittery pastel bone and skull hair clips

Hello! How are you doing? Today is my second offical day of Study Break and I have certainly not done any studying ~___^ Instead, I've been working on finishing off some projects from the huge box of WIPs. So, so many abandoned projects; it's sad really. And also I've started some new projects because I am not the kind of person that will ever have all of her crafts actually finished.

  

This is one such project; I decided the other day that I wanted a hair clip shaped like a bone. I have no idea why, I just suddenly really wanted one. So I sat down with some sculpey and made some bones. And then I made some skulls. And then I burnt them (oops!) so I had to paint them.

 

 

I originally spray-painted them white, but then I decided that they should be pastel. And glittery. Because, why not, right? ~___^

I use Scott's Warhammer paints to paint my sculpey but of course those paints only come in dark, army-type colours; no pretty pinks in sight! So I mixed a drop of each of the acrylic colours in with some of the Bone White Warhammer paint  to create my pastels. It worked really well! I think because I used only a tiny bit of acrylic the paint still adherred really well to the sculpey. After I'd painted the bones, I gave them a thin coating of glittery Mod Podge; I absolutely love the subtle sparkle it gives the bones ^___^

 

I was going to attach alligator clips to the back of these, but then I found some great pins in the milinary section of Spotlight. They look just like bobby pins except they have a metal circle on the end of them which made them really easy to glue to the back of the bones. I wish I had found them before I made the bones though, because, as you can see, they are a teeny bit long and stick out from behind the bones.

 

I really like how these clips turned out but they are a little tricky to photograph; I took a whole set of photos yesterday but they turned out too blurry (for the close-ups) and limited in detail (for the in-action ones). So I took some new ones today but you can see from the photos with me in them that I'm still having some trouble with the latter problem; I wondered maybe if because they were so pale they were reflecting the sun too much? I don't really know. I included a couple of the in-action photos anyway, so you could get an idea of how big they are. You'll just have to imagine that you can see a bit more detail then the photo actually provides ~___^

I wore them into the city today as Scott and I checked out the new Codex release at the Warhammer store; but I didn't tell the people there that I've been using paints for non-army related purposes. That'll be our little secret, ok? ~___^

- Lisa xx

Goulia Yelps - Makeover edition

Hey! Do you remember that ages ago I brought a Ghoulia Yelps Monster High doll? Well, anyway I did, and she looked like this:

Not very zombie-like.

So, I sanded off her makeup, gave her a repaint, and made her a new outfit and now ...

... she's zombiefied ~_^

 

 

"BRAINSSS!"

 

What do you think? Do you like her? I hope you do!

- Lisa x