What I've been up to for the last month and a half...

Not what you were expecting to see, huh?  I know this isn't the kind of thing I normally post on my blog, but this picture took a month and a half to do (or about 45 hours), so I'm going to show it to you!  In case you're wondering, the Blue-Eyed Painter is the blog I'm posting my artwork to, so I can still share it with the universe without filling (HA!  I just wrote post #4) this crafting/mommy blog with unrelated stuff.  Check it out if you want to.  I won't be offended if you don't.

So, back to the artwork.  About forever ago, a friend of mine asked me to make a piece of artwork for him, something to illustrate the fight between good and evil, Armor of God vs the forces of darkness, that sort of thing.  Well, I finally got it finished!  Hurray!

Sometimes I liked the project, sometimes I wondered why on earth I was doing it at all.  (Oh, yeah--I'm getting paid.)  As you can probably guess, this kind of work isn't really my style, with the monsters and stuff.  Even just having so many characters in the picture is different than what I like to do.  I discovered in one of my illustration classes in college that I am just drawn (no pun intended) to artwork with very few characters who take up the whole picture.  So composing, drawing, and painting (for lack of a better term--it's digital) a scene with so many characters was a little daunting.  I had to talk my friend down to this many characters, even.  He'd first described a whole battle scene.

But I survived.  And I like the end result, too.  Painting the monsters was fun once I got some good ideas of how to make them monstrous.  (Let's just say, without my husband's helpful critique, the monsters would have been mildly upset, not-at-all threatening thugs.  Tall thugs, but not really monsters.)

So there's my random tangent of a post.  I'm proud of my work, so I just had to show you.  I will be posting a crafting tutorial soon--I made pearl necklaces for Boo and myself for Easter, so I'll show you how I did it.  Is there anything classier than a pearl necklace?  Hmm, that might be a good Mother's Day present...I might need some more beads...

Until then, happy crafting!

I thought I'd try out a new craft--Designing Fabric!

My MIL thought I'd be good at designing fabric, so I decided to give it a try.  Here's what I've come up with so far...

I'm working on a few others, but they're not done yet.  What do you think?  Which do you like best?  Do you have any ideas for future designs?

This is all just for fun right now (I don't know how I'd go about getting fabric-makers to actually produce my designs), but hey, I can dream!

Merry Christmas Ornaments

Remember my early Christmas present?  Well, here it is--my first finished made-with-my-new-Silhouette project.  (Thanks again, hubby!)

Custom Christmas Ornaments!

This was such an easy project, and I love how it turned out!  In Photoshop, I made an 8 1/2" x 11" design filled with the words "Merry Christmas 2011" plus lots of snowflakes.  (Any image-editing program would work.)  Then I saved it as a jpg.

Then I opened the file in the Silhouette software...

Selected the Trace option, highlighted the entire design, and clicked "Trace" (which I forgot to circle, but you can find it)...

Then I saved this to my SD card, took it to my Silhouette machine, loaded my vinyl, and let the machine do its thing.

It took maybe fifteen minutes to cut out all those shapes!  (I didn't watch the clock, but it was going for a long time.)

Then all I had to do was peel the letters (and numbers, and snowflakes)  off their backing, and stick them on the ornaments I'd bought at the grocery store.  

I've already given one to my in-laws, one's on my Christmas tree, I have one for this ornament exchange I'm going to in a couple weeks--talk about an easy homemade Christmas present!

PS  You can buy vinyl from Silhouette's store, but I just got mine from Lowe's--just ask for the contact paper.  I haven't used Silhouette's vinyl; maybe it's nicer, but this vinyl I got worked well and cost almost nothing.

Happy Crafting!

How To Make Custom Navigation Tabs

(Once again, the evil laugh of success.)

I told you in my post about adding navigation tabs (aka Pages) under your blog's heading that I had an idea for how to make these customized.  Well, it worked.  (Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!)  I'd read other tutorials about how to do this, but they involved all this html stuff that I really didn't understand.  So I just kept thinking about it and hopeing there was an easier way to accomplish the same thing.

Then it occurred to me--What is the difference between a blog button and a navigation tab?  Nothing.

So here's what you do.

First, whip up some completely awe-inspiring Pages.  (You do not have to have added the Pages gadget to do this.)

Then, use your favorite image editing software to design your new, unique tabs (one for each page).  Upload the images to Photobucket or some similar website.

Next, on Blogger, go to Design-->Page Elements (Update:  It's under "Layout" now)-->Add a Gadget right under your header, like in my other tutorial.  This time, add the HTML/JavaScript gadget.  (If you already have the Pages gadget, you can delete it.  Don't worry, your pages won't disappear.  I tried it just to make sure.)

Now paste this into the space for "Content," and replace the red text with your own info.

<a href="the url of the page you want this tab to take you to" mce_href="the url of the page you want this tab to take you to"><img src="the url where the image is hosted aka Direct Link on photobucket" mce_src="the url where the image is hosted aka Direct Link on photobucket" border="0" /></a>

(I don't know why everything is there twice; all I know is that this does work.)

Do this for each of your tabs (in the same HTML gadget--you don't need to add multiple gadgets).  Click Save, and you're done!

Here are my tabs.  What do you think?  I'm not completely in love with them, myself, but the'll do for now.

Free Valentine's Day Card Templates!

I got an e-mail from MCP Actions announcing that their Facebook fans could download some free Valentine's Day card templates from them.  Here is a link to the download.  The templates work in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

When you download the templates, you get the entire unflattened file--this means you can edit and change anything about it!  You can use the adorable cards as they are (plus your child's name and picture), you can change the colors to perfectly coordinate with your picture, or you can use the template just for inspiration to create your own design!

I hope you have fun with it.  Here's my effort.  (I'll probably make lots more!)  The cards are wallet size, by the way.