Glitter Tart Designs: March 2015

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Hoppy Easter!

This year to celebrate Easter I decided to take part in blissfullART's Easter Tin Swap.

What I ended up with is one of the most major deviations from a plan I have ever done but I love how it ended up (despite numerous mistakes).

You can't tell in the photo's but the tin background is shimmery gold over a textured light pink.

My plan always called for a decorated egg on the inside. I carefully cut, sized and decorated the egg. It wasn't until after I glued it into the tin that I realized I had decorated the wrong half, the bigger half, so now the tin doesn't close :(

Just look at that detail! I love how this turned out. The mold is a silicone mold-ornaments and settings. The piece needed to be flexible to wrap around the tin so I used hot glue. Yep, you read that right, I put hot glue in the mold. Waited a few minutes, popped it out and spray painted it gold.

Inside I ended up making the non closure worse by adding the grass at the base of the bunnies feet. I guess at this point it didn't matter, it was never going to close and the grass is fun. Still frustrated me.

The egg is paper mache that I highlighted with cream adhesive pearls, dazzles gold swirls and flourishes stickers , and dazzles gold thin lines stickers.

I really hope that my swap partner likes what I have created for her. The one she made for me arrived a few days ago and I can't wait to share it with you it is a glitter tarts dream come true!

Thanks for stopping by!

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Mash Up! Marie Antoinette and The Mad Hatter Tea Cup

The Alpha Stamps kit this month is Marie in Wonderland!

This one was custom made for me...Marie and Alice and The Mad Hatter and Marie....need I go on????

I started with a Tea Cup idea, wanting to create a scene inside the cup and have things going on on the outside. Originally I thought, hey lets hang it from the handle and dangle things off the rim of the cup, but obviously the piece evolved in a different direction.

I know you have seen those darling scenes inside real cups. Well, I was too scared (remember I was going to dangle things which meant drilling into the cup) and didn't want to buy a cup so I found this fabulous paper mache teacup tutorial and followed it.

The cup is covered with paper from the Harmony 6x6 paper pad it took a little over one sheet to do the entire cup. Inside The Mad hatter is featured (Mad Hatters tea party #2 Collage Sheet) sitting at a table with a 3D Bronze Tea Time teapot charm, mini strawberry cake and a mini heart tart cake charm. The table cloth is a bit of lace (1/2 Inch Natural Scalloped cotton lace). Some mini rose buds and a raw brass flourish finish off the scene.

Next came some fun top hats. Those things are itty bitty...as in 1"!

The hats are covered with paper from the Harmony collection, then adorned with 1/8" Red Satin Ribbon (hides the seam where the base of the hat meets the hat), heart sequin mix, clock face buttons, and mini rose buds. I affixed them to the cup using 22 gauge wire that I covered with red seed beads.

This is the pattern I used. I am sorry I can't remember where I got it from but it was originally much bigger. I shrunk it down in photoshop.

Marie herself is an image from the Marie Takes Tea Collage Sheet. To dress her up I added some 1mm micro pearls and some more of the red ribbon tied in itty bitty bows. Her center bow was created using the mini bows silicone mold. I used paper clay and red paint to make the bow.

Even though you can't really see the cup I wanted to dress it up. Thin looped Dresden boarders are what I used around the rims. Since it is Marie, a few paper clay Fluer de lis adorn the cups.

Now lets chat about the handle.

I was going to use a really awesome resin casting. If you take the resin piece out before it is really hard it bends! However when I did that I wasn't ready to attach it yet and it got too hard by the time I was. So if you want the ice resin handle (shown below) your cup needs to be ready for a handle when you make it. Bend the piece gently and hot glue into place. The hot glue will hold the bend and the resin will harden in that shape.

Notice how it is holding its shape without me even holding it after I bent it.

Anyway...

I selected a piece from the Architectural flourishes silicone mold and made it using paper clay. Next I attached the handle (from the tutorial) using hot glue. Then came the tricky part. I took the paper clay out of the mold (still wet), very carefully cut off the ugly bits and then glued it to the handle. I used a regular glue to glue it. Now walk away! It has to dry before you can do anything else with it. Once the paper clay was dry I painted the entire handle.

I had a fun time creating this piece. I also tried a bunch of different items in my molds. In the next few days I will have an information post up, I used bees wax, hot glue, ice resin, paper clay, you name it I tried it and some of them are great!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

This piece is on sale in my Etsy Shop.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Fabric & Lace Cuff Bracelet Tutorial

Lace Cuff's are very popular right now and so easy to make. I thought I would share with you the one I made recently and how I made it. Sit back and relax, this is heavy on pictures.

Most of the supplies I used are available from Alpha Stamps (a complete list of supplies is provided at the end)

Blue Jean (or other heavy fabric like this printed burlap)

1" Natural cotton lace
5/8" Zig Zag Cotton lace
1/2" Natural Scalloped Cotton lace
(or purchase all the laces in the sampler)

Pink Tulle

Pink Ruffle Ribbon

Charms (I made mine using supplies from Alpha Stamps, listed below)

Jump rings

Pearl Rosary Chain

Chain

Cream Pearl Assortment

Pin heads

Clasp

Step 1: Measure your writs. Mine was 6" so I decided to cut my fabric 7" giving me a 1/2" seem allowance at both ends. Because I am using a chain and clasp closure method I did not have to worry about making the fit exact.

Step 2: Measure the base fabric.

** Not shown in pictures.

I laid out my laces and ribbon to determine how wide I wanted to make the bracelet. I went with 2 1/2"

Step 3: Optional. I decided to rip the jeans to give the edges a frayed look. You could of course cut the fabric.

Here is my base fabric. It is roughly 2 1/2" wide and 7" long.

Step 4: Lay out the ribbon, lace and charms to get a feel for where you want them. This helped me determine how wide to make the tulle, it is 1 1/2" by 25" (you want the tulle long enough to gather nicely and slightly wider than the charms you are using, my charm is 1").

Step 5: Sew a running stitch up both sides of the tulle.

Step 6: On one end of the tulle, tie a knot, on both the right and left sides

Step 7: At the other end of the tulle, separate the threads and pull on one per side.

Step 8: Keep pulling on the same threads, working the gathered fabric down to the end with the knots.

Step 9: Now that the tulle is gathered, spread it out and pin it to your base fabric.

Step 10: To determine the order you need to sew down your ribbons place all of them on one side and pin them.

Step 11: Sew the ribbon and lace down using a running stitch. You might have to move some of them aside to sew others down (as shown in the picture above). You want them all to be as flowy as possible so don't sew them where they don't need sewing, just one stitch per ribbon is fine.

** I used a sewing machine but this entire project could be done by hand if you don't have one or if it scares you (yes, my sewing machine scares me on a regular basis).

Step 12: Place the lace/ribbon on the other side of the bracelet. The white lace I choose to put under the blue jean. The image above shows it affixed to the back of the bracelet.