Sugar Skull Egg Ornaments

I came across these eggs while digging through

my craft supply box. 

They were a half off "after

the holiday" purchase from Walmart. 

I wish I'd picked up

several dozen. I'm hoping they

carry them again this coming Easter. 

They are so much fun to work with!

I decided to make a sugar skull ornaments with the eggs and 

used my very fine artist markers for the design. 

I finished it off with lace, a flower bead, and beaded straight pin.

Black ribbon was used for the hanging loop and I glued 

all those things together with Tacky Glue. 

The back had to say Feliz Navidad!

After making a "her" I had to make a "him".

I started by making a black hat with a purple rose

and green leaves out of cold porcelain clay and let 

that dry for 24 hours. 

In the meantime, I worked on his face

and back "Feliz Navidad" greeting. 

The hat and ribbon were adhered

with a black beaded straight pin

and Tacky Glue. 

I love the way they turned out and am

anxious to show you some more that I've just finished.

I learned from the first ornament, not to use my artist markers.

While they're great for drawing on paper,

they smeared a bit as I turned the egg in my

hand to work on it. 

With my subsequent ornaments, I used permanent markers
(Bic and Sharpie) as well as Pitt Pens.
They all worked well together and didn't smear. 

Happy Thanksgiving.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday!

Star and Cross Shrine

This is the completed star and cross shrine

that I mentioned in my last post. I say completed,

but I'm still pondering adding something

to the bottom right (inside) corner to hide some

bubbling that occurred in that area. 

I still need to figure out how

to hang my shrines.

There's not a lot of weight to the piece, but

any hanger will need to be adhered with 

glue of some kind. I want something that'll

be sturdy and long lasting, but won't damage the piece. 

I'll have to see what Home Depot has available. 

Up next is a side view of the piece. 

I had to make that pretty too.

You can get more of an idea of

it's size next to my hand in this pic. 

On Wednesday, I plan to share some funky
Christmas ornaments that I'm working on.

Hope your day is a good one!

Cardboard Shrine Boxes

There were a couple of factors that tipped the scales

when it came to making my own shrine boxes as 

opposed to purchasing ready made ones. 

First and foremost, I wanted to design my own

patterns and create one of a kind pieces. Mind you, 

I looked at a bunch of different designs and

then started sketching out 

some patterns of my own on grid paper. 

The second reason goes back to

my desire to use the materials I have on hand.  

The bases are all sturdy Christmas card boxes. The

frames and details are cut from various cardboard mailing boxes

I'd saved. 

All of the pieces of these boxes

were adhered together with masking tape, no glue. 

Sorry about the fuzziness of the bottom box in this next picture,

but I wanted to point out how I used

some air dry paper clay as well as cardboard 

cut-outs to build up some dimension. 

I learned a few tips with this project. 

1) The more intricate the design, the more patience and time

you'll need to paper mache. I did several pieces at a time and it

would've been better to focus on one to completion. 

2) Also, the more detailed the design, the smaller the strips

of paper you'll need to fit in the little spaces. I thought maybe if

the paper was saturated enough, I could coax it into the crevices

and around corners. . .wrong! It didn't work and I had to undo and redo.

3) I would've been a bit more generous with the masking tape, especially

around the edges of the frame. One of the frames became

a little too pliable while sitting to dry. Gravity wanted to pull down

some of the scroll type edging that had become too saturated

during the paper mache process. I was able to straighten it, but more

tape may've prevented the problem in the first place. 

The following is my star shrine. I'll 

post pictures of this piece all finished in my next post.