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Jan
31
2012

The Martha Craft Challenge, Project 65: Glittered Birds

by Beth on January 31, 2012

Don’t worry, they aren’t real birds. But is there anything Martha won’t put glitter on?

Now we’re glittering fake birds. Yay? The good news is this one is, in fact, very straightforward. Instead of putting a bird on it, you put glitter on the bird.

And here are the results you’ve been waiting for!

So there they are, my two little glittered birds. What do you think?

There is nothing exciting to report, here. I followed the directions, and it was easy. Boring.

TIME INVESTED

About 30 minutes for two birds

DIFFICULTY

Easy

TOTAL COST

  • glitter pack, $29.99 (or significantly cheaper if you buy it at Michaels with the 40% off coupon)
  • glittering glue, $3.99
  • birds, $2.99 ea (at Michaels)

Total cost = $39.96

WAS IT WORTH IT?

Well, what am I going to do with two glittered birds now? Not really my aesthetic. So I vote NO.

Am I being too hard on the glitter, people? I want to give it its fair shake, but… glitter?

{ 5 comments }

Jan
30
2012

Color Palettes from Painters’ Palettes

by Beth on January 30, 2012

I came across these cool photos of famous painters’ palettes on The Retronaut via Remodelista the other day. They’re surprisingly muted, I think, but I figured I’d try to create some color palettes from them, you know, just to be meta.

Here’s what I came up with:

This palette belonged to Eugène Delacroix, a French Romantic painter from the early nineteenth century. I liked how neatly he organized all his colors.

This one’s from Georges Seurat, whom you probably know as the pointillist painter.  I liked how nicely his colors blend into one another.

So, that was fun. Even more fun, though, was finding this on The Retronaut. It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen, like, maybe all year. Be warned, though; probably NSFW and NSF-those-who-are-easily-offended.

{ 1 comment }

Jan
27
2012

I Got A New Set of Eyes

by Beth on January 27, 2012

Hi all!

I thought I’d pop in to let you know my fun news: I just had LASIK yesterday!

It was more harrowing than I thought it would be, but relatively simple and gazoinks! it’s the day after and I’m seeing 20/20. No joke! The eye doctor confirmed it this morning!

Here’s my pre-op photo:

They put a sticker on my chest with all my info: what surgery I was having, which eyes, yadda yadda.  Then they stuck two round red office stickers (very high tech) above each of my eyes to indicate that both were to be worked on.

Here’s a photo from today, less than 24 hours after my cornea was sliced and flipped open and a laser “resurfaced” my eye:

A few broken blood vessels in that left eye, but other than that, good as new!  The slit in my cornea should heal in about 5 days, so no eye makeup or other activities that could get any bacteria in my eyes for a week.  It’s amazing what they can do, people.

I’ll be back soon with more glittering, buy or diys, you know, all the things.

{ 2 comments }

Jan
25
2012

Coloriffic!

by Beth on January 25, 2012

I’ve been interested in color more and more these days.  I think I’m pretty good at making color matches; I never would’ve said that before I started the barrette biz, but enough people said, “Ooooh, I like those colors together” that I started to maybe think it was something other than a fluke.

I love blue and orange together:

And I like purple and green:

And other stuff.  I had a fun time doing this little color quiz from Curbly and Glidden paint.

It’s the My Life, My Colors quiz, and it asks you questions about your personality and then gives you a range of choices of colors that “match” you.  Then, you can choose one color and it will generate some palettes for you.  I did the quiz twice, since I always find there are several different answers that apply to me.

Here are a few of my palettes from the first go round:

I kind of like the mix of colors, but I’m not wowed.  I do like the orange and teal one.

Hop on over and take the quiz and let me know if you get any better results.  In the meantime, I’m pondering the Pantone Color of the Year for 2012: Tangerine Tango!

{ 0 comments }

Jan
23
2012

The Martha Craft Challenge, Project 64: Glittered Snowflakes

by Beth on January 23, 2012

You would not guess, looking at this project, that it was the one that almost pushed me over the edge.  For the first time, I actually considered giving up.  Giving up on Martha!

It’s a totally straightforward project.  Cut out snowflakes.  Cover them in glue.  Cover them in glitter.  And… scene.

But the problems start with the cutting.  Step one.  I had a feeling that it was going to be slow going because you have to cut out a detailed image in cardboard.  With a craft knife.  My craft knife skillz are not the best.  But this craft had me considering: “Am I even doing this right?  Do I need a craft knife tutorial?  Isn’t this tool pretty self-explanatory?”

The problem is that cutting out so many details with a craft knife takes a long time, and it’s really hard to be precise.  To outline a few of the main problems:

~ The knife doesn’t cut all the way through the cardboard.  You have to go over the cut several times until you can tell it’s gone through.  But then what happens is the seams between cuts don’t go all the way through.

You can see here that where the edges come together, the cuts haven’t gone all the way through.  That’s annoying, and what I ended up having to do was go over all the cuts from the back.

~ While some of the cuts don’t go through at the connection points, the others get overcut, and that makes the delicate points on the snowflake less stable.

You can see how some of the cuts go past where they should.  GAH!

So, do you want to know how long it took me to cut out this snowflake with a craft knife? It took me 23 minutes. Seriously! Half way through, I started an internal dialogue.

“This is what I’m doing right now.  I have just spent 15 minutes cutting out a snowflake that I will probably never use and that I don’t want.  Should I just quit?  Cut my losses?  I could be doing one hundred other things with my time right now.  What am I doing?”

But I staggered on, with each cut thinking, “this is going to be my last cut.  I’m quitting.”  Until finally, it was done.  PRAISE THE LORD.

So as you can see, this looks like crap. But I was hopeful that the glittering would cover over most of the imperfections.  I pulled off all those little hangy pieces and moved on.

There was another template with a differently-shaped snowflake, and in spite of my hatred for this process, I decided to do an experiment.  I wondered whether cutting with scissors might not be easier.  So I cut the outside of this snowflake with scissors.

Aaaaand that one looks like crap, too. It was highly frustrating (and even a little painful) to cut through the cardboard with scissors, but it was faster. I had to cut the inside with the craft knife, but all told this one took me 18 minutes instead of 23.

Gah!  I’ve already spend 40 minutes on this craft, and I haven’t even gotten to the glitter part!

But when I did, there was more frustration awaiting.  I covered the snowflake with Martha’s own “glittering glue,” and I covered it well.  I let it sit for a while to dry before I shook off the extra glitter.  And then?

BLARGH!  The glitter was very, very spotty.

Now, this was a real disappointment, every step of the way.  So I took matters into my own hands.  I went and got the spray adhesive an sprayed the crap out of these snowflakes, and then coated them in glitter.  And you know what?  It worked like a charm in about 3 seconds.  What the hell, Martha?

There they are.  Mocking me with their preschool art project looks and their epic difficulty.  I’m pretty sure these were one of the labors of Hercules.

To recap: this project blows.

TIME INVESTED

ZOMGZ I spent over an hour on these two snowflakes.

DIFFICULTY

Really, really crazy hard

TOTAL COST

  • glitter pack, $29.99 (or significantly cheaper if you buy it at Michaels with the 40% off coupon)*
  • glittering glue, $3.99
  • cardboard (I keep pieces of cardboard from packaging that I think might be useful, so I didn’t spend any money on this item)

Total cost = $33.98

WAS IT WORTH IT?

It is possible that this is the least desirable craft in the Encyclopedia so far.  No, indeed.

More glittering to come.

{ 9 comments }

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