Painted Candle Jars (completed)

Well I'm through painting candle jars, you can visit here to read more.  First let me say they weren't difficult to do but between work, studying and other home duties I find I only have maybe 1 - 2 hours a day to get any painting done.

This is what I started with 

I used homemade chalk paint (white) for the base coat.  There are so many recipes out there for homemade chalk paint but I decided to try this recipe from I Heart Nap Time.  For this project I made approx a quart of white homemade chalk paint.  I took about 2 TBS white chalk paint and added about 1 tsp acrylic paint for each of the color.  This beats making large amounts of paint for small projects, plus it leaves me with plenty of paint to play around with for other projects.

For this one I used white chalk paint as a base coat, Gold Metallic paint 2nd coat, and Kelly Green 3rd coat.  I then sanded and later waxed it with miniwax paste finishing wax.

I finished it off with burlap & beads.

On the other jar I used homemade chalk paint (white) for the base coat & Kelly Green 2nd coat.  I decided to use gold foil (I'm experimenting with).  I'm learning not everybody is fond of the distress look  ;-).   I later sealed it with shellac.

I then wrapped with torn strips of sheer, tied off with raffia decorated w/beads.

So here are all of my little painted babies ;-)

Wrapped and ready to go...

Have fun and don't forget to LET YOUR CREATIVITY FLOW!

Glass Jar Candles

I've been working on some painted glass that I promised to someone.  There's 4 in total but I've managed to complete 2 so far.

I initially used white homemade chalk paint, for various colors I added acrylic paint to the chalk paint. 

For this one I undercoated with Carmelo and top coated with Avocado Green.  Sanded it and once dried waxed with minwax finishing paste.

Wrapped with burlap & a dangling earring (I had lost the mate years ago).

 I undercoated with Baby Blue and top coated with Warm White.  Sanded and then glazed it with Rustic Brown wiped it off and once dry waxed it with minwax finishing paste.

Wrapped it with burgundy burlap and cut silk flowers.

Two candles down, two more to go!  LET YOUR CREATIVITY FLOW!

Kitchen Counter (kinda ready for holidays)

In my previous blog I mentioned I was working on small projects trying to get my kitchen counter together, nothing major, just little stuff that I kept procrastinating about.   I'm embarrassed to say I had the brown frame (far right) displayed on my counter for a while and never put a photo in it...

Gosh, talk about colorless and dull!

Thankfully I finished everything (well almost)... I'm now trying to get everything ready for Christmas. Here are the before and after pics

The leaves are from dry coconut bark

The Jamaican Coffee was given to me by a friend who recently visited Jamaica.

With Christmas around the corner I decided to add some color to bring in some holiday cheer - remember earlier I mentioned my Christmas decorations went MIA - other than what I hung on the tree, this is all I had left.

Yeah, I know it isn't much, but it helps to set the mood. :-)

Wait, don't go yet, I also want to share a few candle nuggets that needed to be wrapped...

Hopefully, we'll chat again before Christmas, but if not have a BEAUTIFUL & SAFE CHRISTMAS and don't forget to LET YOUR CREATIVITY FLOW!

Family Candles

I hope everybody had a blessed and happy Thanksgiving Holiday!  I was fortunate to spend the holiday in Georgia with my sister, her family and my son (who's attending school over here), for the feast and we had a beautiful time.

During our special bonding period, we decided on the perfect gift for our siblings - 8 in total - Family Candles.  Okay, so what is a Family Candle?  Actually it's something we made up... my older sister is the historian in the  family who we're always calling to find out about birthdays, deaths, etc.  So to eliminate this annual question of birthdays we decided to put it on a candle!

Sorry, I don't have very many pics but it's easy to follow:

First we identified the pictures we wanted to use and printed them on tissue paper.  We found the best way to do this was to tape the tissue paper along the corners and edges on top of plain paper.  I think it's better to print your pictures first to make sure your candles will be the correct size.

We then took plain candles and glued the pictures on them.  I used mod podge for this.

So this is my family

Well, remember I said we can never remember each other's b'day... we also typed the date of birth for each sibling and glued it to the back of the candle, because there were so many of us we were always dubbed The Rolland Clan (smile).

We didn't stop there...my parents died at a very early age and none of us (excepting my sister Teresa the "historian") could remember their date of birth or death.  So we purchased additional candles to include my parents.

And then we included my grandmother (on my father's side) who played a major role in our upbringing.  I remember taking this picture of her when I first started playing around with black & white photography.  Although she enjoyed dressing up, on those hot,blistery Georgia summer days she was known to sit on the porch with her hair wrapped in a scarf.  When I showed her this picture she was quite upset...but I always loved it.

This is the first of our Family Candles.

Although it's difficult to tell from the pictures the candles used were creamy yellows (siblings) and white (parents).

I was so impressed with how these candles turned out I decided I would try to do a family line using candles.  They make a beautiful display plus they'll provide a good source of reference for my son when he's ready to trace back his family line.

Because I'll be leaving in a few days, I'll be giving each of them their Family Candles early.  But I'm hoping we will never have to call the "historian" for birth dates again (smile).

Now its your turn to LET YOUR CREATIVITY FLOW!