Family Initial

Unfortunately, we are one of those families whose last name starts with K.

I'm always envious when I see a family letter wall.

Group too many K's together. Bad! Really bad. So I decided to make this freestanding K to present our family.

My challenges...the letter K obviously. Materials....what I had on hand. This was part of my Christmas crafting challenge where I tried to use materials I'd had forever. This is what I came up with.

I started with a wooden letter K.

Pages of sticky backed aluminum  pages. And red and turquoise paint. And Embossing powder, distressing ink, heat gun and Sizzix boutique press. I had a ton of crap on hand!!!!!

Here are the metal pieces.

I put a piece of metal (I cut it with my paper cutter) to fit in my Sizzix folder.

I ran it through my Boutique machine.

I painted them with leftover Turquoise paint (acrylic). Lightly.

Once dry, I distressed them with an ink pad. I think it's a Ranger product. You just rub it across the top. While still wet.....

Sprinkle on the Embossing powder. Let the excess run off. 

Then give it a couple seconds under a heat gun.

It gets this crystalized affect.  

I had to cut and piece my metal to fit my letter K.

Picture Frames

I've had these wooden frames for a while now and didn't really know how I was going to use them.

So I searched in Pinterest.

Here was my inspiration that I found on Pinterest.

I opted to paint mine red because it was the only color I had enough of on hand to cover all the 3 frames.

I had these metal clips in my stash of supplies. I think I got them at Hobby Lobby.

After the paint was dry, I added a piece of scrapbook paper.

Here is a little trick I used to hang them. Get some tooth paste.

I did a drop on top and bottom of where the nail would go.

I held it against the wall.

Then added the nail.

The cool thing is, I can trade out the papers inside the frames.

So for Christmas, I'm going to use the papers below.

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One Little Word

If you haven't heard of the movement called One Little Word, let me introduce you.

It started with Ali Edwards. Basically, it's a year long project where you pick one word you'd like to focus on for the year. Through her workshop, you are given prompts to explore your word. I did it previously here.

This year I chose the word aware, because I would like to be more focused on my family and the things that matter. Last time I created a journal to log my explorations. So I decided, why not another journal?

For this project, I was inspired by my new workout clothes I got for Christmas (seen below).

My hope was to use the sticky backed canvases from my stash of supplies for the covers. So I started to paint them and then this happened above.

So I attached them to cardboard pieces from scrapbook orders I saved, then painted them.

I just peeled a little off at a time and attached them.

Worked much better. I started with a base of light/bright orange. Let it dry about 10 minutes then started adding layers of darker orange.

Then I added some stenciling in a light blue.

For the darker blue I reversed the stencil.

And then I got impatient, and added the bottom stencil layer before the brushes were dry (I kept washing and drying my brushes). So this happened. EEK!

So I added a family photo and frame over it.

It's far from perfect, but it's my new journal and it's ready for me to explore the word "Aware".