DIY Frame in a shadow-box!

For a birthday coming up I decided to create a photo-frame for the birthday girl. But I wanted to do something more original than a simple frame. At the shop I saw a shadow box frame with a B&W picture in it that looked nice but unpersonalizable. So here's a DIY on how to make a personalized shadowbox-frame!

Here's what you'll need:

- a photo of your choosing

- a shadow box of the size of your picture 

- gold paint or a gold pen

- a printer 

- your text

- paper, pen, cissors, tape, ruler, brush

Step 1: 

Get your picture or print it 

Step 2 : 

Choose your text. For my case, i wrote it on the computer so i can choose what I exactly wanted but you could also use some existing quote online etc. If you're using photoshop or anything similar, flip your image then print it. If not, print it on thin paper and use transparency to reproduce. Here's what it should look like.

Step 3:

Stick with tape your reversed text on the front of your glass. Then copy your text with a gold pen or paint. Mine was not the best so I would not recommend it and will look for something else. Text needs to be well covered in gold. 

If you make mistakes, let it dry, then you can use a metal object to slowly and carefully scratch it. In my case I used an old tweezer and a brush to clean the gold dust.

Step 4: 

Once your done, it should look like that (up) . Then clean your glass with window cleaner, both sides but be careful to avoid the text, put all the frame back together, et voila! 

Need help? Or a frame? I can do custom orders too :) let me know in messages

Halloween costume 2017

A post long overdue!

I wanted to post here some pictures of my last Halloween couple costume with just-married hubby!

This year we were Corpse Bride Emily and Victor.
The Emily costume was the hard part. I wanted to do as much as I could from scratch to keep the feeling of the the 'hand-made puppet" into the costume.

So here are some of the 'tricks' I used:

For the skirts, I bought fabrics of different weights, cut them to look like tears and paint them with arabesques. Then finally saw them together.






The bustier is actually a cheap lingerie bustier that I covered  with lace with the sewing machine. I added some pearls and then paint with acrylic paint to obtain variations of blues and blacks.
The rib cage detais is actually polymer clay I sculpted, baked and glue to the bustier.
I rework the painting around this area to look hole, like a cratch in the dress.
I also bought cheap polyester gloves and painted them blue with bony fingers on them, (and imitate the teared effect on the gloves)

- The crown is made of plastic flowers painted and attached together with a metal wire 'crown'. The veil is handsaw with arabesque of blue string

- all the face is covered with body paint from Menhron, very nice to use and dry instantly
< here's some test paint I did on myself!
I bought a blue wig, lenses and a sock that I put on my arm  to imitate a skeleton arm!





- the Victor costume was simpler.  All I did was to transform a Elvis wig (yes!) to the shape I needed using a lot of glue and hair spray. Did some face make up as well and bought a tie and vest, pants. But the stripes on the pants are also handdrawn to again keep with puppet - hand-made effect as much as I could!
If you have any questions about these costumes please email me! ;)

Oh, and yes! I re used my real wedding bouquet as a prop! I just covered it with black tulle to give it a more 'moody effect" !

my Wedding DIY Final post!

My last DIY wedding post! the cake topper!

We wanted a personalized cake topper for our 'croquenbouche' cake so I decided to make one using polymer clay. For this I used :

- Sculpey original clay (the white one)

- sculpting tools, mostly a scalpel

- some paints, for the faces

The sculpey will need to be baked. It may leave some baking marks. Fro this reason I will advise to bake standing or on a surface that will not be visible. Baking time are indicated on the package of the clay, don't loose it! Scupey is great vbecause it never dry if not baked. So you can continue to work on it as long as you want

I will post here some of the later steps. If you need some more information email me!

And the final result!

My wedding DIY part 6 - the invitations

We decided to do all our watercolor invitations by hand.
For that, I used
- a heavy watercolor paper found at Michaels (100 lb+) Mine was a 24" sheet
- Acrylic paint from Basics
- Brushes for acrylic paints of various sizes
- scissors and scalpel
-painter's tape
-a surface to attached the painter's tape
-stamps (that I will talk about later) and stamp inks, a stamping block
-ruler, eraser, transparent paper

Starting from there I divided the sheet in 8 x 12 inches and taped each square to a wood support. This will help for the paper to not bend and stay flat.
Design will be your choice, but you will certainly use a pre made pattern you like on transparent paper and reproduce your drawing on each square before starting the painting
Here are some of the pictures of the different steps :

It is a lot of work and painting, but it has a "zen" effect as well

All the text is stamped on the card> For this I used an etsy shop that let you create  your own stamps, with whatever you need, here its link:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/BlueDiamondStamps
For Ink pads, I used Color Box. They were really good and easy to use for this project

< Here you can see a stamp I used on our envelopes

To finish, after they all dry, I erased all the lines and  I cut them to the shape I wanted (using a pattern that I created for it as well in cardboard)  with just scissors >
Repeat, 50+ times and
 the final result: