One of my favorite things to make are these frames and crosses that I fill with beads and found objects.  Some I make with a theme like a western frame, or one made with toys.  But at times I use a color scheme instead.

1.  The first step is to gather lots of little items to use on the frames. (I’m going to use the word frames, although it is interchangable with crosses, as the process is the same for either.)  My friends and family give me all their old or broken jewelry.  Little pendants, charms or pieces of ear rings are great!  I buy old board games at garage sales and thrift stores for the little “men” and game pieces.  I watch for sale bins at the dollar stores and craft stores for buttons, beads, Christmas garland, miniatures, embellishments, etc.

I have a canvas box that I keep them all in.  Last year when Kristina visited me, she spent hours categorizing all my things by color.  What a gift that was!!  They are sorted in plastic bags.

Here is a shot of some of the types of things I save.

Bag of buttons on sale at craft store.

Foam shapes, poetry tiles, plastic toy charms, ghost from earring.

plastic beads, bottle caps, foam shapes, mosaic tiles

Monopoly houses from a game bought at thrift store.

On left, miniature Christmass tree ornaments, bag of buttons.

If you start looking for any little items you’ll be amazed at what you can find for very little money.  Be sure to enlist family and friends to give you little baubles and they will begin to add up.

2.  Next you’ll need frames or crosses to decorate with your goodies.  Again, I look for items on sale or at garage sales and thrift stores.

The cross in the front is available at Hobby Lobby when they have the Vacation Bible School supplies in the summer.  At the end, they are marked down and I always get several for about 99 cents.

The frame on the right is from a dollar store.  It’s made of some sort of pressed cardboard but it doesnt’ matter because after it’s painted and covered in little doodads no one will ever know.

The package of frames on the left is a set of two.  They are nice wooden frames that are sometimes found at a dollar store or Michaels.

3.  Begin the project by painting the frame.  If you are using a theme you’ll want to consider that in your choice of paint color.  If the object is wood you might need to lightly sand it before you paint.  The paint job needs to cover all areas but doesn’t have to be perfect since all but the sides will be covered up.

4.  Before we start adding our elements, let’s talk about glue.  The two I prefer are Aleene’s Tacky Glue and Martha Stewart’s permanent glue.  Aleene’s is less expensive and available at any craft store.  It works very well, and the only negative is that it is white.  It dries clear but when you are laying a lot of seed or microbeads on it, it is more difficult to see how they will look while the glue is still white.

The Martha Stewart glue is sold in the scrapbooking supplies at Micheal’s.  It is clear and holds the objects in place very well.  If you don’t mind the extra cost, this is the better choice.

5.  Next you’ll want to create a background.  The reason for this is so that the little objects you glue in won’t sink to the back.  By creating a background, the objects will be dimensional by standing out at different heighths.

I prefer to create the background from microbeads and seed beads.

In this photo, you hopefully can see that I painted the cross, then cut a piece of scrapbook paper to fill in the background. Above that I put seed bead randomly before I started adding the larger beads, buttons, etc.

This is a picture of this cross, finished.

6.  Once you’ve got some background beads in place start gathering the objects you’ll use for your theme.  I have a lot of jewelry pieces that are separated into gold and silver bags.  Consider that when picking your color scheme.  Consider putting only silver or only gold to make a more cohesive look.

I seem to have gathered a lot of pearls and white beads.  I combined them with gold in these.

For a more western look, on this frame I used copper colored beads and some more rustic elements.

This one has colorful plastic buttons, game pieces and small toys for a childlike look.

This frame is colorful and has no set theme.  I used a little bit of everything here bu tried to keep with gold and red as the main colors.

Can you see in the finished pieces how the objects are glued at different angles and some are built up higher than the others? This give the piece more interest than if the little items were laid flat on the frame itself.

I have fixed the glitches that occured the last time I tried to offer this course.  You can read more about the course, and sign up here.

The course is three separate lessons that will teach you everything to create beautiful artwork on any shoes.  The cost is $20.00.

Course will begin on May 9th, so sign up soon!

Here is the latest pair of shoes I painted…

I have been going to garage sales and thrift stores for years.  It started out of necessity but now I continue to shop at these places because I get awesome stuff for nearly nothing!!  Lots of my friends say they never can find anything at thrift stores so I thought I’d share with my readers how I do it.

1.  Know your stores

Go to all the thrift stores in your area.  Spend some time checking out what they have and what their prices are like.   They aren’t all alike by any means!

Thrift stores  have different specials and sales on certain days of the week.  Make note of what each store has on sale on what days.  For instance, my two favorite stores have clothes half price on Wednesdays. They have certain days that knick knacks are on sale, and other days accessories, etc.

2.  Know what you will use

If you feel overwhelmed when you walk in the door it’s probably because you dont’ know what you want to find.  Think about the things you typically look at when you go to the craft or art supply stores.  Do you focus on beads/jewelry?  Or do you like scrapbooking supplies? Maybe you prefer paints and brushes?

When you enter the thrift store find the area that most closely fits the category of things you use a lot in your art.  Because I’m a mixed media artist, and alter lots of things, I check out the books, games and jewelry first.

3. Know what you’ll pay

It helps to know what the things you use in your art cost new.  If you find a Scrabble game at the thrift store and it’s marked $10 is that a bargain?   If you sell your art, consider what you’ll have to charge to cover the cost of buying these supplies.  I would never buy a brand new Scrabble game to use in my art. And I wouldn’t pay $10 at the thrift store either.  But I would pay $1.

After you spend some time in the thrift stores or at garage sales, you’ll get a feel for what is often available. The things that are more abundant are cheaper.  So you might pay a little more for something you’ve been looking for and know is hard to find.

4.  Know what you are getting

Always check everything closely.  If it’s a game, open it up and see what parts are still there. If it’s a book, make sure the pages aren’t scribbled with crayon.

I sometimes get so excited at finding something that I grab it up and don’t really think it through.  Will I really use 25 lotto card with simple children’s pictures of objects?  Probably not but I have an abundance of them because I didn’t think before I threw it in my cart

5.  Know how you will use the items

This last tip is possibly the most important.  It is so exciting to find such great things so cheap that it’s tempting to buy anything that catches your eye.  I have bought many things and then realized I had no way to attach them, or clean them, or it was too big or too small – you get the idea.

Once you get the hang of thrifting you’re going to get obsessed, trust me   So just expect to buy a bunch of stuff you’ll end up throwing out.  That’s okay.  But once the newness has passed, go to the thrift store or garage sale with things in mind that you need for current projects or ideas you want to implement.  It will save in the log run on the cost of organizers

Here is an example of one of my recent Great Finds.  This was a small tin and I paid 99 cents for it.

I love the grungy look of the tin.  I may use it for a project later but right now I’m using it to carry my journaling supplies.  I can fit small scissors, glue stick short pencils, watercolor crayons and a sharpener in it.   The little wooden circles and the dice I will use on some frames I’m making from found objects.

The little backgammon board is totally cool looking.  I scanned it to use as an image for backgrounds. Here it is.

It’s about 4 inches square. Isn’t it a great image?  This alone was worth 99 cents!

I’d love if you’d share with me and my readers in the comment section any great finds you’ve found while thrifting!!

Well, things seem to be back to normal now with the blog. I wasnt’ able to get all my old posts imported, but I do have more security in place, and the blog database is automatically being backed up daily. So if I start fresh now, hopefully this wont’ happen again.

So, let’s get back to Jazzy’s cool tips!

Make Your Own Alcohol Inks

Once again you find yourself standing there with your limited budget in hand, looking at those marvelous alcohol inks that stick to anything and cleanout your wallet at the same time. Can’t or don’t want to spend the cha-ching on them?

Make your own, sweetums! Here’s how You are going to kick yourself this is so easy!

Supplies:
Squirty bottles from the dollar store…like the kind they sell for ketchup and mustard at a picnic. Or whatever squirty bottles you already have (admit it, you have some under the sink) Dishsoap bottles are good for this.

RIT dyes in whatever colors you want, or get your three primaries and then yer kinda set to make any colors
Isopropyl alcohol from the drugstore. talk about cheap, you can get a LOT for 2 bux
Try to get the 90% kind, 70% will work and all but 90% is best.

Now, empty some of the RIT dye powder into the squirty bottle. Guess what ya do next? Gosh yer smart! Add enough alcohol to dissolve the powder. Shake that puppy vigorously until well mixed. Guess what. You just put Tim Holtz out of business. You now have Alcohol inks to play with to yer heart’s content. Make them thicker, thinner, however you like by controlling the amount of alcohol you put in. Use your inks on plain new stamp pads, or go cheapo and get those sponges at the scraft store that expand when they get wet, and use that as a stamp pad. or, put in small cups or tin cans and paint away.

Isn’t that just too much fun? Run to the store now and get the stuff while yer thinking about it! For about the cost of one little tiny set of inks from the crapft store you can make quarts of the stuff!

Then you make me a pecan pie

~O8:>