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 didn’t have time to write a tutorial this week with the boys here, but here is one from http://cutoutandkeep.net that I love.  You cout these stars out of magazine images, scrapbook paper or whatever you want.  Aren’t they great?  Here is the tutorial.

Have fun!

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 trying to do doodles like Nici does for a couple of years now.  I have never been able to do them in a way I liked.  But I have enjoyed doing designs for a while now that are squares with various designs in them.  Here is an example of one of them.

This gave me the idea to try the same thing with a circle.  And I was pleased with the result of this sort of funky mandala design.

What I liked about Nici’s doodles was that she did some of them with twinklink H2O’s ( metallic watercolors) so I tried this type of mandala with the twinling paints.  And it is as close as I’ve come to liking a doodle type image I’ve done with them.  I think it’s a mandala doodle

All of these were done in my journal which is a sketch pad.  The first two were done with sharpies.  The last one was done on a page coated with black gesso with twinkling H2O’s as I said.

Just before I decided to focus on art to sell rather than more e-products, I had started writing a book on creating art journal backgrounds.  I’ve decided to share these techniques with my readers as tutorials.  Here is the first one using cut-out letters on your background.

Cut out letters

Materials needed:
•    magazines
•    letter stencils or die-cut letters
•    craft knife or scissors
•    acrylic paint
•    water soluble crayons ,oil pastels, watercolor pencils, or plain colored pencils
•    baby wipes or damp cloth
•    glue stick

1.    Select magazine pages that have interesting patterns, color or text.

2.    Trace the outline of each letter you’ll be spelling onto different magazine images you have chosen.

If you don’t want the lines of the pen or pencil you are using to trace, showing up on the front of your letters, trace them backwards on the back of the page.

3.    When all the letters are traced, cut each one out, using a craft knife.  You can use scissors if you prefer.

4.    Select an acrylic paint that goes with the magazine patterns you have chosen for you letters. Paint a page in your journal with the one solid color.

5.    Create a simple image on the page.  I made a bird silhouette and colored it in with water soluble oil pastels, but you could use watercolor crayons, watercolor pencils or just plain colored pencils if you want.  After I colored it with the pastels, I used a baby wipe to smooth the pastels around for a smoother look.

If you’d like to use a bird, also, you can click on this picture and it will take you to the original image that you can download.

6.    Decide how you want to arrange your cut-out letters on the page.  Once you’ve made this decision, glue them on with a glue stick.