Painting & Knitting

Underneath the tablecloth on my kitchen table is a permanent patch of butcher's paper securely taped down. Why you might ask? So that when the painting bug strikes my children which is quite often this mama can just whip off the cloth and and let them go wild without worrying about how I'm going to fix water marks and paint stains *grin*.

I seriously love this stuff! And it's pretty much indestructible :) If you have never used it there is one side made of brown craft paper which makes great wrapping paper that you can stamp and draw on and on the other side it has a water proof waxy coating that you can spill on, paint on, get marker all over and wash it all up with soap and water when you're finished :)

Today they were painting the backgrounds for a fun fall tree picture that will have them blowing paint through a straw tomorrow to make free form tree trunks and then we'll add colorful leaves using our pencil eraser ends. I just hope we can keep the paint from blowing out of the straws and onto the walls! Maybe we should to some practice breathing through the straws before I actually hand over the paint LOL.

While they happily painted away I pulled out my yarn swift and a couple of skeins of a pretty mauve colored cotton/linen blend of yarn that I've had put away for a rainy day :)

I think I've found the perfect project for it but you'll have to wait until tomorrow's yarn along post to learn more about it *grin*. Gotta love ravelry and free patterns!

Hugs,
Rosina

White Washing

I think I speak for both my oldest son and myself when I say we are getting really excited that our chicken coop remodel is nearly finished *grin*. It was great when Hubby was home and he put in a brand new door so that we could get in and out of the house easily but since then it's just been me and the kids :)

The last couple of days we've been cutting, hammering, sweeping and scraping the walls using a wire brush to get any old paint and muck off of the walls in preparation for white washing the walls. With all of the dust and dirt that was flying around I thought it wouldn't hurt to wear some masks so that we didn't breathe to much of it in :)

There haven't been any chickens in this old house for quite a few years and we found numerous holes in the floor that needed to be covered to stop any mice or rats from coming in and then there were a few larger ones leading in from the old nesting area that required some larger boards to seal off the main room to keep any other animals out that might find their way in. We do have a really big problem with raccoons and mink so I want to make sure that our new little babies are going to be safe. Plus we don't have any need for nesting boxes until later this fall when the chicks mature enough to start laying some eggs :)

Thankfully I know my way around a skill saw *grin*. K and I scavenged through the old lumber pile by the wood shed looking for boards that didn't look to rotten and then dragged them up to the house where we could measure them and cut them to the right length for the wall we needed to cover. From there we took them back to the chicken house and started to close in the wall.

Oh boy did we have some good laughs!! K was having some trouble getting the nails started while holding the chicken wire tight behind the boards that we were nailing up so I held the wire all the while cringing as I hoped he wouldn't hammer my fingers LOL. He thought it was hilarious that I was so worried yet only minutes before he was eyeing me up skeptically as I balanced boards on the saw horses and he was worried that I wouldn't know how to use the saw :) Yup, we are quite the handyman duo *grin*.

So with all the wood work done it was time to give the insides a nice clean coat of paint with a lime white wash. It's good and cheap to make, brightens up dark and dingy barn rooms and as an added bonus it helps stop any bacteria from growing.

Just in case you're interested here's how I made it :) You will need a bag of Hydrated Lime. Make sure you get hydrated lime and NOT dolomite or garden lime. Dolomite is the greyer colored lime that you can find at grocery stores and garden centers and it is okay if you put your hands in it but Hydrated lime is a purer white and usually can be found at any building supply or farm and feed store and it has a big warning on the front of the bag that it is corrosive so when you handle it you want to make sure you wear gloves and preferably a mask when mixing because you don't want to breathe in the powder as it flies in the air.

Using a large plastic pail to hold the lime and a large coffee tin as my make do measuring cup I scooped out five full coffee tins of lime and put them into my plastic pail and then I added just under two gallons of water and stirred it well to combine the water and lime. Protective eye wear is a good idea at this point to keep it from accidentally splashing in your eyes. You want it to be a nice thick paste so don't add your water all at one time or you will have to add more lime :) Now you can tuck it away for the night. This makes what they call slaked lime and is actually the base of house plaster if I'm correct.

The next morning or whenever you get back to it, take your pail and pour off any excess water that is sitting on top of the lime paste. This is water that the lime couldn't absorb. The paste as it stands now is much to thick to paint with so you will want to thin it with some salt water. I used 2.5 pounds of pickling salt to one gallon of water mixed well together and then poured a little at a time into the lime paste. You want it to be like the consistency of pancake batter but make sure you don't add to much water! You can't add more lime anymore at this point. Once you have thinned your white wash to a spreadable consistency you are ready to paint :)

Wearing our rubber gloves and eye protection we got to work painting on the white wash. Oh my goodness this stuff is AMAZING!! It spreads on nice and thick so you get good coverage and even though it looks a little grey while it's wet it dries bright white! Our chicken coop has never ever looked so clean and good :)

Only a few more days and our babies arrives... just in time for Easter!!

Hugs,
Rosina

T-Shirt Art Using Freezer Paper Stencils ~ Tutorial

One of my son's friends is absolutely crazy about the Mario Brothers, especially Luigi, and is actually having a Mario themed birthday party really soon. I couldn't for the life of me find anything to purchase though that had Luigi on it so I thought it would be fun to make him his own personal Luigi t-shirt :)

I love using freezer paper to make stencils so out came my big roll of butchers wrap :) If you haven't seen it before it looks just like brown craft paper on one side and the other has a shiny waxy side which normally is the side you would wrap your meat or other food to be frozen on but it also works as an awesome peel and stick paper for creating paper stencils!

You can cut it down to regular letterhead sized paper, 8.5 x 11 inches and run it right through your printer to. Just make sure you place it in your paper tray so that you print on the paper side and not the waxy side *grin*.

So I found a really simple image of Luigi online, printed it directly onto my freezer paper and started to cut out all of the pieces that I wanted to replace with paint instead using my exacto knife. A smaller craft knife works really well to and is nice for small areas but I have misplaced mine so I had to go with the big knife *grin*.

With my stencil all cut apart I was ready to start sticking the freezer paper directly onto a clean cotton t-shirt. I started by placing all of the pieces of my stencil where I didn't want any paint touching the shirt down with the shiny side touching the fabric. It is very important that you make sure the shiny side is facing the shirt because it gets very sticky when it heats up and you don't want to accidentally glue it to your iron!

Using a dry iron with no steam I ran it gently over top of the paper parts until they were all glued into place. It only takes a second or two for the freezer paper to bond to the fabric but you can double check all edges of your stencil before you start painting to make sure they are securely attached to the fabric so that no paint will seep underneath when you start. If you find a loose spot just run your iron over it again and press down a bit and it'll fix it right up :)

Now that you are ready to start painting you can either use a fabric paint or you can use any regular acrylic paint that you have on hand. I always use plain old acrylic paint as we always have tons of it and to turn it into a permanent fabric paint you just need to use a little bit of 'fabric medium'.

My favorite medium to use is Jo Sonja's but they were all out when I went to pick a new bottle up so this time I'm using the Americana brand. So for each color I wanted to paint with I used 2 parts acrylic paint to 1 part fabric medium. Mix it all together really well and paint directly onto your shirt :)

For my Luigi I wanted to do all of the black outline lines first so that is the portions of my freezer paper stencil that I removed and I brushed in a layer of black paint and hung it to dry overnight.

When I woke up this morning the first layer of black paint was nice and dry so I peeled off all of the freezer paper bits that were still attached to the shirt leaving behind all of the perfect white spots where I could now fill in all of the colors that make up Luigi's clothing and body :)

Section by section I slowly mixed paint and filled in the blanks. Sort of like a paint by number project *grin*. I think he turned out pretty well :)

Once you are finished painting everything, hang your shirt somewhere to dry again for another 12 - 24 hours to really let the paint cure.

I didn't quite wait the full 12 hours for mine to finish drying but I wanted to pull off the last of the freezer paper to just show you how it looks when you are finished :)

I love how you can create such detailed images by peeling and sticking little bits of paper to fabric like this without needing to do any sort of screen printing process.

Tomorrow morning it will have been a full 24 hours that my little Luigi has been drying and then I can use my iron on the no steam setting again and heat set the paint permanently setting it onto the fabric. I have had great success using fabric medium. The kids have quite a few shirts done that we did together and they go in and out of the wash constantly and look just as great as the day we painted them. Minus a few ketchup stains here and there *grin*.

Have fun making some of your own!

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Valentine Handprint Cards & One For You

Valentine's day is just around the corner and every year we make something special to give to Omi and Opa. Last year we made valentine paper bag books and this year I thought it would fun to get really messy and make handprint heart cards :)

No kid can resist having their hands completely coated in paint!



The trick is to get them to keep their hands on the paper and not their faces, walls, chairs, oh and hair... hair is a really good one to keep sticky paint covered hands out of *grin*. Why is it that as soon as they know that they aren't supposed to scratch a body part it becomes mysteriously itchy??

With our watercolor paper folded in half and each hand thoroughly covered in red paint we then placed them onto the paper doing our best to keep our thumbs slightly bent and our pointer fingers touching to make a lovely handprint heart :) To be fair we did a couple of practice runs on scrap paper before doing our 'good' cards so that we could perfect our heart making technique :)

One tip before getting your little one to stick their hands to the paper is to make sure that you have your card upside down or the opposite way that you would want it to stand when it is complete. That way your heart will display right side up. We made that mistake the first time and when we stood the card upright to dry we realized that the heart was actually upside down *grin*. Still cute but my little guy was not happy his heart didn't look quite right!

To give each of our cards a little shimmer we sprinkled glitter over the wet paint and then using our alphabet stamps my daughter stamped 'Be Mine' and 'I ♥ U' in the center of the handprint hearts for sweet little Valentine messages :)

I just love how cute they look all lined up on the table drying :)

We got a little carried away with making handprints and ended up with more cards than we actually need so if you or your children would like a little surprise Valentine card sent to you in the mail just let me now in the comments below :)

The first five commenters will have one personally sent to you by my little heart handprint creators *grin*.

All of the Valentine cards have now been spoken for :)

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)