Family Crossword

I've been wanting to make some home decor items for myself after making a few canvas items for other people; so I made this 18"x24" canvas for us. I'm not sure if I saw this idea any where before but this is what I came up with. Unfortunately the green background color isn't as dark as it shows in my edited picture - honestly, I'm not thrilled with how this turned out - the colors just don't quite complement each other, IMOP. The letter is done in gold vinyl layered on maroon red vinyl that Hubby insisted would look good with the green paint. 

After getting this hung in the living room I was looking at it & realized I should have done #1 as our last name with the clue being the Family title. Oh, well, it is a nice piece. 

Hope everyone is keeping warm (it is -6 here today!) and Blessed Be,

Alyssa

Winter Handmade Gift Exchange

I love doing the Handmade Gift Exchange through Craftaholic's Anonymous!
This time I was paired with the lovely Trista of My Sparkled Life.
I was lucky enough to recieve a beautiful crocheted earwarmer, coffee cozy, gorgeous damask frame and cute glittered clothes pins!

I, of course, forgot to take pictures of what I made for Trista but she is wonderful and did a blog post already of her gifts.  I made her a roll basket and cut several things on my Silhouette. I hope she enjoys her gifts as much as I do mine!

I hope everyone is well.

Blessed Be, Alyssa

Wedding Anniversary

Disclaimer: This is by no means perfect but it works and I really didn't want to start over.

So, the hubby & I had our ten year wedding anniversary last week. I wanted to make something to commemorate the event and had a hard time making up my mind what I wanted to do, so I procrastinated until the last minute. I wanted to surprise my hubby with a nice canvas with a quote or something (this was one idea since The Princess Bride is a favorite movie). I eventually settled on part of our recessional song (I think that is what it's call, the song playing when we walked down the "isle" after the ceremony) which was Higher & Higher by Jackie Wilson. I did this much the same as I did for the canvas for my brother, unfortunately it didn't turn out nearly as nice! I made this on a 12x16" canvas using contact paper again but wish I had remembered this tutorial, I'm sure it would have went much more smoothly & turned out a lot better :(

The white portion with our names & the date is actually vinyl because the original contact paper didn't stick down enough so the paint bled under it to the point of not being able to read it. I mod podged the vinyl on to make sure it would stick, after I had to repaint that strip green so the the white, unpainted portion of canvas, wouldn't show.

Oh, well maybe at our 15 year anniversary I'll redo it :)

So, here's to many more happy years :)

Have a good day

Water Bottles and Canvas Quote

We went to the Black Hills over Memorial Day Weekend to meet up with my family, so...

I wanted an easy, inexpesive gift (that 10 people would all like/use) to give. Plus I'd seen this pin & knew something similar would be perfect for my sister L. I picked up 10 aluminum water bottles from The Dollar Tree and designed some vinyl cuts to personalize the water bottles. They were a pretty big hit. I don't have a decent picture of the water bottles, but I do have files for anyone that is interested. I made a fish silhouette, hot rod, a running quote, a pig, a chicken, an Oliver shield (tractor), a crown, and my sewing machine. I just used clip art and the trace feature in the Silhouette Studio program.

I still needed to get my brother's birthday gift made. I had been bugging him for a couple of months for a quote - he posts more quotes to Facebook than actual status updates. He sent me this quote:

"All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity." – James F. Cooper

I cut the quote out of contact paper and placed it on a 24"x30" unfinished canvas - which I have to say I should have painted it first so the contact paper would stick!! So after much time spent getting the letters to stick enough to be able to spray paint it, I sprayed the plain canvas with flat black spray paint. The letters not sticking to the canvas actually made a really neat effect leaving the edges of the letters soft (which isn't very easy to see but whatever).

Well, I hope everyone had a nice weekend. I have some client's sewing to get done tonight.

Blessed Be & Good Night.