Springy Sunflower Nail Art

     Welcome spring with these bright, sunny nails.  Sunflowers are probably my second favorite flowers, my first being red roses.  These sunny flowers put a smile on my face when I see them, so I decided to add them to my nails.

Materials:

*Sky blue nail polish
*Clear base/top coat
*Yellow acrylic paint
*Brown acrylic paint
*Black acrylic paint
*Ultra fine nail art brush
*Various sizes of dotting tools, ranging from large to very small

Directions:

*Apply clear base coat to nails.  Let dry.

*Apply light blue polish to nails.  Let dry.

*Paint on yellow flower shapes using yellow paint.  To make the flower shape, I began by painting a plus sign on the nail.  I then painted an "x" through the plus sign to make something resembling an asterisk.  I then painted on a line between each of the lines already on my nail.  I've tried to illustrate the process with the image below, with the index finger showing the plus sign stage, the middle finger the plus sign with the x through it, and the ring finger showing the completed flower shape.  Let dry.

*Dip a large dotting tool in brown paint and add brown centers to each of the flower shapes.

*Mix together black and brown paint and use a medium sized dotting tool to add a bit of this color to the center of each flower.

*Mix yellow and brown acrylic paints together to create a light brown paint.  Using a very small dotting tool, add dots around the brown ring of the sunflower.

*Seal with a clear top coat.

DIY Graduation Tassel

     A lot of colleges and universities, including my school, the University of Maine, are moving courses online for the remainder of the semester due to COVID-19.  It is uncertain at this time whether many schools will be able to hold commencement, but there is a good chance that a formal commencement will not be in the cards for some if not most 2020 graduates.  I know this is frustrating for many of us - I've been looking forward to earning and celebrating my PhD for years now, especially since Brian and I were hoping to walk together at graduation.  However, there still is room for celebration, just on a much smaller scale.  Today I'm going to show you how I made some tassels for UMaine's mini graduation ceremony, aka Coronamencement.

Me with my tassel.

     While I dug out my old Master's cap for the Coronamencement, I saw a lot of clever caps from people who didn't have access to an official school cap.  Some people bought graduation caps from Party City, while others made caps by attaching cardboard to baseball caps.  A friend of mine donned a blue bathrobe as a substitute graduation robe.

Brian had to work, so he couldn't make it to Coronamencement, but I made him a tassel anyway.

At Coronamencement.

     I know many 2020 graduates won't get any graduation celebration, official or unofficial, and certainly not on the scale of Coronamencement.  That sucks.  But even though you may not have a tremendous audience, your accomplishments are still worth celebrating.  When graduation day comes, have a virtual ceremony with your friends and family.  DIY tassels, caps, and robes with objects you have around the house, or wear a nice outfit.  I'm sorry for all of us that this is how our academic careers are coming to an end, but we have accomplished something big nonetheless, and you have every right to be proud of that.

Materials:

*Yarn
*Scissors
*Glittery cardstock
*Die cutting machine or X-acto knife

Directions:

*To make the "2020" for your tassel, use the template below or one of your own design to cut a "2020" from gold cardstock.  You could either use a die cutting machine or scissors and an X-acto knife to make it.

*Take yarn in a color of your choice and wind it around your hand about 16 times, like this:

*Carefully slide the yarn off your hand.

*Cut off a length of yarn long enough to serve as the string that fastens your tassel to your cap.  Mine were about 17" long.

*Slide the piece of yarn through your wound yarn and knot the ends together.

*Cut off a shorter length of yarn, about 6", and slip it through the end of your "2020" tag.

*Tie the piece of yarn around your wound yarn, up toward the top.

*Cut open the bottom of the wound yarn to create the tassel shapes.  Trim as needed.

Turning Myself into a Paper Doll

     If you've ever wanted to cartoonize yourself, but felt like you don't have the prerequisite drawing skills, then this may be the post for you.  In the first video in this two-part series, I'll show you how to use a tracing technique to come up with a cartoon version of yourself.  In the second, I'll show you how to color in the image digitally to get a more polished looking image.
     This technique works great for making paper doll versions of yourself or your loved ones, and could be a great gift, especially for the kids in your lives.  While the paper doll angle is the focus of this series, the same techniques will work for making cartoon avatars.
     When I made the first iteration of my paper doll, I had no intention of making a series of paper doll videos.  I was trying to think of a doll related craft to do for my Hey, Day series, and wondered if this would work.  I've used tracing before to create silhouettes, but I thought that I lacked the skills to draw in the facial features.  When the drawing portion worked better than I had expected, I decided to play around with coloring techniques to see if I could get a more polished looking doll, and when that worked okay, I decided to make a second video.  I don't currently have plans for any subsequent videos, but I do love paper crafting, so if you'd like to see more content like this, let me know and I'll see what I can come up with.

How to Draw Yourself as a Paper Doll (Part I of the Video Series)

Digitizing Your Paper Self (Part II of the Video Series)

Star Confetti Bookmark

     Add some shine to your books with a confetti bookmark.

Materials:

*Star confetti
*Laminator and laminating sheets
*Hole punch
*Ribbon
*Scissors

Directions:

*Arrange confetti in a rectangular shape between the laminating sheets.

*Laminate the confetti.

*Punch a hole at the top of the confetti rectangle.  I recommend doing this before you start cutting out the bookmark so you don't forget to leave space at the top to punch the hole.

*Cut rectangular bookmark shape out of the laminating sheet, making sure to leave about a quarter of an inch of excess plastic beyond the edges of the confetti.

*Tie a ribbon through the hole you punched.

Strawberry Frosted Donut Inspired Nail Art

     Give yourself a manicure that looks good enough to eat!

Materials:

*Clear base/top coat
*Pink nail polish
*Acrylic paint in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and white
*Fine nail art brush

Directions:

*Paint nails with a clear base coat, followed by a coat of pink polish.  Let dry.

*Paint on "sprinkles" by adding randomly oriented streaks of color.  Start with some red acrylic paint and add one to two sprinkles per nail.

*Next add one to two orange sprinkles per nail, making sure to leave enough space for the remaining colors.

*Continue adding one to two sprinkles of each color, one color at a time.

*Seal with a clear top coat.

DIY Wedding Invites with the Foil Quill

     As some of you know, Brian and I are getting married this May.  When it came to the invites, we decided to make them ourselves.  To aid us with the invites, we picked up a machine called the Foil Quill, which adds shiny foil to your cards.  In this video tutorial, we'll show you the method we developed for using the Foil Quill to add some shine to our invites.

Here's what the front and back of the invites look like, as well as the RSVP card.

     Check out the video tutorial below to see how we used the Foil Quill to make our invites shine.

     Although I don't go through the design process in this video, if you want to find the clip art I used for the back of the card and the RSVP card, I ordered it from Etsy.  The three packs I used are Alice in Wonderland Clipart, Tea & Macaroons, and Autumn in Wonderland.

Hey, Day Challenge Week VII Round Up

     Week seven of the Hey, Day Challenge has come and gone, and it was a busy one.  If you're not familiar with this video series, I challenge myself to try out activities relating to various pages from the book Hey, Day! by Clea Hantman and Keva Marie, a day book filled with things to "do, make, and ponder."  I'm not covering every page in the book, but rather about 10 per month.
     If you've been meaning to follow my Hey, Day Challenge video series, but haven't had a chance to, here's a round up of all the videos that aired between January 9th and February 16th.  I've included a brief description of each video so you can determine whether the videos sound like they're up your alley.

DIY Fake Blood

     In this video, I test out a couple of fake blood recipes, one suggested by the book and one that I looked up online.

Valentine's Placemats

     This video is the first in a three part Valentine's Day party series.  In this one, I show you how to make Valentine's Day placemats using dollar store Valentine's Day cards.  Note that all three party posts are cutesy rather than zombified, so if cutesy Valentine's Day is your jam, you may want to give these a watch.

Valentine's Day Party Menu

     This video is the second Valentine's Day party video.  In this video I show you how to create an elegant looking menu for your party.

Valentine's Party

     In the final video in the Valentine's Day series, I show you how to set up a Valentine's Day party tablescape using relatively inexpensive and easy crafting ideas.

     This past week was a busy one for the series.  The next couple of weeks will be a bit slower, since a lot of the February projects I liked happened early in the month, but don't worry.  There are still plenty of videos in store.