33 Days 'til Christmas - My Favorite Handmade Gifts - Wood Plaque Photo Transfer

economy size

This is another easy gift to make and one that is sure to be appreciated by the recipient. I recently made this plaque for my Mom's birthday. My Mom knows that she is probably going to get some kind of handmade gift from her starving artist daughter for just about every occasion and she is fine with it. I try to make the gifts useful and/or memorable. Believe me, there are a lot of weird and random craft ideas out there that I would never give as a gift. If it doesn't pass the "Would I Like To Receive This?" test, it doesn't make the cut. This craft passes with flying colors.

It is a very easy project, unfortunately you will most likely have to make a trip to the craft store. Unless you are an artist, it is doubtful you have gel medium on hand, and nobody I've ever met keeps a supply of blank wooden plaques hanging around. But if you are anything like me, you are at the craft store at least once a week (who am I kidding, I am there almost daily). Also you will need a laser print of the photo you are transferring. Unless you do a black & white transfer, then just a regular copy from a copy machine will work. The only thing that will not work is an ink jet copy. When you print your image, do not forget to reverse it so that when it's transferred onto the plaque it is the right way. This is especially important if your image includes lettering, or is a photo of your family home which you are giving to your mother as a gift.

Paint the printed image with a nice, even coating of gel medium. Carefully lay it on the plaque, making sure there are no bubbles, and smooth it down. Try not to press it over the edge of the plaque, and wipe up any gel medium that oozes over the edge. That stuff dries as hard as plastic and is a real pain to get off without marring the edges of your image. Let it dry for 24 hours.

The next day, set the plaque face down in a shallow dish with a little water & let it soak for a minute. It is so awesome, just like magic the image will be transferred onto the wood. Now you must carefully rub the paper off. You can do it under running water, or you can rub some off, soak for a minute, rub the paper, soak, etc. until it's almost all the way off then finish under running water, which is what I did. After it dries, you will notice that there is still some paper left and you'll have to wet it and rub it some more. This will happen a few times before all of the paper is gone. Tiny bits of the image will get rubbed off too, but it just adds to the home made coolness of the plaque.

Ta-da! Another fabulous handmade gift that will be sure to warm the heart of the lucky receiver.

PS: don't forget that there are many wonderful artists offering lots of lovely handmade items for sale this Season and all throughout the year! Even if you aren't into making all of your presents, consider buying handmade gifts this year and support small businesses! Although I am partial, these are two of my faves-

Red Scorpio Crafts & Art

Shadoan Photographic Arts

34 Days "til Christmas - My Favorite Handmade Gifts - Shrink Plastic Pendant

34 days until Christmas and I still have so many things to do. Pretty much everything. I should take my own advice and start busting out some cool handmade stuff to give to all of the people on my list. Maybe I will make a few of these shrink plastic pendants. They are super easy and look really awesome. Best of all, if you have any #6 plastic take out containers, they are just about free.

More & more restaurants are switching to #1 and #2 plastic for take out boxes, and that is wonderful because #1 & #2 can be easily recycled, in fact those are the only 2 kinds my recycle bin accepts. If you do happen upon some #6, save it to make shrinkies. You will be helping the planet by not tossing more plastic into the trash and you get to enjoy a super fun and easy craft. Win-win. If you can't get your hands on #6 plastic, shrink plastic is readily available at craft stores and in the craft department of Target, Walmart, etc.

awesome necklace

You will need:
#6 take out container or store bought shrink plastic
Sharpies
Colored Pencils
Hole punch
Scissors
Craft heat gun
Jump rings, wire, cording, or something of your choosing from which to hang your pendant.


Let's start with the design. I wanted to make a cool pendant for my Mom's birthday gift, and I happened to have a fierce pic of my Mom and my dad Bob. First, I had to tweak it a little by making it black & white and adjusting the contrast. You can find out how to do this by Googling "picture to stencil". Here is a great Instructable on the subject. Don't get hung up on trying to get a super smooth edge. You will be tracing the pic and therefore can take a whole lot of liberties. Alternately you could find some cool clip art. Your original image should be no bigger than 5"x5"and probably no smaller than 3"x3".

Make sure your container is very clean. Cut out an appropriately sized piece, making sure there is nothing stamped on it (like a big ol' #6). You should lightly sand it with fine grit sandpaper if you are using colored pencils or if you want a more opaque look but if you use Sharpies sanding is not necessary. Tape the plastic to the image you're tracing. This is a very important step, trust me. Start with the outline and the big obvious shapes, then add in the details. For a monochromatic piece like this one, make sure you leave blank spaces, in the hair for example, to give it texture. If you are using a Sharpie you will notice that it "marks" areas that you have already colored. Don't worry about that, you will not be able to tell once you've shrunk it down.

these sunglasses look all googly now, but they won't in a minute

 If you make a mistake you can erase it with a Q-tip barely moistened with rubbing alcohol. Once you are satisfied with your design, trim the plastic down to a neat shape and punch your hole. Or holes, depending on how you want your pendant to hang. I made mine into a beaded necklace, so I punched a hole in each top corner. A regular office-type hole punch is perfect. The holes will seem huge but shrink down to just the right size. Place your plastic on a heat proof surface and shrink it with your crafty heat gun. You could use a toaster oven, if you have a spare, but I wouldn't shrink plastic in something I cook food in, and the heat gun works great.  ***Before you shrink have a flat bottomed glass handy (with no lettering on the bottom!)  so you can press your piece flat if you need to, and try not to blast the plastic off the table with the forced air of the heat gun. It is going to curl up so don't freak out. It should straighten itself out, but if not, you can tweak it into submission while it's still hot. And it will be very hot, so be careful.










Here is the result! Store bought shrink plastic may give a soother finish (although I wouldn't know, I've never bought the stuff) but I like this imperfect "wabi-sabi" finish. If you're feeling extra creative, colored pencils work great as well and are permanent once you shrink them. My Mom loved her necklace and I bet your Mom would too. I think I will now go make some shrink plastic ornaments for my tree.





PS: don't forget that there are many wonderful artists offering lots of lovely handmade items for sale this Season and all throughout the year! Consider buying handmade gifts this year and support small businesses! Although I am partial, these are two of my faves-

Red Scorpio Crafts & Art

Shadoan Photographic Arts

35 Days 'til Christmas - My Favorite Handmade Gifts - Infused Vodka

There are 35 days left until Christmas! And it's the perfect time to make handmade gifts, so I will be sharing some of my favorite handmade gift ideas. My #1 rule for handmade gifts is "Would I like to receive this as a present?" Because frankly, there are some pretty weird and kind of lame craft ideas out there.  This one is very well received.

I'm going to tell you how I make it, then you can tailor it to your own circumstances. I happen to have a large empty Vodka bottle on hand (at all times) so I buy a large bottle of Costco Vodka and pour half into the empty bottle and leave half in its original bottle. There is no need to buy expensive Vodka for this project. Decent Vodka works great. Actually, Costco Vodka is very good and it happens to be the cheapest per ounce, so that is what I use. Put 1/4 cup of cracked black pepper and 1/4 cup of crushed red peppers in each bottle, close tightly and let it infuse for at least a week. I am posting this as the first gift idea because I think the longer it sits, the better it tastes. Decant into pretty bottles for giving, straining out the solids. The Vodka will be tinted by the peppers, so you can make custom labels and call it "Dirty Vodka" or something sexy like that. My life's theme is black & red, so I make black & red labels and call it "Two Pepper Vodka" with a warning that it is extremely hot. That's it, couldn't be easier. I've made this for a few years now and I actually get requests for it around Holiday time.

Cheers!

PS: don't forget that there are many wonderful artists offering lots of lovely handmade items for sale this Season and all throughout the year! Consider buying handmade gifts this year and support small businesses! Although I am partial, these are two of my faves-

Red Scorpio Crafts & Art

Shadoan Photographic Arts

More Birdie Drama...

Last week there was all kinds of drama involving our quail hatchlings, so this week the grown-up birds decided to raise a ruckus.

We've had a small flock of Japanese quail for almost three years. We are down to five now, the two chicks and a threesome of adults. Buddy and his two girlfriends usually get along just fine, however, once or twice a year, the girls try to murder Buddy. They are pretty savage about it, and honestly I have lost more birds to quail on quail violence than any other cause. Generally I just remove Buddy for a couple of days and when I put him back everyone gets along as though nothing has happened.

That didn't work this time. This time when Buddy was reintroduced, the attacks commenced immediately. It took me several minutes to figure out that the girls didn't want Buddy around because they were broody. Well, one of them was broody, and her sister was going to defend her to the death. This turn of events was astounding to me because quail very rarely go broody. Like never. But there she was, trying to spread her body out to cover eight tiny eggs. It looked so cute, I didn't have the heart to take them away from her. I figured "what the Hell", and let her try to hatch her own babies for once in her life. The main problem with this scenario was that her sister was not broody and therefore kept on laying a tiny (and without Buddy, infertile) egg every day, one that the wanna-be mama gathered up under her fluffy breast to be set upon. As you can imagine, this was a hilarious sight albeit a losing proposition. I doubted any of those few fertile eggs would ever be properly incubated but I let her set on them anyway because, hey, you never know. But yeah, none of them hatched.

After a few days I tried to put Buddy back with his harem. Unfortunately, he was no longer welcome and now the poor guy lives all by himself, next door to his former lovers and BFFs. So sad! He used to pick the choice crumbles out of the feeder and set them on the ground for the girls to eat. He was such a good mate & I bet they just took him for granted.