I had a moment of weakness—or shall I say a few hours of PINTEREST inspiration!
Honestly I haven’t really been on Pinterest in months. With all my new listings in my Etsy shop this last week, I knew it was time to update my boards. WOWSA I felt like a Pinterest newbie all over again. You know– that time when you stayed up wicked late to pin everything you could possible think of and woke up the next morning with a Pinterest hangover? Well, not QUITE like that, but close. I just felt so inspired all over again, one of the amazing things I love about that site! I browsed through my old boards, searched around for some NEW stuff, and then of course — I got HUNGRY…yes hungry. Doesn’t Pinterest make you hungry? There is always someone pinning yummy treats!
I found a few good boards of recycled blue jean crafts and was in HEAVEN– yup I’m SINGING!!! I went pinning like CRAAAAAAAZY! So I’m sorry if you are one of my followers and you opened up Pinterest this morning covered with all my blue jean pins but I couldn’t help it! I feel like sewing with blue jeans today. Thanks Pinterest for the inspiration. 🙂
Tic Tac Toe with recycled blue jeans? HOW CUTE!!! I will definitely be making some of these!
If you’d like to see my Recycled Blue Jeans Board you can find it HERE — It is loaded with TONS of goodies!
As Always — Don’t forget to visit me on ETSY, SPRING SALE GOING ON!!! And LIKE my page on Facebook to keep up with all the goodies!!!! Remember to support your local crafters!
This is the day you may begin to understand my artsy ways, and my title Clever Catastrophe. I have clever ideas that turn to complete catastrophes. But then I turn my catastrophe back into pure cleverness. Hence my namesake Clever Catastrophe was born. I hope I don’t lose you on this, stay with me, I promise you’ll understand by the time this post is finished.
Yesterday was NOT a good day. It started out yucky, drizzly, misty, all together it was just a nasty day, and I thought I could turn it into something fun for the kids. I’ve been dying to try out the cool crayon melted canvases I have seen all over Pinterest. Have you seen them? I thought they were quite clever. This is what I found:
melty crayons on Pinterest
This was love at first site! I thought how hard could this be? You take crayons and stick them to the paper/board-whatever, and then you melt with a hairdryer. Got it. I DON’T need directions. ****My first mistake…
I pulled up some of my cheapo yard sale frames. I had a vision. I love things that think “outside the box” quite literally and by that I mean pictures and art that extends beyond the frame. I envisioned this not-so-perfect, neato, melty mess, dripping along the edge of the frame, oh yum. I envisioned it all. I don’t like perfect order….to me that’s just way too perfect. I love abstract art. I like the imperfections and mismatched style that looks like it was just meant to be that way. Yes the rainbow and perfect order is pretty and great, but that doesn’t say HEIDI.
So with the rain and all I thought it would be a good project for Sebastian and I.
Apparently I thought wrong.
For all those of you who think, oh gee how does she have time for all this? How does she do this with little ones? She always manages to come up with great ideas and life is perfect hunky-dory. NOT NOT NOT! I promise you this is NOT the case. Yesterday was an epic failure as an artsy crafty mom.
Anyhoo, first I measured out my cardboard backings and paper for the frames. Cutting, snipping, gluing, then stapling in the backs nice and secure, all while the kiddos were eating breakfast. Laying out ginormous pieces of cardboard on the kitchen floor was quite entertaining I suppose.
Second we started peeling papers of the crayons. Let me just tell you that EVERY single board I found on Pinterest and Etsy with melty crayon thingys all had the papers. I thought, why? I don’t like that! It looks like crayons…..I want a piece of art that looks like it USED to be crayons. So of course I have to be different. Remember when I told you in my first post that I look for inspiration in other’s craftiness, yet I put my own spin on things; this is exactly what I mean. Again, you’ll understand when this is all over.
I purchased 2 boxes of dollar store crayons last week knowing I had this creation up my sleeve. $2 for 2 packs of 48 crayons was perfect for a melty mess, who needs Crayola brand when you’re just trashing them for art? Save those for real coloring projects. ****quick tip**** the dollar store crayon papers peel easier, sometimes the papers just fell off on their own— it was so easy! Also they have more of the same or similar colors (yes repeats, lol).
So we peeled papers, and then glued naked crayons to our canvas. They only needed a little stick because once they started melting they would just stick on their own to the paper, so a glue stick would be just fine right? My second mistake, WRONG AGAIN.
measuringGluingchoosing and gluing
This small one was supposed to be Sebastian’s artwork. After gluing the crayons down, we started up the hairdryer.
hairdryer by Sebastian
I decided to start this flat, give the crayons time for a little melting action. I wanted to make sure these crayons stuck to the paper. It was a good idea, but that doesn’t mean it was going to work. Sebastian was bored after about 8 seconds. So I took over. Shelby was being clingy so I let her sit in my lap….she climbed all over me tried to knock the frame over, smacking crayons, poking me in the eye, banging her head on mine, etc. TWENTY minutes rolled by and these crayons were barely getting shiny, least of all drippy….UGH, this was just not working, the kids were just being insane and all I wanted to do was finish this stupid project. Yes at this point it was stupid. Screaming children, messy living room, dishes in the sink, laudry needing to be done. yes I should have attended to these, but I thought this was going to be a simple project to entertain the kiddos for an hour. There would be time for housework later.
This simple project for the kids became MY project.
I kept on truckin’ with this hair dryer. I figured a few more minutes and these crayons were going to melt. Baby climbing on me again, Sebastian taking her toys, coloring on the TV, pulling things out of cabinets, sippy cups being thrown out the window, pulling the dogs tail. Oh jeez this was NOT working.
But I was obsessed. Just 5 more minutes guys, please. Baby back on my lap….and the crayons FINALLY started to melt! YAY!
Yay! Melting! Not how I planned but I didn’t care at this point.
After starting and stopping a thousand times the kids gave me 5 full minutes and I thought I was getting somewhere.
Then catastrophe.
Melty crayon falling off oh no!!!!
One of the melty crayons broke and started to fall. (Yes that is a cereal box holding up my artwork.) You know, this was very frustrating. It was not working. Stopping again to try to fix the issue, the crayons were cooling and needed to remelt yet again. The kids were being OK, so I prayed please give me another 5 minutes, please please, I’m almost there I can feel it. I moved on. I decided that I liked the broken crayon there. It gives it character, and it says me, non-perfection makes it perfectly ME. Good. Moving on.
Heating yet again.
Another catastrophe.
More crayons falling off.
FUDGE! OKAY, NOW I’M TICKED. Kids climbing on me again, fighting, throwing fits. This is just NOT happening. OK I give up. This was my sign from God, jeez, pay attention to your kids get over this crayon melty mess. I put everything away and said I’m done with this crap.
Had some quality time with the kids, made some lunch. Then ahhhhh. Nap time. Peace.
Sometimes a break is all I need to clear my head.
And I did it. I gathered my thoughts, pulled my supplies out again, MADE A PHONE CALL <<<<<<that’s important if you can’t tell>>>>>>>>>…..and I came up with the perfect melty mess that I imagined.
But I can’t show you just yet…..It would ruin the surprise. There is more to the story and I don’t want to bore you, so I can give you a sneek peak.
sneek peak!
Oh, isn’t it just perfect? Oh I love it. I’m very pleased and I can’t wait to share. Stay tuned…..
I came across this really interesting sun-catcher on . I love this site! I love sharing on it and I love to find nifty little creations that I can do at home myself. As you all I know I love to craft anything I can get my hands on. My first day on Pinterest I thought I was losing my eyesight, I was soooooo addicted to pinning that my eyes were burning. I think I woke up with a Pinterest hangover. If you haven’t tried Pinterest, then I suggest you check it out!
So anyhoo, back to my crafting experience. I found this awesome picture:
I thought, wow, so pretty! It must be complicated right? NOT SO!!!! VERY, VERY simple I promise. You buy the clear-ish plastic pony beads form the craft store, I just so happened to have some from my hair braiding days, or I’m sure you could use any clear plastic beads. You dump them into a round non-stick cake pan in a SINGLE layer, no greasing necessary (yes this made me nervous) and bake them in the oven on 400 for about 20 minutes. My oven took closer to 30 minutes, but it also depends on what kind of effect you want to have I suppose. The less time you cook them for the bumpier they are. I prefer them a little smoother so I kept checking them every 5 minutes after the 20 passed. As you can see, some melted differently. The clear ones still looked a little bumpy, but I was happy with it.
Baked and melty-looking
***NOTE, this does smell a little in the house so if you are bothered by melting plastic smells, I wouldn’t do this in your house. Maybe purchase a toaster oven that you could put outside?? I don’t know, but I know some people complain of the smell. It really didn’t bother me. I suppose if I was doing this as a full time job I would pick up an old oven and keep it in a shed or garage to bake in. But one time isn’t going to kill me. AND ANOTHER NOTE **** Just because I wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out, I went yard sale-ing for pans and paid .25 each. I didn’t want to use my own in case they got ruined, but I also don’t want to melt plastics in them and then cook food in them if you know what I mean. I’m not one of those nutty people who freak out over all things plastic, it just seemed weird to me, so I’m keeping separate pans for craft stuff.
So once the baked beads cool, flip the pan over and the plastic”cake” falls right out! No more worries about not greasing the pans. Woo-hoo!! I am so excited about this silly little NEW thing! Why didn’t I think of this?
After baking the first plastic cake, I was hooked. I got so many ideas! Now the original instructions said that you can drill holes in the sun catchers wherever you want them. Again this made me nervous thinking the plastic would easily crack, so on the first sun catcher I put a heart shaped metal cookie cutter [you can see in the picture above] at the top thinking I would make my own hole. The cookie cutter DID NOT pop out so easily. It was actually pretty well-stuck in there. I had to perform serious wiggling tactics to remove it. Finally it came out, so not too bad but I won’t try that again.
I thought I would make some smaller plastic cakes to hang as little dangles from my big one. So I took these muffin pans I also yard saled for a quarter each and put some beads in them ready to bake. This time I used a rivet for my holes (you can see the rivet in the pre-baking picture below) to see how this would come out, knowing I was going to leave them in as decoration. Now I didn’t realize that the cupcake pans were not completely non-stick coated like the cake pan was so I had to really pop the bottom of the cups to remove my cakes. I also noticed a “texture” on the bottom of the cakes from the pan and I could also see very tiny scratches. So note that any imperfections in the pans MAY be noticeable in your sun-catchers.
beads in muffin/ cupcake pans
So I now have one big sun-catcher, and 6 small ones. I imagined my sun-catcher with 3 long dangling strands each with 2 small ones on them. I realized that I have 6 circles with one hole each, and my big circle only had my top hole shaped like a heart. Oh boy. I HAD to break out my drill and proceeded to drill 3 holes in the bottom of the big sun catcher, and one hole in each of only 3 of the small ones. The ones hanging on the bottom of the strands only needed the top holes with the rivets. It really wasn’t that bad. No major cracking when I did the drilling. Next time I will not be worried to drill the holes later, but that won’t stop me from thinking of other creative ways of making cool shapes for holes.
NEXT STEP—I creeped into the shed —real sneaky-like—-and stole some of my hubby’s fishing line…..I couldn’t find any new packages, so I just took it right from the reel. HEHEHEEEEE, yes clever isn’t it? Fishing line is perfect for this project and if you have a hubby that likes to fish it’s probably something you have laying around the house—one less thing to buy, LOVE it!
tying fishing line in top and bottom holes
I tied all the pieces together exactly where I wanted them and VOILA!!! ***Tip- I dangled mine from the table so I could see exactly where I wanted to place them.
Hanging to see how they fall as I tied themoutsideThe whole shebangTrying to get pics in the sunlight…A semi-sunny pic….at least of the top half
So my picture-taking skills aren’t so great, but you get the picture (no pun intended). I love this new creation and I have so many ideas that come with it! I could make different shapes, I could put different non-clear items within them before baking, I could even make wind chimes. I can separate colors and make them one or a few certain colors each. I can make swirls or patterns with the beads before I bake them….It just goes to show how flexible some crafts are. No one says you HAVE to follow the directions to the “T.” I liked mine sun-catcher longer, I did that on purpose. You could make yours shorter, or put more small pieces on it. Have fun with it, make it your own. Send me pictures!!! I wanna see what you come up with!
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Clever Catastrophe 