Paint Chip Necklace

So I keep seeing the awesome necklaces and earrings made out of paint chips.  Well, we just painted my living room, and I have all these paint chips left over, so what do I do?  I make a necklace!  I din't actually use a tutorial, but I think it came out pretty well.

First, I chose my colors.  I used some blues, but you can do it with any colors.  I used 5 colors, 4 from one strip, and 1 from a darker strip as an accent color.

Next, I cut them into abstract shapes.  I did a lot of rain-drop-ish shapes, but you can do whatever inspires you, as long as you make sure they all have one end that is pointy (this will be the top end.)

Now arrange your pieces where you want them to be on the necklace.  I made two of these, one with all of them ending at the same spot, and one where they ende separately   I'm only going to teach you how to do the one where they all end at the same place, but they both look cool if u can figure it out yourself.  Here is how I arranged my pieces, but you can do whatever you like!

Next, glue your pieces together.  Regular old Elmer's Glue works fine, but use as little as possible.  After you've glued them, take a small rectangle of scrap paint chip, fold it in half, and glue it over the pointy end of your charm.  Then, use a pin, tack, or needle to poke a hole through the rectangle.  It should look like this:

Then insert a jump-ring through the hole you poked.  Close the jump-ring  and put it on a necklace chain.  And you're done!!!

My two versions of this necklace.

-Amelia

Candy Soda Can Earrings

On Etsy here.

So this isn't really a tutorial, but it's kind of cool, and hopefully will give you guys some ideas.  I love making jewelry, and although sometimes I plan out my projects, other times I just do it on the fly to match whatever it is I'm wearing before I rush out the door.  For example, my soda earrings.

I got these soda candies at a candy store in Fire Island a couple years ago, and I saved the adorable bottles they came in just in case.  Well, one morning I decided to make them into earrings.  It really only took a minute.  I just took 2 old earrings, removed the charms, and connected them to the "tabs" on the soda bottles.  I didn't even need jumprings.

Anyway, this is just a reminder that anything can be jewelry.  Dollhouse furniture especially works nicely.
You  can find the soda candy on Amazon here.

-Amelia

Easy Watercolor Portrait Tutorial

So this is my first tutorial.  Super excited!!!  I'm going to be showing you how to make watercolor portraits extremely easily.  This tutorial was inspired by Grow Creative's original tutorial, but I made a few adjustments.

First, choose the picture you want to create a watercolor of.  You may have to test a few photos, because some of them will look weird once you edit them, depending on the shadows.

Once you have your picture, upload it to Picmonkey.  Then, go to the Effects section, and scroll all the way to the bottom.  Then select Posterize, and scale it to 2 colors.  Leave everything else as is. 

                                                 

In the end, it should look something like this:

Then, print your edited photo.  Take a piece of water color or normal printer paper (I used printer paper.)  Lay your paper on top of your photo, and trace the photo in a dark pen(use a bright window, computer or phone screen.)  This may not work as well with watercolor paper.

Your paper should look something like this.  Don't be afraid to simplify your picture as you trace, because anything too small will be hard to watercolor.  Flip your paper over.  You should be able to see the pen lines lightly through the paper.  If you can't make them darker until you can.  Now, choose a color to paint in, and, using your smallest brush, go over the lines you made on the back in pen with paint of your selected color.  It should look something like this:

As you can see, I messed up a bit, and already colored in the small bits.  That's okay, you can awlays fudge the lines a bit, no one will know (except me, but I won't tell!)  Now, fill in all the parts you want to be colored.  On your photo version, the background will be colored in, but if you want to paint the face instead, that is fine.  I painted the background and the parts that correspond with it, and in the end this is what I got!

It's not evenly colored, but that's part of how watercolor looks.  I also got rid of some details that were to small.  Feel free to do the same.  And I don't know if you can tell, but the paper is a bit warped because it got all wet.  I ironed it after taking this picture, and it flattened right out!

All right, that's it!  You're done!  I'm doing a series of these of my entire family, pets included, and I'll update with photos when I finish!

-Amelia