Since Cinco de Mayo is coming up, just wanted to remind you guys about the fabulous Piñata tutorial from last year, by Joanne of Ready Set Craft!! It’s it just gorgeous?
Dabbled readers are so creative! Here are some of the cool things that I’ve seen recently in the Dabbled flickr group. (If you’re on Flickr, come join us!) Several of these have tutorials, so go read the links below. And if you’re featured here, don’t forget to grab your I Was Featured Button!
(More links below the photo mosaic) 
5. Feed the Dog- Cute robots!
6. Easter Round Ripple – Love the colors!
7. Attic24′s jar cover – Great re-use idea.
8. Cute owl from an old tank top and here is the Tutorial on D is for Delicate
9. Mini-Angler Felted Plush 1, – TOTALLY AWESOME! “He’s 100% dyed, needle-felted wool, with acrylic airbrushed shadows. He also has a working LED light in his “fishing-lure” with a battery pack hidden inside his mouth, and painted polymer clay teeth!” from Felted Chicken (Airbrushing Felt Tutorial is here)
10. Stash Buster Farmer Tote Love the size of this thing, the tutorial is here on Some Art Talk. (Colleen has been featured on Dabbled: Cute Re-made Girls Jeans Tutorial)
11. Sheep Tote Bag cute! Tutorial is here.
12. Rose Umbrella Fancy up an umbrella by adding roses! Tutorial is here
Thanks to all of you for sharing!
One of the fun activities that we’ve been doing, to try to get our little video game fiend (yah, he’s a born geek) out of the house is taking a ‘photo safari’–sometimes we call it a ‘photography field trip’… The 4 year old gets possession of mommy’s point and shoot camera, and we go for a walk–sometimes through the woods, sometimes through the neighborhood. I’m actually pretty amazed at some of his shots (many are pure luck, like achieving the rule of thirds because he wiggled his hands accidentally!) but I do find it fun to look at the world through a child’s eye view. Plus I notice a bunch of little things that I never would just out walking by myself. So, go take a photo safari of your own this weekend.. what are you waiting for?
Here are the results of The Boy’s safari, and below the pic are some tips for taking one with your kids!
Click here to see the full picture set on flickr!
And here’s a previous one from February..
Tips:
So, get going on safari… you don’t even have to be a kid to do it, ya know?
I’ve been working on a way to sell some of my artwork, in a way that is both affordable, and more ‘useful’ than just a picture you hang on your wall. So this is a couple of prototypes of my latest idea! (Excuse the pics, these aren’t the highest quality!)
I’ve been playing around with glass tile necklaces, with either prints from my artwork, or original drawings, as fun and wearable art.
Here are the 2 prototypes–based on the watercolor series (“Robot World“) which is currently in the Museum of Science in Boston. One is the robot from “A Clockwork Red” and the other is one of the balloons in the background of “Blue”. I’m really loving the balloon one, I’ve worn it several times!
And yes, I’m about 6 months behind on my shop (I really have to stop starting other projects!), so if you’d be interested in one, drop me an email! I’ll do a “really, the shop will be up soon” special for you guys for $18, including US shipping. [dot-at-dabbled-dot-org] . So if you’ve always wanted to wear some Dot Art around your neck, here’s your chance! It doesn’t have to be one of these 2, but it does need to be something i have a high quality print of lying around the house to slice up for you. And yeah, if you want an original it will be a little more.
These are done with prints (obviously!) but my idea is to also showcase original drawings/watercolors, for something more personalized, or more special.
I’ll do a post on how I made the necklaces next week, but if you’re in a hurry to try it yourself, I’ll point you to this good tutorial that I found at Trey & Lucy, where she does some really cute ones using scrapbook paper. Oh, and I totally screwed up at first — can you figure out what’s wrong with the balloon one shown in the picture?
Check out this nifty Dr. Who cake by Dabbled friend The Domestic Scientist… A Tardis and flying Daleks? How geeky cool! (We interviewed Renee here)
For my birthday I decided to be crazy-go-nuts on my own birthday cake and really push my boundaries as a novice baker. I figured since the only one to disappoint is myself, no harm in trying something that can fail horribly, right? And ya know what, I didn’t do too bad.
I didn’t use any fondant, since I hate the stuff. It’s almond cake and rice krispie treats with modeling chocolate for the cake and gumpaste for the Daleks. Did you know modeling chocolate is remarkably easy to make? I did learn that you can’t paint it like fondant. It acts like a waxed car. But it tastes DELICIOUS. I mean, who wouldn’t love cake covered in chocolate?? So yup, besides the wooden dowels, it was 100% edible! I’m quite proud of that.
Dabbled friends Chica & Jo have a very cool detailed tutorial today about how to make ‘gems’ out of candy. These look just lovely! I can’t wait to try this out.
Jo and I have been doing lots of projects over the last month or so for Little Jo’s birthday party. I’m not gonna let you in on what the theme was just yet, but I want to show you one of the projects I did for part of the party decor. We found ourselves needing some round gems in just the right color of teal. If they could be edible, all the better. So I did some shopping and some research and came up with everything I needed to make hard candy jewels. And I gotta tell you, this turned out to be one of the most fun projects I’ve done in ages!
By the way, there was a lot of trial and error as I figured out just the right techniques for making hard candy, and I’ll tell you about that at the end of this post. But for now, here is the right way to do it!
Although the #craftsocial people know about this, I just realized I hadn’t mentioned a new project I’ve been working on with some other cool craft bloggers. (It’s one of the myriad of reasons posting has been light on Dabbled the last few weeks — I just keep filling my plate full and going back for seconds!)
So what is it?
We Dare You…
We dare you to reach outside of your craft comfort zone and create pieces you’ve never dreamed of. We dare you to write about the creative issues most important to you. Most of all, we dare you to join a community of other creative people and meet people from all flavors of crafting and creativity.
We dare you to grow as an artist!
Craftdare.com is launching in May with challenges to make, do and talk about ideas that span the boundaries of individual crafts and genres.
Go over to craftdare.com to sign up to be notified of updates. And you can follow @craftdare on twitter.
I’m really excited about it! The team is great… and it should be a great site! Go check it out :)
I’ve been really enjoying Made by Nichole (in fact, I linked to her today at Foodwhirl, too.. go see!)– and I think I already linked to this on Twitter or Facebook, but I wanted to share it here…
You’d never believe these gorgeous spring flowers were made from paper towels. Particularly paper towels that were used to clean up from another craft project! Love this idea of truly turning trash into treasure!
(See the project that spawned the paper towels, a cool homemade paper, here.)
Speaking of cool recycling ideas… – check out the tutorial from last year by So She Sews on how to make your own fabric out of fused plastic bags! Tutorial here.
Coffee Sleeve make from recycled plastic bags
Earth Day is coming up… What’s your favorite ‘Green’ craft project or idea? (Drop me an email with your faves, or leave a comment… I’ll be highlighting some on Dabbled this next week.)
Here are some to get your inspiration going!*
1. piglinks, 2. Ad Bracelet, 3. Recycled Tunic, 4. RCA Record Comb, 5. a batch of studs – copyright amalia versaci 2009, 6. Madonna Wine tote, 7. Olive and Teal Sundress, 8. recycled plastic earrings, 9. around the world in 80 stamps upcycled vintage bag
*I’m recycling these pics from 2009! See how I can blog Green!? And here are some additional green crafting ideas recycled from the past!
Thanks to all of your great feedback, here’s the mostly finalized version of the logo I shared a few weeks ago. Whatcha think?
