Welcome Kim (again)! ;)

Good morning darlings!

I am so happy Kim is back for our second blog swap. For those of you that are new to Spunky Junky I occasionally will do a swap with another blog, Kim and I did a swap two weeks ago and it was so much fun that we decided to do another!

Check it out, give her some love, and stop by her little piece of blog heaven to say "hi!"

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Hi, again, Spunky Junkers!  It's Kimberly, from bugaboo, mini, mr & me once more.  If you remember from a few weeks ago, Halsey and I had the brilliant idea to swap blogs not once, but TWICE which would allow us to each pick a "secret" ingredient for our crafts!

Last time, my pick was fabric or paper napkins or handkerchiefs.  You can see my "Poppy Fields" wreath here.

This week, Halsey informed me our secret ingredient would be... drum roll.  FOOD COLORING!

What the!?!  I'll admit.  That's a pretty creative idea right off the bat.  But I was a little stumped.  A LITTLE mind you.  I mean, I'd already done the homemade play dough thing, and it seems as though the sidewalk chalk paint is all over the place this summer... my favorite thing to do with food coloring is stained glass.  I've done it in different variations for the holidays, to turn a frame into a tray, to make some stellar vases, and my favorite - this night light.

So what could I show you that would be just a little different?  I decided to try my hand at painting with food coloring.  I suppose we could call it Food Coloring Water Color.  Or something.

I based my idea on this painting from Anthropologie:

I liked the sketchiness of it and the casual feel.  It reminded me of something out of a kid's sketchbook.  But I really did NOT like the $299.95 price tag.  Seriously Anthro?  Seriously?

You'll need:

water and food coloring.  Obviously.

a black fabric paint pen

spray bottle

a number of canvases

a rag (or old baby blanket when you can't find a rag.)

First off, you'll want a plan.  Think up some awesome design and figure out how you want to arrange your canvases.  Sketching things out ahead of time on paper would be helpful at this point.  A little tip: tight, intricate designs are not going to work well with this method.  You want something more abstract.  Anything pastoral or representing nature would be good.  Or just shapes and such.  But nothing specific like argyle or quatrefoil, right?

I decided that my large canvas would go on the bottom and be grassy, dotted with flowers.  Kind of like a representation of my blog header, I guess.  Then I would put the smaller canvases above and paint those like clouds.  I explain all of this because my tutorial will obviously be specific to MY design - so just adjust colors and such for yours.

I started with the base color, which in my case was blue.  Fill your spray bottle about half way and add as many drops of food coloring as you want to get the saturation you're going for.  On the canvas, the food coloring will be MUCH more pastel than in the bottle.

Now, using the "mist" setting on your spray bottle, just spray your canvas all over.  Here's another tip:  You'll want to have a base color in your design - something in the background that's dominant.  Why?  Because it's important to really soak the canvas so it doesn't remain hard and stiff - resistant to the coloring.  If you don't use enough water, the canvas will look mottled and you will have spots of canvas showing through and areas that look stained or crusty.

Once you've saturated your canvas with your base color, take your rag and blot it off in some areas.

Then use the base color and spray it all over again.

And blot again.  Just keep repeating these two steps until you have the desired coloring/pattern you like.  See?  Doesn't that kind of look like clouds?

I used two base colors for the big canvas, because I didn't want my grass to be teal.  SO, just spray the top of the canvas with blue and the bottom all over with green.  SATURATE.

Adjust your bottle so the nozzle is more of a stream.  Use the green food coloring and water to spray jets of green stripes on the bottom 3/4 of the canvas.

Use the mister setting again to spray some blops of color around in the grass to add dimension.  I used red and yellow together for a light orange.  Then I blotted it off.

Next, drop red and yellow dots of food coloring directly from the little squeezy dropper onto the canvas randomly.

And blot pretty well.

Your canvases look a little like this when you're done.

Let them sit out in the sun to really set the food coloring and dry off all the water.

Now, if at this point you think the color is a little too faded, you can repeat the process.  I liked the faded look.

When you're done, you can go to town sketching floral shapes around the blobs of color with your black paint pen.  Add a few leaves.

And you can lightly outline the clouds.  Maybe add a few geese for fun.

Can I take a moment to tell you that I love those fabric paint pens??  This was my first time using one and I will totally use it again.  I love that it is just slightly shiny and raised off the surface of the canvas - it adds dimension and texture so it doesn't look so flat.

And here, in all it's bad lighting glory is my Food Coloring Water Color nature scene in all its bad lighting glory in my upstairs hallway.  

I think it dresses up the hallway but doesn't feel too formal, which I really like.  It reminds me of kid's art - which I have a fondness for.  I liked the idea so much, I've begun work on ANOTHER food coloring project that may or may not include some sewing as well... hmmm... TBA.

Thanks for letting me come by again, Halsey!  It was great sharing another project with you all and don't forget to drop by!

*Be sure to check just below for all the fun parties I link to!

Blog Swap with Kim.

Hey Friends! Hope ya'll are enjoying this beautiful Saturday. I have a very, very special treat for ya today. Kim from Bugaboo, Mini, Mr. & Me is here, this chick has got some serious skills. Very serious.

And because we are all 'bout the serious business Miss Kim will be back next week too.

Pretty cool, huh?

Well we are going to do two blog swaps that we focus on a "secret" ingredient. buwahahaha (insert: evil laugh).

Now I will pass the torch to the one. and. only.......Kim!

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Hi Spunky Junky Junkies!  I'm a huge junkie myself, and I blog over at bugaboo, mini, mr & me.  I've been a big fan of Halsey's ever since I made my first comment and discovered she was just as super nice in virtual correspondence as she is on her blog!  We've been talking about doing a swap for a while, and wanted to switch things up a little, so we decided to each pick a "Secret Crafting Ingredient" and swap not once, but TWICE!


My secret ingredient is up first.  What did I pick?  

source

Napkins!


More precisely, I chose napkins or handkerchiefs, paper or fabric.  See how much there was to play with??


I happened to have two packs of BRIGHT red and orange napkins that I got at Walmart a bajillion years ago, thinking "I could make something cool with these bright colored napkins" but then losing momentum mid-brainstorm.


I revived the napkins for this project and finally decided to make a wreath.  Here was my inspiration:

Source

Source

And after a lot of experimentation, some throwing my hands up in despair, a bit of fake cursing, and a dash of almost trashing the entire idea and throwing it all in the garbage, here is the end result of my napkin poppies:

You've gotta have:
napkins (preferably red and orange.  You know, poppy-colored)
scissors
hot glue gun
stick wreath
black beads or buttons


Now, I will start by showing you how to create the poppies.  I started by making several different shapes for the petals and gluing them together.  If you are the kind of person that likes precise measurements and so forth, you probably will not like me.  I don't measure.  But I will try to be as explanatory as possible, and really, it's pretty easy.  
We will begin with the four-petal poppy design.
Start by laying your napkin out.  For the purposes of this tutorial, anytime you see the napkin laid out like this, the corner of the napkin that becomes the middle when opened will always be at the bottom left - the folded part of the napkin along the bottom.

Cut a rounded petal-shape out of the "middle" corner of your napkin.  

I wanted to make my petals have the ridges of the poppy petals in the photos above, so I decided on an according fold.
Begin your according fold on the very side.

Then, making teeny tiny folds, go across the petal, making sure that the folds aren't straight up and down, but rather begin at the bottom of the petal and kind of fan out.  (Except at the very sides of the petal.  Those go straight up and down.)

When it's all folded up it'll look like a shriveled chili pepper.

Unfold it and use your scissors to cut along the curve at the top of the petal - just cut bits out at random intervals to make it look more natural.

When you unfold the petal, it'll look like this.

Now you have to glue it together to give it a more poppy shape.  Below is one possibility, but you could also just play with it until you get the shape you like.

Next, we'll do the three-petal poppy.  Start by laying your napkin out the same way, and then cut a shape like so:

When you unfold it, you'll get two pieces that look like this:

Fold them in half and then do the accordion fold.

When the accordion fold is finished it'll look something like this v-shape:

Unfold it and use your scissors to make the curve jaggedy and wavy again:

When unfolded, it will now look like this:

Now you need to glue it.  Here's how I did it, but again, you can experiment and glue it the way you like:

Now for the two-petal poppy.  Begin with your napkin laid out as above.  Cut two little bumps out of the side without the fold.

When opened, you get two pieces that look like this:

Fold them each in half and then accordion fold them up.

Use your scissors to make the curve all jaggedy and wavy.

And glue to make a poppy shape.  Maybe something like this:

Of course, you can make single petals as well to create a whole flower or add to the pieces you've already made.  Just cut out an oval shape, fold in an accordion fold, make the curved edge wavy, and separate all the pieces.

Then you can combine your petal shapes in different ways.  For instance, you can put a single petal with a double and a four-petal.

And it will look a little like this:

Now, you've got your stick wreath.  (In actuality, you can use any wreath form you want, but I liked the stick wreath because it went with the "natural" element).

And one at a time, glue your poppies to the wreath.

You can bunch them as close as you want or spread them out a bit.  Mine aren't bunched too tightly, but they are positioned so you can't see a ton of the sticks in the front.

Just keep going.  

And when I was done with the red ones, I positioned some orange ones here and there for a pop of color.

Take your black beads.  Mine were from this old bracelet I never wear.  I just cut it apart.

And each individual poppy gets at least one black bead,

but the bigger poppies get more.

The black beads are pretty essential to making the wreath look like it's made of paper flowers and not just crumpled up tissues.

See?

And there you have it!  It's finished!  Hang and impress your neighbors.

Just want to thank Halsey for swapping with me and thank you all for reading along!  Stay tuned next week for what I made with Halsey's secret ingredient!  Oh, and don't forget to come say hi!