Crafties, Goodies, Beeies

My daughter had a great idea before Christmas, she saw a picture of a mug with chalk board paint on it, and decided to make these for Christmas presents.  I sent her to Michael's, Home Depot, and TJ Maxx for mugs and supplies.  We had plenty of time, like a week before Christmas to get these done, the weather was gorgeous se we got to work outside.

Apparently chalk board paint does not stick to ceramic mugs.  It just peels right off, like an orange peel.  Because my daughter is MY daughter, she did not read any directions, and neither did I, since I am, well me; we just started painting the ceramic mugs.  All of them.  Luckily, since the paint just peeled off, I did peel it off to return the ceramic mugs.    

After a return trip to TJ Maxx and some Googleing to you know, read some directions, we bought glass mugs, bowls and glasses to paint.  We used painter tape to square off areas for painting.

It took about 4 coats of paint, and after the first coat I could have stopped with the painters tape, but I didn't realize that until I was through about 50% of the painting.  I just kept taking it off, in one set of directions it told us to take the tape off right away so that the edges wouldn't pull off.  Then re-taping very accurately with curse words around the same area.  After the first coat I discovered I could just come close enough with the sponge brush and didn't need the tape.

We added some decorative touches with paint I had on hand and goodies and chalk to the gifts.  They were a hit.  They were all given away, and after all my help, I didn't get one!  I'm owed for next year, we have plenty of paint left.

I was so shocked/happy/surprised to get this in the mail from one of my bee mates!  Elisa in Sew Bee It flickr group sent it with her January fabrics!  I love this bag!  She made it from a bag that held rabbit pellets, aren't the rabbits just darling!  I will use it when shopping for all my pets!  Thank you Elisa!  I adore it.

I wanted to make much more of these swap string blocks.  Especially after I laid them all out together.  They are gorgeous!  I didn't run out of scraps to use, just time.   I only made 20 for the swap, I will be making more.  Here's the swap group if you want to join, round 2 is going to start.  

This is what I used the phone book pages for, the foundations for the string blocks.  Good use of phone book pages, I can't imagine having to use these to look up numbers anymore.  Kids, we actually used these books at one time, and Rain Man actually memorized his!  

Just one more, my block for January Block Party Bee, we are using blocks from the book Block Party.  The String X block.