My First Belly Cast October 23, 2010

 

Being a Cyclone (and celebrating our HUGE WIN over Texas today!) in Nebraska is tough, this big red N is EVERYWHERE!!  But I didn’t mind doing a Husker themed project for a good friend of mine because this particular project was something I had never done, decorating a belly cast!!

 

 

 

We started with a few different ideas that I sketched out.

 

 

And after trimming up the loose ends of the belly cast to give it a nice, clean shape I then sanded it and applied gesso just like you would on a newly stretched canvas. I used a 4B pencil to freehand sketch the chosen design on the gessoed surface.

A little blurry but there it is after applying many layers of acrylic paint.

And a side view shows the double red stripes, just like the Huskers have on their game day pants!

I used a black Sharpie marker to do the lettering (blurred here for privacy reasons) which worked out really well. Then coated the entire piece with a matte spray finish.   I glued the ribbon to the back with fabric glue and it feels like it will hold up really well.

This is going to look so cute in Dylan’s Husker themed nursery!

 

Smiles!

Megan

Trendy Elephants For Baby June 2, 2010

I just knew my friend Cindi would come up with something so adorable for her new baby’s nursery, she has an amazing eye for design and color, must come from her mad graphic design skills at a local ad agency.  When little Aaron came into her and her husband Warren’s life it was a wonderful miracle and I knew they would have so many memories they just had to have somewhere to keep them!

Seriously SO CUTE!!  Note the elephant on the changing table, elephant mobile, elephant quilt and what are those circles on the walls?  I HAVE to find out.

Her creative pals at the ad agency threw a very cute shower complete with the elephant theme!

I fell in love with the elephants and wanted to incorporate them into the memory box so I used white Prisma Color to draw them all over the box.

And continued with the green, brown and white color theme.  What a beautiful photo Cindi took of little Aaron all wrapped up.  And I was able to use a lot of fun buttons found in various antique/junk stores.

Here are a few shots of the inside cover and inside of the box.  You will probably notice a few themes – rick rack, fuzzy white poofy ball things and the fun little letters.

With inspiration from my friends Karla and Lynn, I’m starting to have a little fun with the wrapping by incorporating elements from the memory box into the entire gift package. Karla actually made the striped clip I used to clip the card to the bag.

She took a mini paper clip and glued an old poker chip to it then covered the poker chip with fun paper!  How creative!

I hope to visit little Aaron again soon and spend some time with the new Mom and Dad!  And I hope that between all the golfing, concert going, gardening and traveling I’ve been doing I can spend some more time blogging. Speaking of traveling, have you ever heard of a rose rock?  It is the state rock of Oklahoma where I just spent a great weekend with Brian and his family.

I’m so grateful for this precious and intricate little souvenir from my trip to Oklahoma.  Thanks Di-Ann!

Smiles,

Megan

Red, Yello and Green, it’s a Fire Truck Theme! April 25, 2010

Just look at this sweet little baby, Colin, surrounded by his Dad’s firefighter uniform. Precious, isn’t it? This photo makes me smile every time I look at it and I got to see the little guy on Friday when he visited his mom and my coworker, Courtney, at work (be sure to check out Courtney’s amazing design work here).  He was all smiles just like his Mom but with a little bit of shyness. Totally adorable!

Colin’s Dad is a firefighter, his nursery is decorated in firefighter theme so Courtney asked me to design a box with that in mind.  You would think it would be easy to find firefighter themed trinkets and papers and fabrics but it’s not!  So this one was definitely a challenge but once I gathered all elements I was so excited to see the smile on Courtney’s face when it was complete!

Of course I used a red and yellow theme with some blue and green accents.  The green and white checked paper is what Courtney used for either his announcements or a shower invite, I can’t remember!

I found the cute little 3D stickers at Hobby Lobby and the blue rick rack could probably be considered vintage.  Did I mention, I love using rick rack?  I bet that photo of Colin will look perfect in the space I created with photo corners for a 4″x6″ photo.

The inside cover is a very clean design but so bright and colorful. Besides rick rack I also love using those little plastic letters.  Unfortunately I didn’t get a quality photo of the entire inside of the box but I covered the inside of the tray with green paper to repeat it from the cover.

When I saw these little stick on letters they completely reminded me of a little boy and make a great addition to Colin’s memory box.

Giving the final product to my customers is probably the best part about creating memory boxes.  I think Courtney was really happy with it and excited to fill it with many happy memories!  Many thanks to Courtney for her creative ideas and encouragement, I love “talking shop” with you friend!

What are some other baby boy themes I could make into a memory box?

Smiles!

Megan