Bleach Pen Art tutorial.

I visit Pinterest on a daily basis and always find such great ideas! One such idea came from The Next Bird.

She got a spot of bleach on a pair of pants and instead of throwing them out she grabbed a bleach pen and created a design around the spot! Genius! I went to my local Goodwill second hand store and got this lovely brown GAP t-shirt for $3.00. I bought a bleach pen from Wal-Mart.

It's hard to tell but I used chalk to sketch my pattern before I went nuts with the bleach pen. you can sort of see the faint chalk lines on the above picture... I also stuck a piece of cardboard inside the shirt and stretched it as snug as I could.

This is what the shirt looks like with the bleach on it - working its magic. I left in on for about 30 minutes. My drawing did not turn out completely symetrical. The beach pen flowed faster than I thought and so my first few lines were a little crazy but with a few deep meditative calming breaths I was able to still create a whimsical fun pattern.

After 30 minutes it still looks about the same, but you can tell that its working. I rinsed it and washed it and I'm wearing it right now... as I type this... and I'm not posting a photo because when I ate dinner I spilt salsa on the front of it... true story!  Once the bleach is washed off the lines are a soft brownish pink color, not a white color like they are in the photos. If you happen to be cruising your local thrift store and see a forlorn plain old t-shirt without a closet to call its own... give it a forever home and a new look with a bleach pen!

Baseball Birthday Cake

My son turned 8-years-old last week! Every year he picks a theme and I always make a cake for him.  This year the theme was baseball and more specifically the Texas Rangers.  I did not take pictures of the process on this project (I really don't want anyone to see what a messy state my kitchen is in when I'm in the midst of the creative process!).



The cake was made from two box mixes cooked in two 11x9 cake pans. I used this blog's suggestion for making box mix cakes taste like they are scratch made and ended up with a beautifully rich moist cake!

Note that the score is 8 to 0 in the 8th inning, since my son is 8-years old!                                           I followed Clockwork Lemon's directions for making Marshmallow Fondant. In years past I have purchased store bought fondant and it has done its job - looking smooth and pretty, but this stuff, did all of that and TASTED GOOD too! Very few guests peeled the fondant off, most just ate it!

I also purchased the baseball players that are on the cake from amazon.com. They are a product called Kaskey Kids Baseball Guys. This was also a present for my son, which I let him have as soon as I was done using them for the cake! I honestly would have put fewer players on the cake as they were a little too big to be to scale and the cake ended up a bit crowded, but we couldn't have a game without a full roster on the field!!! Could we?!?! I vetoed my son's idea to have two additional red-team players as base runners!

The base paths are crushed graham crackers and the outfield wall is made of graham crackers sprayed with edible food color spray. I used royal icing for the bases, foul lines and distance markers on the outfield wall (the numbers are the actual distances of the Texas Rangers Ballpark in Arlington). Finally the foul poles are wooden shish-ke-bab skewers.

Below are pictures of cakes from previous years - Just as a Bonus!



2nd Birthday - Nemo



3rd Birthday Scooby Doo



4th Birthday-Daffy Duck





5th Birthday - Scooby Doo (Take 2)





6th Birthday - Batman




7th Birthday - Spongebob Squarepants!





Travel Doll House

I have to get something off my chest! I did not come up with this idea! I'm not even really going to give any kind of tutorial here... But I will link you to the genius whom I chose to imitate for this masterpiece.

Southern Disposition

She had this brilliant idea to use 3 Ring Binders to make a doll house that can be stored on a shelf when not in use.  I used her tutorial for the kitchen chairs and loosely adapted her bed and living room furniture tutorials as well.

All four rooms of the Travel Dollhouse I made!

I know, friends and family, you are wondering, "Why in heaven's name would Joy endeavor to make a travel dollhouse!?!? Surely not for her 8 year old BOY!!!"

My answer is, "Of course not!" It's for a dear family friend's little 7-year-old Barbie lovin' daughter!"

So here is a room by room breakdown of what I did:



The Living Room



In each room I created a "curtain" to hang on the three ring binder rings to conceal them. I also only made focal furniture, anything else I created by putting pictures on the walls of the room. Like end table, lamps and the fireplace. I found a template for a picture frame and used those along with a family photo that I stole uh, borrowed, off of my friend's facebook. The family photos on the wall made her daughter squeal with glee (literally! She squealed!!) The only place I deviated from the tutorial is that I made an ottoman instead of a coffee table and I hand stiched the furniture instead of using fabric glue or a hot glue gun (mainly because I couldn't find my hot glue gun!)



The Bedroom



The bed was just a piece of foam matress pad that I cut into a rectangle I sewed a cover for the foam and a comforter. The "two" pillows are really just one, that I sewed a line down the middle of, to make it look like two. The bed sits on a black cardboard box. Google Images is the source for the furniture on the walls.

Once again I used a family photo of the little girl and Tinkerbell from a recent Disney trip.



The Kitchen



 Thanks to Ikea's website and Sears.com this doll has some stellar appliances in the kitchen! The kitchen table is a thread spool and a CD (and a magical little thing called krazy glue!)



The Bathroom



The bathroom provides everything Barbie needs to look her best! Sink, Bathtub and mirror... No toilet... she'll have to take care of that need somewhere else! The sink is a little prep-bowl from Tuesday Morning and an awesome gravy boat (once again from Tuesday Morning - on clearance) makes a prett good bathtub.

Throughout the house there are several impressionistic paintings on the walls. I got those from Dollhouse Decorating who got them from www.benjaminartdesign.com

So, there you have it! This was a really fun project, however it was time consuming... and truthfully... I'm thankful I have a boy!