Embossed Mini Canvas Magnets

We're going to take a break from the Presser Foot Series because I've not had a chance to do some of the projects I need to do to show you how some of the feet work, but we will pick it back up in the near future.

But I do have a project for you all, and I looooove this one! Okay, you guys - embossing powder. I had never used it, although it always looked interesting to me. But I'm not much of a scrapbooker, and I'm more of a use-what-you've-got occasional card maker, so I never really had a good reason to justify buying the supplies.

But THEN...

an old friend asked me to make some cute travel pillow cases for her girls, and when I went to her house to drop them off she was doing a major pare down on her scrapbooking supplies. And right there in the middle of it all was a heat gun and several jars of embossing powder! So I came home with a new toy, and ever since then it's been EMBOSS ALL THE THINGS!

Well, I had these little canvases left over from Taylor's birthday party. And Hobby Lobby had a bunch more in black on crazy low clearance, so I grabbed a few packs. Last night I sat down with my embossing powders, heat gun, embossing pen, stamps, and pigment ink pads and made these awesome little canvas magnets!

Oh my goodness, SO CUTE! I love them! Taylor did some too. The one that says love is hers.

These are super easy. Just load up the stamp of your choice with pigment ink. It does need to be pigment ink, because otherwise it will dry before you can get the embossing powder to stick. I didn't know that beforehand, but fortunately I had several pads on hand already. It doesn't matter what color ink they are, because your embossing powder will cover them, unless you use clear powder, in which case you will want to use ink in the color you want the end result to be. That sentence felt awkward, but you get what I mean.

Anyway, stamp your design onto the canvas. If your canvas is stretched over a frame (some of mine were and some were just wrapped around a little board), you may want to rub the canvas from behind to make sure the stamp design fully transfers.

Once your design is on the canvas, lay the canvas on a sheet of paper, then sprinkle on your embossing powder, making sure to cover the whole design. Then shake the excess off onto the paper, and use the paper to funnel the excess back into the jar to use next time. You can gently tap the canvas on the table if there are clumps, and you can brush off any extra that didn't fall off with a small paintbrush. It will also help the powder to only stick to the ink if you rub your canvas ahead of time with a dryer sheet.

Now comes the magic. Turn your heat gun on and aim it at your design, a few inches away. Pretty soon you'll see the embossing powder start to melt, and when you do, start moving the gun over the whole design. You just want to leave it on there long enough to melt the powder. So much fun!

Look how shiny it turned!

You can even go back and add a second layer of embossing just so long as you're careful not to burn the design.

Just stick a magnet or two on the back using E6000 or even your glue gun and you're done!

I love these so much!

Next time I have any sort of crafty get together we are definitely doing these. Happy embossing!

Crafty Birthday Party: The Activities

Fair warning, this post is going to be LONG. I planned a ton of activities for this party. And we got to almost all of them. We had planned to do Sharpie tie dyed shirts, but about half the girls forgot to bring a shirt to dye. We were also going to do nail polish pendants, but we really just ran out of time and energy.
We had the party at our church’s family life center, which was such a blessing and terrific for the space and amenities, but it’s not my favorite place to shoot pictures, so excuse the industrial background.

We started out just letting the girls mingle and have fun. They picked out their party favors and chowed down on the food. A few of them had to come late, so we waited on the crafts until they were all there. My mom did such a great job with the food and decorations.


I made this cupcake banner courtesy of inspiration found here.

Gratuitous shot of my awesome nephew LB.

              Taylor                                    Lily

Sawyer

After the food and presents the girls dove into Taylor’s monstrous collection of nail polish for mani-pedis. A couple of months ago I found a bunch of pedicure flip flops for like 40 cents a pair so I stocked up for the party.

After the nail polish, the girls did chocolate facials. These were SO simple, just coconut oil and cocoa powder. They all said it made their skin super soft, and of course it smelled amazing! I had enough left to package some up to send it home as parting gifts the next day.


While the chocolate facials were setting, I had them making lip balm.


Then I let them dive into my bag of leather remnants, and they cut out leather earrings.

Next they made Shrinky Dinks. This was maybe my favorite activity of the night just because of how entranced they all were by the process. Most of them had never seen them before, and they couldn’t get enough of them! Did you know that you can buy a 50 pack of the sheets for $22.00? Such a better deal than paying $6 for 10 sheets at the craft store!


Then they painted little canvases mounted on magnets.


Next up were bottle cap pins. Images purchased here, here, and here.

Doesn’t that little hipster squirrel just slay you? That whole sheet of images was awesomesauce!
Next (yes, there was more!) I let them dig through my bag of satin remnants to make singed satin flower hair clips.

The last activity of the night was the photo shoot. They were looking a little tired by this point.

All of these accessories were found at the Dollar Tree, and we had enough scarves and sunglasses to send one of each home with each girl.
So this is what I look like at 5:30 in the morning after hosting a bunch of newly minted teenage girls! Keepin’ it real, folks.

After that I put them all to bed and popped Frozen in the DVD player. The next morning I fed them fruit, pop tarts, granola bars, cereal, and milk. All in all I think it was a huge success!