Gift for Lennon

Hi!  Hope you're having a great day.

Today I'm showing you a gift I made for a little guy.

He turned 5 and absolutely loves dinosaurs.

This wasn't an easy and smooth process and I'll try to tell 

about my mistakes, so you don't also make them.

I started with a blank canvas, acrylic paints and Chap Stick.

Yes, I know that sounds strange, but I couldn't find my Microglaze and

thought I'd give the Chap Stick a try.

And I have to say it did work to a degree, but not as easily as

the Microglaze would have.

Here is a link to what I wanted to do with it.

I ended up not using it for the gift piece, but 

not because it wasn't working at all, I just didn't

have the time to play with it.

And of course guess what I found a couple days later?!?!

I know this might be hard to see, but it sure is hard to

photograph something that is clear.

I cut out a dinosaur design with Lennon's name on it

using my Silhouette Cameo and The Dinosaur Border Set

from the Silhouette Design Store.

I used a piece of acetate to make the stencil and mask.

I ran the stencil and mask through my large Xyron machine

and stuck the mask down onto the canvas.

I started painting with the lightest color that I had, which

was a pink.  I was going for a sunset/universe look.

I continued to add colors, one by one, lightest to darkest.

I also added the red to his name.

Then came the darker colors, blues and purples.

And BOOM that's when things went awry. 

It all looked fine, until I took the mask off and the paint

had bled under the mask and made a total mess.

So I began again.

I used a little different strategy for the second attempt.

I used a bit less paint, less water on my brush when cleaning

it between colors and was more careful about how I applied the 

paint, trying to brush out from the mask at all times.

This time the dinosaurs came out much better, but there was

still some bleeding, but no where near as bad this time

Then I laid the stencil part of the acetate over the painted

canvas to see exactly where the dinosaurs were and painted his name in

more carefully.

Once that was done, I took the stencil off and began 

painting all the white parts with black paint.

After a couple coats of black and some more red....

it was almost finished.

For a finishing touch, I used some white paint,

added a little water and used my paint brush to flick

spatters onto the sky.  

I did lay the mask over the dinosaurs before

flicking the white paint.

I also gave the dinosaurs red eyes and I was done.

Then I was on to the card.

I decided to make a card to match the gift.

I cut the dinosaurs and the 

Happy Birthday! 

from black card stock.

I used a star stamp and stamped the card with 

VersaMark Ink and heat embossed them with silver

embossing powder.

Here is a picture of the gift and card together.

The day of his party, I think Lennon was so overwhelmed

that he didn't really know all the gifts he got,

but his parents did and they both loved this gift.

I think it turned out pretty cool too.

Thanks for popping in to see what I've been creating.

Glad to have you here, come again soon.

Until next time,

have fun crafting!

Note the links are only to give a reference so you can

see what the products are.
I didn't necessarily purchase from these sites,

except where specified,

and you may find better prices elsewhere,

I am in no way promoting any particular site.