Unfinished Umbrage

Welcome to Day Twenty-one of the A to Z Blogging Challenge! This is the day for the letter U, and I'm talking about Unfinished Umbrage, or the annoyance with unfinished projects!

Every crafter has a pile of unfinished projects, and sometimes it's hard to not get overwhelmed with them! With our different moves, certain projects got packed away in boxes, almost forgotten. Every now and then, going through a box, I'll find a project and wish I had finished it. Sometimes I do finish it! But usually... not. 

I made a new years resolution in 2011 or 2012 to finish a project as fully as I can before getting really involved in another, but it's really difficult, especially when real life gets in the way, or a deadline pops up!

Here are a few of my unfinished projects...

 Water under the bridge... a bridge I'm making! It's actually more finished than this but I don't have more recent photo at hand. But there's still work to be done - once I'm done shaping the blocks to the right slope, it all has to get painted a grayish color.

 These dice bags ended up a bit too small in the neck to finish, so I made a new pattern and started work on black and white satin bags, they still aren't finished. I did successfully make dice bags with my new patterns with a third set of fabrics, but the black and white sets still aren't finished! Someday...

 This pillow case is almost finished, I never hemmed the open end, but my daughter loved it so much I haven't really gotten it away from her TO finish!

And one of my more notorious unfinished projects... sword plaques! The one with the shiny black sword and star came finished, which is what inspired me to make holders for our other replica weapons. The plain pine plaque is stained now, and I have plaques for the short sword and dagger also, with sketches and plans for what to do with them, and the idea of a shelf to hang the katana from. But, alas, unfinished. The swords are all in a well-padded box in a storage closet and the plaques and wood stain (what didn't get mistakenly tossed in the move) are in a storage bin in another closet. Just waiting, waiting to be finished. More wall space would help too, I'm already running out of it at our condo right now! When we buy a house, maybe I'll have them done for the new house =)

These are just the tip of the iceberg, but I have gotten better about finishing NEW projects since my resolution. It helps if the item is for a friend, or one of my daughter's dresses. Then I HAVE to get it done!

Do you have a problem with unfinished projects? Are there any projects you really want to finish sitting forgotten in a box, on a shelf, in a closet? Maybe you should try to find some time to finish them, and tell me about it in the comments! I think the bridge should be the first one I finish, then maybe I can take photos and share some of my husband's war gaming terrain.

Thanks for joining me again on this blogging journey! Come back tomorrow for something that starts with V! Only five days left!

Pretty Paintings

Oh no, I'm late! Thursday was very busy and I didn't get my blog post up! So two for today. First, for April 18th, the letter P for Pretty Paintings.

 You already know from my Alicorn Art post that I paint a little for my daughter's room, and other rooms in our house. Mostly small stuff - the canvas above is about five by seven inches. It's not on my daughter's wall yet, but it's the companion to her Alicorn shield.

This is where the whole gray and purple theme came from for her room, I started out with the coat rack and shelf, then added little by little.

This is how it looks on her wall now, more or less altogether - the flower coat rack is on her closet door for sweaters. And now with the new headband rack I made up, it's a little different again.

But I don't paint just for her room. Below are some other things I've painted.

 This is a tray I'm still in the middle of painting, someday I'll finish! I made the stencil back in high school for a series of trays I painted as gifts, it's cut from a bacon tray (very well washed).

 These were grandmother gifts, at different times considering one is a newborn photo and the other is a six month old photo. Wonder if they've updated the photos, almost four years later!

 Some woodstaining above, with some gold and other detailing - lots of fun! These are all finished, the chest was a gift.

This is MY headband rack in my room, I don't have as many as my daughter. I painted it to match my quilt.

Except the canvas and the bear, these were all unfinished wood items from the craft store, painted with mostly acrylic paints, brushes and sponges and stenciling. Lots of fun and adds a little personal touch to your home or a gift!

I hope you enjoyed this feature in the A to Z Blogging Challenge even though it was late! In other posts I might go into more detail on some of these projects. Join me again soon for the letter Q!

Neat Nails

 Thank you for joining me yet again for the A to Z Blogging Challenge! Today's post is for the letter N, for Neat Nails!

 There is a lot of paint in my home. A LOT. Acrylic paint, glitter paint, miniature paint, oh and paint for nails - nail polish! You might say I collect it. Some of these paints I've had longer than I've known my husband, and most of them still work well.

 I love painting my nails, it's a special bit of me time that I can then show off for a few days (no matter what I try, nail polish usually chips in 2-3 days!) Glitter is a lot of fun, above are some of my newer glitters - purple and green!

 Nail art is a lot of fun! These were both summer nail designs. The yellow suns I made with a small paint brush in yellow nail polish, the black happy faces I used a nail art pen for.

 These flowers were inspired by A Mom In Red High Heels' nail art post, I couldn't help myself!

 I wasn't super happy with my first flowers, so I decided to try it again, to match one of my favorite shirts.

  Can you tell I like green? This was a work of many layers - green, glow in the dark green, black crackle, then silver glitter on top. They glowed between the cracks, it was pretty neat! An idea for Halloween. But I couldn't get a good photo of them glowing.

  Something new came out in the last two years - magnetic nail polish! It's very time consuming, because you can only paint one nail at a time. Paint, place magnet over, wait for design to appear, check, repeat 9 times! But it looks really neat, and is fun to mix colors side by side in.

You can get different magnets too, currently I think I have seven or more colors, and five different magnet designs.

 The idea below I got from an exclusively nail art blog, the idea is Lisa Frank, with a rainbow of colors under black crackle. I wasn't very happy with how mine looked, it was more 80s fashion than I'm a fan of. Lighter colors might have worked better, or different color combinations (most of the nails had three colors)

 I had more fun with glitter above, for the Fourth of July week.

You might notice some of these pictures are better than others - I used to photograph a nail design right away, now I wait till the next day after I've cleaned off the smudges around my fingers. But I can't go back and fix the old photos without re-creating those designs, and there's always something new to try! =)

Below is some more fun nail art! I have a black, a white, and a pink nail art pen, but the black is bleeding a lot and the white is almost dry... I wonder why!

Stars and stripes - always a classic!

 I'd like to try stenciling or stamping, but haven't gotten into it yet. I did try some uv-free gel nail polish and that did NOT end well. So back to traditional polish for now - not like I have a lack of options! I wonder how I'll paint my nails next? Maybe with letters for the A to Z Challenge!

My daughter already loves nail polish too - and she wants the same flowers I put on mine, and always glitter on top!

 Do you have a favorite nail polish or design, or technique? Share in the comments!

I hope you enjoyed another insight into my fun creations and collections! Join me again tomorrow for something that starts with O!

Magnificent Miniatures - A to Z Blogging Challenge Week Three!

 It's time for week three of the A to Z Blogging Challenge! Today's post is for the letter M, and after this we're halfway through the alphabet, and the month! I'm featuring Magnificent Miniatures today, little figurines we assemble and paint for gaming!

I really love miniatures, they've become almost my new Barbies since I started gaming. They come in all different styles, and you can make modifications to them, and paint them however you want! Usually, my miniatures are for individual characters in our roleplaying games. Sometimes, though, they're just for fun! (They can also make great dice bag props!) I love collecting miniatures and painting them, my husband loves them too, as you can see from the following photos!

 

These five (and wolf) are for our current roleplaying game, the two on black bases aren't mine, they belong to two of our players, but the rest I already had before the game. And look one is already painted! Our games are often like this, mostly unpainted, because it takes me a while to actually paint miniatures, with all the other stuff going on. The painted armored guy in the middle has brass balls too, I added those since we started playing, since he got them during a game. Beads and miniatures, yay!

These are some of my favorite female miniatures, not all characters, but most of them were at one point. You can see the strawberry blonde wizardess on the bottom is not fully painted, I have a lot like that!

Star Wars has a roleplaying game too! The miniature on the far left was my pilot, nothing fancy done to her (other than painting striped pants!), and the droid on the far right is a licensed pre-painted miniature. But the two in the middle with lightsabers we modified, the lightsabers are from Clone Wars toys, removed and cut to size, then glued to the hilt of the weapons that were on the miniatures originally. I painted all of the humans here too!

My husband's miniatures, on the other hand, are for table top war games, specifically Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000.

This scary spider is part of the goblin army, he won this in a raffle at a special tournament, assembled and painted by one of the best at the store.

This is a manticore, for his beastmen army, and I'm in the process of painting him. Rawr, I'm a monster!

 Here's another of his beasties I've been painting, he's pretty much finished.

These guys are also for his beastmen army, two special customizations I helped him make - the green parts are called 'green stuff', it's a molding compound you make to put different things together where glue won't work, or add to a miniature - or make it from scratch if you're ambitious! The scary guy on the left is a Ghorgon, I added extra horns to him, changed out the weapons on his right arms - oh and added in an extra right arm! The one-eyed monster on the right is a Cyghor, like a cyclops but more monstrous. I made his eye, gave him extra horns, and molded that rock he's holding. My husband painted these guys.

This was our painting station at our last home, until I needed it more for my sewing machine - now we use a paint tray on tray tables - traylicious! Most of those paints you see are Citadel Paints, from Games Workshop. The paint is perfect for miniatures.

Here are some favorites - the two big miniatures are creations of my husband's, painted by a master from Milwaukee. The girl on the hill is one of mine, painted by me.

Here on the top you can see another miniature with customization: special sword, fan I made with brass! I don't know where she is in the cases or I'd take a better picture, maybe in another post. On the bottom, there are two girls I painted, and one silly miniature we got from a friend of ours.

These girls are some of my favorites. All painted by me! And all former characters, the angel was a winged elf, the catgirl was a half cheetah, the girl with the red cloak was a half dragon - red of course!

And here, we present my husband's grand army collection! There are five armies here, I think. Chaos warriors, chaos daemons, beastmen, dark eldar, space wolves, high elves, and some deathwatch. Okay, seven armies! As you can see, he has a lot of painting to do! This was when he was taking inventory last fall. He hasn't gotten too many new models since. No, we don't have a problem, we have a hobby =)

Thank you for joining me again for the A to Z Blogging Challenge, come back tomorrow for something that starts with N!

Kids' Crafts

 Welcome again to the A to Z Blogging Challenge! Today's letter is K and I'm focusing on Kids' Crafts for the day.

 

 Doing crafts with kids can be fun! But you don't always have the best outcome...

The point is, though, that they had fun!

We used to go to a story time weekly in Michigan that did a craft after the story, and ended up with a fridge full of kid crafts!

Here's the pink pumpkin in detail, I came up with that for her after we read Pinkalicious' pink pumpkin book.

One of my favorite crafts that we made recently was a little pennant flag.

 It's really simple! Just fold a piece of construction paper in half and cut a triangle out.

Take a stick and stick that in the fold, slather glue on one side to glue the sides together, then decorate with crayon, markers, or even better, sticky back fun foam! I have some left over from other crafts, so I've been having some fun with it. 

Can you tell? (I had to keep looking at reference pictures for the mice)

One more fun craft is this pot o' gold, that we made for St. Patrick's Day

I feel bad, my daughter didn't get to make any Easter crafts, have to make that up to her with some fun spring and summer crafts! Her birthday is coming up, I'm pinning some fun ideas on Pinterest for her party! Follow me on Pinterest for more fun ideas!

Thanks for joining me again for the A to Z Blogging Challenge! Join me again tomorrow for something that starts with L!