What A Week, I'm Exhuasted

What a week it was this last week....
Back to school has been full on, Rhyley's teacher got them right in the swing of things &
sent homework home the first day back, much to my horror!
We usually have a week before the dreaded homework starts but not this year!, oh well
you can't win them all.

So Thursday was a public holiday. We spent a lovely relaxing day at home together since it was Australia Day, in all honestly it was too hot to go out & join the festivities of the day.
On Friday at school they had a fun filled day celebrating Australia Day with Lamington
making, thong throwing & watching the movie Red Dog, Rhyley had a great day & really enjoyed the day with his school friends.

This weekend we decided to get Rhyley a new bed; a double bed - so it can used as a guest bed when we have family visit, after Jason put it together we wrapped the lights we used on the Christmas tree around the bedhead & across the window.
Rhyley loves it! - which what really matters I plan on getting a couple of thin bookcases to put on either side of the bed for storage of books, clock, toys & other knick knacks.

This weekend I also went shopping for a Closet Cupid gift for one of the ladies on a parenting site I'm apart of.
What is a Closet Cupid?
Well it's the same as a Secret Santa but we are sending each other a little Valentine's Day gift.
If you don't know how a Secret Santa works it's where you are given a name & you go out & buy a little gift for that person & give it to them.
The thing is we are all over the world so we send our gifts then post a photo of our gift.
So we all get to see what the others have received.
It's alot of fun & really exciting to get a gift & not know exactly who it's from until you open it.

So I decided to make a little handmade goodie for my Closet Cupid gift & when I saw the awesome Commercial Vectors Miss Mint had just released over at Peppermint Creative I knew exactly what I was going to do.

So here's what you'll need for this craft.

Materials:

Firstly I purchased Treats & Friends Word Art by Tay Silver for only $0.99!
or grab the Valentine XO BlockART  freebie also by Tay Silver (hurry it won't be free for long!)
Photoshop Elements or similar
Printer
A Ceramic Mug
Ceramic Paints I used Mont Marte brand
Paintbrush
Scissors
Sticky Tape
Tape Measure/Ruler
Pencil

Method:

1. Measure your mug so you can resize the vectors so they will fit nicely on the mug.
2. Open up you vector (I used the PNG file) in your editing software.
3. Resize the images & arrange them on an A4 page for printing (I cut the cake off so I could place it above the text.
4. When you have all your images on your A4 page you are ready to print.

 

 5. After printing, cut out your image & turn it over to white side, take your pencil & rub all over the piece of paper (doing it like this is easier than trying to cut everything out) 

 

 

6. Position the paper on the mug & tape it in place so it doesn't move. 

7. Then carefully trace around the image onto the mug, remove the paper. 

8. Using your paints - paint over the image on your mug when you are happy with it follow the directions on the pack of your paints - mine required me either to coat with a gloss & bake at 150°C for 30 minutes OR to bake at 150°C for 30 minutes, let mug cool then coat with gloss & rebake at 150°C for another 30 minutes. If your paints have similar instructions I highly recommend painting, baking, glossing & rebaking! 

 

9. Enjoy your new, spiffy custom made mug - give it as a gift or keep it for yourself!

In the last couple of weeks I also got a couple of new pages done.

Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to do more because I have been battling some major unexplained fatigue lately so I'm off to the doctor's next week.

But in the meantime here are my latest pages:

The first one is of Rhyley & Coop opening their joint Christmas present I used Miss Mint's beautiful kit Christmas Past

 Credits are here

This one I made for Peppermint Creative's Pimp My Page Challenge for January. I decided to scrap about our very unwelcome snake visitor earlier this month.
 

Credits are here

It's time to get some sleep.

Until next time,