Tuesday 29 May 2012

Ava's Memory Coins - Ta-Dah!

If you remember, I promised a 'big reveal' of these memory coins once I had finished them...well.  They.  Are.  Finished.  A month later.  Yay!!

I used my new 12 colour pack of Posca PC-1M 0.7mm markers to colour them in.  I already had a black one that I drew the outlines with.

If you know what you are going to draw, before you start, I would highly recommend laying your colour down first.  I coloured around and over my outlines, then had to redraw the outlines because the colour kind of blocked the black out.  So, some of the outlines are now a bit messy from double drawing.  Also, try and be as clean as you can when you put colour on.  Our coins looked pretty neat before polishing, but the polish really does show any stray dots of colour up quite a lot.

I used home made beeswax and olive oil polish to seal the wood...protecting it from dirty little fingers.  It was super easy to make and it goes a l-o-o-o-ng way.  There is enough polish left over to seal our dining room table and chairs!  Which are unsealed/polished solid oak...  It was easy-peasy to apply just using my fingers and then polished with an old dish towel.

This is all the polish that I used!  The jar holds 1 1/4 cups of polish.  I really should have made a lot less.

The polish recipe has tips about choosing your oil...well, I used the olive oil that we have in the house, which is Napolina Light & Mild.  It has a very pale colour and is more yellow than green.  The beeswax that I used is left over from some soap that I made and was white pellets.  The ingredients contribute to the final colour.

There are 12 flowery designs, so 24 coins in total.  As I bought something like 200 coins, there are plenty left over to to increase the difficulty.

Ava was given a birthday gift wrapped in the little fabric bag...but it was plain and didn't have any draw strings.  So, we used some Versacraft stamp pads and wine bottle cork stamps to decorate it.  Ava did the front side more-or-less by herself...so is a bit messy.  I stamped her name on the front.  {I should really finish that off with "memory game", shouldn't I?}

I did the otherside, let it dry and then ironed it.  The draw string is purple, unwaxed, shamballa cord which I threaded through the little casing with a needle.

One unfinished project finished - beeeeg tick!



1 comment:

Mezz said...

hi there, i just stumbled across your lovely blog via my sister in laws butter and buntings blog. what a lovely spot you've got! loved the memory coins idea, you are very very clever!
cheers, mezz (from mezzmakesstuff (AT) blogspot)