Altered Clipboards

This is what you do when you have way too much time on your hands (like me, these days). You decorate blank clipboards. They can be useful around the house, so why not spice them up a little.

I've seen altered clipboards before, so it's not an original idea, but I wanted to give it a try and just see how they would come out. It's a great way to be creative and have fun at the same time. In my case, I had several weeks in front of me where I would be "stationed" on the couch with nothing to do, so I put my time to some good, creative use. The fact that clipboards are so cheap and provide a perfect medium for art work also makes it a great gift idea for others.

The first one I created was a combo of fabric, acrylic paints and Mod Podge. The second one was just some free flow hand painting.

I had some fabric laying around that I cut into squares. I lined them up on the clipboard and applied Mod Podge on top (at least 4 layers). In between the squares I painted some flowers. When it was completed I taped off the clip at the top and sprayed it with clear finish.

Below is a close up. It looks pretty cool right? The only problem is (and I didn't think of this while putting it together), is that it's "bumpy". So ya can't use it to write on......duh....

Well, I put a yellow legal pad on it and use it that way, so it's still useful.

Next up: Remember your "hippie" days? Doesn't this remind you of that?

Needless to say, this one took some time, but was so much fun to make.

What is all this stuff anyway? The contents of my mind? Scary, isn't it?

How I did this:

I drew out the design with permanent marker and then painted over all of it with acrylics-outlining in black paint. It was finished off with 5 coats of hard spray gloss.

This one I like and it's smooth, so it's very useful.

Christy

01 02 12

El Cheapo Cacti

Everyone makes mistakes, right? I walked into a large box store (not going to mention the name) and the sign under the cactus said, "cactus $1.00". Well, to me that means all the cactus are a buck, right?

That really wasn't what they meant. They actually were discounting all the broken and dying cactus, not the entire shelf. But isn't that "false advertising?". My question exactly! So they landed up selling me any cactus I wanted for a buck. Since I love the plants, I bought 20 of them. Oh yes, they will fill my entire window sill or several of them. I love cactus for several reasons. They are hard to kill and require very little maintenance. Although, not the easiest of plants to transplant into pots, it is doable-you just have to wear heavy duty gardening gloves.

Such a deal allowed me to buy some clay for planting. I painted all of them with acrylics and sealed them with a clear gloss spray. I'm not sure if you are suppose to seal clay pots, but they looked so much better and I wanted to preserve the painting. Clay pots are so much fun to decorate. I've done mosaics on them, mod podged them and hand painted them. They always come out looking great, and lets face it, clay pots are pretty cheap. Decorated by hand they can make great, inexpensive gifts. You can find some great tips on taking care of your cactus here. Scroll down for the info.

I looked for some common and unusual primitive designs to copy onto my pots and this is how they came out.

I'm not sure what all of these symbols mean, by the way, but I liked the way they looked.

I only painted a few of these pots for now. I did purchase 20 cactus!! It's a big job.

and more......

Here are a few of them that are completed and up on the window sill.

and...

6 down, 14 to go!

Christy

01 02 12