Wednesday, May 16, 2012

DIY Watercolour Tutorial: Glow in the dark galaxy nebula stickers | Go to post

Hello! ♥

So I occasionally do things completely unrelated to jewelry, and last night I made a bunch a glow-in-the-dark nebula stickers. Had the foresight to snap pictures while I was doing it, so here's the tutorial to make your own DIY galaxy stickers! :D (I used stickers, but I guess you can use this to paint cards and other things as well.)


Materials needed:
If you don't already have these, they are available at any stationery/craft store. If you live in Singapore, I bought them all from Popular for under SGD$10 altogether.
-Sheet of plain white labels
-Watercolours and brush (I used one of those cheap kiddy trays where you add water to cakes of paint) 
-Toothpicks
-Silver paint marker (optional)
-Glue
-Glow-in-the-dark glitter 

Difficulty/Time taken:
-Easy, 1 hour
Basically the watercolours do all the work for you, so artistic talent isn't really needed. It's really fun and even kids can do it, and there's a list of tips and modifications at the end of this post on how to make things easier :) 


  
Start with a plain sheet of white labels - any size will do, really. These are 1 1/4" circles


Lay down a quick wash of diluted black paint - work quickly because it dries fast! Don't flood the labels with too much paint, because excess water will make them curl and peel off the backing sheet. And don't worry about leaving small gaps or messy strokes - watercolours are very forgiving :)

If you like, you can then put on another layer of dark blue paint - shown here on alternate rows

Working quickly, drop a bit of light blue paint onto the stickers - make sure your paint is quite watery or the next step won't work!

Drop a bit of pink paint onto the stickers, overlapping the blue paint a little. Since the paints are both wet they will blend together on their own, no need for you to do much work :D

Closeup!You can see that the two colours will start bleeding together :) Note that watercolours are more vibrant when wet, so when they dry the colours will be less vivid.

Do the same for the rest of the stickers and let dry.


To make the stars, load your brush with white paint and flick it off your finger so that it splatters over the stickers. You can use an old toothbrush as well. (If your paint comes off as fat blobs, it's too thick. If it flicks off properly but there's barely any white showing, it's too thin!) If you're not sure, practise on a scrap paper first :)

Use a toothpick to create bigger stars and comets - Snip the tip off, a blunter tip will give bigger stars. Drag the toothpick to create shooting stars!

Use a silver paint marker to add metallic accents if you want to.

Let all the paint dry, then use glue to draw a line across each sticker.

Sprinkle on the glow-in-the-dark glitter.

All done! :D Let the glue dry and brush off excess glitter and you have your own set of pretty nebula stickers!

Tips/Modifications:
-I used pink and blue for the nebula cloud because that's the most common colour, but you can use other colours like orange or green too :)
-For astrology geeks or cool horoscope gifts, you can paint on the stars in the shape of actual constellations.
-Instead of splattering paint, use a white paint marker for less mess and drying time.
-Instead of glow-in-the-dark glitter,  which usually comes in tubes and is a bit messy because you need to apply glue and then the glitter goes everywhere - Use glitter glue that comes in tubes. I've seen regular silver and gold glitter as well as the coloured glitter or "pearly" ones that look really great, and glitter glue is also a lot easier for kids to handle.


One last snapshot! Used a sticker on one of the packages I'm sending out today - brown paper, twine, handstamped glassine bag sealed with a nebula sticker and a bit of scrap ribbon. I have an unhealthy obsession with wrapping things. Anyway, I hope the tutorial made sense :)


♥Jasmyn

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5:01 AM

Saturday, May 12, 2012

New collection - Egyptian Treasure | Go to post

Hello!

Just posted the new collection over on the ValkyrieCouture Facebook :D

All inspired by Egyptian symbols/mythology. I love them all, mostly because I'm a sucker for Egyptian things. I have a pretty blue and gold scarab paperweight on my desk that I've been staring at over the few weeks that it's taken to finish all these..








Anyway. Two of these designs have already sold out, I've ordered supplies to restock them but shipping to where I live takes a really long time. =| Check out what's still available over on the ValkyrieCouture store on Etsy :D Other than the new stuff, I'm also working on restocking all the items in the shop that have sold out.. the worst part for me, because I'm lazy and don't like making designs I've already done over several times. Making new things = fun! Making old things over and over again...not so fun. But sales have been picking up recently so I just tell myself to stop whining and get to work.

I've also recently gotten addicted to the Avatar series, whooshed through two seasons in as many days, which obviously isn't good for getting things done, because I sit there with my tools all laid out and end up with nothing done after 3 episodes... It's a lovely show, though!

♥ Jasmyn

12:29 PM

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Etsy Shops now open! | Go to post

Hello! ♥

I'm glad to announce I'm finally off hiatus and both my Etsy shops are now open!

Sodacrush: [link]
ValkyrieCouture: [link]

And all of these new designs are for sale (Click image to go to the Etsy listing):







Fullviews of the cover photos for this collection, you can see over on FB: [link]

Because I've been on hiatus for a long, long time, I have a lot of things to say so feel free to tl;dr-

I think from now on I might do collections this way instead of dumping every single picture of the item onto FB, I'll make up a set of cover pictures for every new collection. :) Although I love doing jewelry along a certain theme, I'm also wondering if it's a good idea to make 5-6 items on a certain theme when there won't be demand or interest in it. But we'll see how that goes :)

I've also (finally) gotten around to doing my my profile page on DeviantArt, so... I'm really happy with how it looks now. :D After being buried in books for so long, it's really, really nice to fiddle around with... everything, really, from jewelry to html. Speaking of html.. I'm currently still using the classic blogger html editor because I'm a bit of a control freak and like things exactly where I want them to be. Tried out the Template Designer and spent a few hours swearing at the ..gadgets and things before I gave up and reinstalled the old code. Ugh. It's pretty much the same situation over on DA, the system of widgets and dragging things around isn't bad, but I still think everything looks much prettier when it's customized. Not that I'm anywhere near proficient at html, I only realized today that the "follow" button on my blog hasn't been working. It's fixed now~ :D

I'm so glad school's over! Exams were tough~ I'm not even going to think about school until next semester. Unfortunately I've already been told that certain exam scripts are ready to be collected from school, so I could actually get my results now...but I really don't want to.

Anyway -  as for commissions, I'm working through them already! Please be patient with me, I have something like 15 people on the list.. I feel like I'm gasping for breath catching up with commissions until I have no time for making any new designs or even restocking my shop! ~whew~ (Not complaining, though. It's a mad rush but I love it at the same time.) Yes, commissions are still open for now. I go back to school in August, so there's a long while yet. :D Here's one of the commissions I just finished:


A lovely set in silver&black, for a wedding. Best wishes to the happy couple! If you're interested in a commission, drop me an email at sodacrush@gmail.com.

Also, I'm probably going to do my next giveaway soon, either as a kiriban or blog giveaway, right now the votes for both are really close.. if it stays this way I might, uhm, do 2 giveaways? With one prize to the person who catches the pageview kiriban, and another prize to a random winner from the list of people who enter the blog giveaway. So yup, exciting things coming up. :D

♥Jasmyn

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5:02 AM

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Currently on HIATUS but leaving this blog up for those who are still looking at old tutorials/process shots :) Will be back one day maybe!

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