Marbled Blacklight Pumpkin DIY

October 9, 2018 by Alexa Leave a Comment

If you’re a pumpkin crafter, I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of nail polish pumpkins. The thing with nail polish pumpkins; however, is that you have very little polish to work with and you generally can only dip smaller-sized pumpkins with them. Also I personally think using nail polish is a lot more stinkier than spray paint (this may be a personal preference). Anyway, after seeing this post a few years back Alisa Burke marbleizing paper and ornaments, I knew I wanted to try it with a pumpkin and I’m actually happy with how mine turned out. Let me show you how easy and fun these are to make!

What you need:

— faux pumpkin
— various colors of spray paint (I used neon so they’d look good under blacklight)
— large bin filled with water
— Gloves (get the gloves, see below)

Before you begin:
Fill a large plastic bin with water. You want enough water so you can submerge your entire pumpkin.

Spray the first color on top. It will spread out as you spray into a halo shape in the water.
Keep spraying and adding more colors till the surface of the water is totally filled with colors.

Once you’ve sprayed the surface, immediately dip your pumpkin.

It takes a little force to push the pumpkin below the water. It was hard for me to capture on camera, but once your pumpkin is totally dunked, you need to pull it up lifting off the paint from the surface of the water.

If there’s an area of the pumpkin that you’ve missed, you can dunk it back in and focus on that area. You may layer over top of a. section you’ve already covered, but because this is abstract and random, it’s hard to mess it up!

Remember when I said you needed gloves. This is why. I got the spray paint on my hand and it took a couple days for it totally to be off my hand. There was a lot of hand washing those two days. LOL.

Here’s what it looked like when I set up my blacklight. I was wanting the neon to really pop and pop it did! I am looking forward to putting this in my glowing decorations this Halloween!

Personalized Watercolor Frame for Mom with Darby Smart

April 17, 2018 by Alexa Leave a Comment

personalized-watercolor-mothers-day

My latest video for Darby Smart is all about the most important person in our life…MOM! This frame is super easy peasy to make and you can create it even if you feel you aren’t super crafty or artsy.

All you need are some watercolors from your local Michaels store and a permanent marker to make your lettering design. And of course your unfinished wooden frame!

View Mother’s Day Watercolor Frame on Darby Smart.

When I created this project, I used a 3/4 inch paint brush and dabbed it into the water, then into my watercolor palette. I dabbed on the color onto the frame, trying to mix together the colors to make brown.

After only 30 minutes, the frame was dry and ready to create my personalized lettering. I chose a line that was an adaption of a John Mayer song; I believe it’s from the song “Daughters”. I always loved that line and thought it is an appropriate statement for Mom too!

After personalizing, add in your favorite photo of you and your mom. I don’t have a great photo of myself with my mom, but I did use this cute photo of my niece and me, so I put that in the frame. I technically could have been old enough in this photo to be her mom. Let me just say, I really love being that girls aunt…we always enjoy a LOT of crafting time together.

If you love this video, watch more on my Darby Smart profile online and on their Darby Smart app. You can download the Darby App now in the Apple app store!

DIY Stained Glass Crayon Candles

May 22, 2016 by Alexa Leave a Comment

I love a good crayon craft, YES I DO! I thought it would be fun to see if I could make a cool stained-glass effect using a pack of crayons and a hair dryer. I think the end result turned out pretty darn cool. Let me show you just how easy it is to make these colorful candles for yourself!

What you need:
– Crayons
– Glass Votives
– Tea lights
– Hairdryer

Unwrap your crayons. If you need to, you can let them set in a bowl of water for a few minutes to make them easier to remove.

Break of several chunks of crayons. You don’t need to use the entire thing! A little goes a long way.

Drop the crayons in the bottom of your votive

Turn on your hair dryer and start swirling the colors around. It won’t take long for them to start melting.

Keep going! Remember to not go so far that your colors start blending all into the same color…only unless you do want them that way! Who knows, you might!

Drop your candle in and you are ready to make your candles come to life! You may wonder if the crayons will continue to met. For mine, I know they got a little tacky from the heat of the candle, but the actual swirly design stayed the same.

What kind of colors would you love to play around for this technique?

I wrote a Snapchat ebook!

March 10, 2016 by Alexa Leave a Comment

I’m so excited to share with you the new book that I co-authored with my good friend Jennifer Priest. It’s all about the latest most buzzed about social media app…Snapchat. Both Jennifer and I have taken the leap and hope you will too!

In the book we share everything from how to use Snapchat to WHY you need to be on Snapchat. Basically, it’s a deep dive into the app and we also share cool people to follow and a prompt of the day challenge.

Learn more about the book and order your copy over on Rainmakermediaworks.com and let me know what you think! I’d love your feedback and insight. 🙂

OK, I have to go! I have a snap story to work on.

Gary Vaynerchuk Printable Valentines

February 11, 2015 by Alexa Leave a Comment

It’s no joke, I love me some Gary Vee! For those of you who have yet to discover Gary, he’s one of the smartest guys in social media and business. And I watch every episode of the #askgaryvee show on his Youtube rather religiously! He even featured one of my questions…in this video:

So, Gary is always talking about “hustle” and how you have to hustle to get a question answered, so I made these cute little printable Valentine’s to sweeten my chance to get on the show! For all you social media junkies and folks in the Vayner Nation please print these out and share with all your office friends or share the ones I individually added below on your fave social sites.

Simply click here >>>>Gary Vaynerchuk Printable Valentine<<<<< to get a large scale 8.5 x 11 inch image that you can print out and give to your social media buddies!

And here’s the individual ones for sharing!

Galaxy Art Pumpkin DIY

October 5, 2014 by Alexa Leave a Comment

Here’s a fun and different idea for making a super cool DIY pumpkin this year! Create a pumpkin that’s out of this world and looks like a galaxy nebula! This look is fun and abstract and no two pumpkins will turn out exactly the same, but they are guaranteed to be super cool!!

FYI If you like this post, you’ll love my DIY Halloween page called Easy Pumpkin Ideas where you’ll find 10+ project DIYs! Check ’em out!
10-diy-pumpkin-no-carve-ideas

What you need:
– Black Pumpkin (Mine is a Funkin from Hobby Lobby)
– Various Tulip fabric paints (mine have some definite messy/crafty love on them)
– Tulip Fabric Spray in black and white (not shown)
– Tulip Fashion Glitters (in coordinating colors to your paints)
– Paper plate or palette
– Cut sponges
– Brushes for making stars (optional)
– Image printed out or pulled up on your phone to go by.

Here’s a quick stepout of my process. Since this process is very loose and abstract, you can literally spend 10 minutes on it -or- and hour to get it “just right”. I want to show you my basic tips, but I encourage you to read up on some more processes for success.

Before I began, I pulled some images of “Galaxy Art DIYs” up on my phone to see what other folks have created. You can also look up “Galaxy Nebula” for various space telescope photos for inspiration for your design. I used these images as inspiration for my design, but I didn’t copy them exactly.

I started by sponging on a light blue base color on the top of the pumpkin, then I sponged in other colors around it blending them slightly. I had no initial rhyme or reason for this, but I did know I wanted to keep my colors seperated a bit and not too blended together. Next, I experimented with some fabric sprays. First I spritzed on some black fabric spray, which gave it a cool, organic look. I then went over top and added a few splatters of the white. Do this sparingly, because you don’t want too many as they will take away from your colorful design.

Note, you can also add “stars” by using the back of your paintbrush to dot on stars randomly all over the pumpkin. In my opinion, I liked the fabric spray look a lot better than the dotted stars look, but dotting on the stars will work perfectly if you don’t have fabric spray.

Admittedly, after I spritzed on the fabric sprays, I went back in and sponged a little of my pinks and blues back over. This is where I talked about getting it “just right”. You are going to have to judge what looks right to your eye! For a final touch, I sprinkled on glitter over the coordinating color of wet paint. It really made my galaxy pop!

If you are still feeling unsure and want some more painting advice before you begin this process, I found this video tutorial very helpful by Tutorials by A (she’s awesome).

Here’s a few closeups of my finished look. I think it turned out so cool!

What do you think? Do you want to give this galaxy art pumpkin a try??

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Crayon Drip Art Pumpkin Tutorial

August 12, 2012 by Alexa 39 Comments

I was so inspired by all the pumpkins and Halloween stuff I saw at Michaels this past week, that I decided to go ahead and get started on my Halloween crafting! With the popularity of the crazy crayon dripped canvases, I decided to do my own version using a pumpkin instead of a canvas. I think it turned out funky, abstract, oh-so-colorful, and fun. Here’s how you make one of your own!

Looking for more fun pumpkin ideas, check out my new pumpkin site…EASY PUMPKIN IDEAS!

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The Swell Designer

Random musings of a crazy, crafty, pop culture-obsessed girl!