Cinderella's Winter Coach

Happy New Year to all! 

I made my mom a pretty little coach for Cinderella or any princess who needs an elegant mode of transportation.  My intention is to complete more pieces so she has in effect a beautiful Christmas Village.  Fingers crossed...

The coach was made using a file from SVGCuts called Enchanted Autumn.

Ever since I made all those Rosettes for Brandin's wedding (here, here and here), I have been obsessed with using my Cricut Expression.  Maybe because now I actually know how to use the thing ;).  You can expect more fun- 3D- projects in the future.  

So here is where I confess that this is the 3rd rendition of this project and the other 2 ended up in the trash. No matter how careful I am, I just can't get everything lined up well enough so at the end everything fits. Instead it goes all wonky.  This was the least wonky of the bunch.  I hate throwing projects away so I guess this has been a good lesson for me.  A lesson in patience, persistence, and precision.  SVGCuts releases assembly videos for all of their kits and Mary makes it look so freakin' easy.  It isn't.  But good things come from hard work.  

I added embellishments to make this more of a Christmas- or holiday-coach.  The flowers and holly are cut from Tim Holtz Alterations Festive Greenery Sizzlet Decorative Strip and Brenda Walton's (for Sizzix) Festive Greenery and Holiday Greenery.  Shhhh... don't tell Tim, but I love her dies.

If you are going to give SVGCuts digital files a go, the biggest piece of advice I would give is to make sure you think through what you want cut from patterned cardstock and what can be cut from plain cardstock.  I made that mistake with my first big project.  It was a huge Halloween Mansion that I never finished because I ran out of patterned paper.  If I had cut the basic form pieces with plain black cardstock, I would have had enough patterned paper to complete it.  Lesson learned the hard way.

Of course I added glitter, rhinestones, and pieces of tinsel.  My favorite thing about SVGCuts files is that I can make it whatever I want.  Mary sticks with one line of paper per project and always uses her papers effectively so if you would rather not be a designer you can easily use her ideas but if you want to go crazy...you can go crazy.  Imagine this as a true Cinderella's Coach with a blue and silver color palate and maybe a small mouse sitting somewhere on it.  Maybe add a crown somewhere. Or a Queen of Hearts carriage with a red and black hearts and playing cards incorporated in the design.  I promised my 97-year-old grandmother I would make her one and I think I will go for a paper she can display all year.  Maybe metallics but stick with embellishments that are not seasonal.

So whether you make it for Cinderella's...or the ice princess...or Mrs Claus....or whomever you want to it is a fun project.  I have plans to make a church, several houses, a tree.....so many plans....

New Year....New Plans.  A few years ago I took quite a few online art classes.  Last year there just weren't many classes that interested me and let's be real, I was busy with Brandin's wedding during the first half of the year.  This year looks like it will be a year of wishing I had more time....

I just signed up for Kelly Rae Roberts first online mixed media class, Hello Soul, Hello Mixed-Media Mantras,  and I cannot wait.   I have been a HUGE fan of hers for so freakin' long and she hasn't taught this type of course in the past.  She is such a good soul and I know it will be an amazing experience.  It starts in February.

I am also taking Life Book 2014 which is a year long course.  I have no idea what to expect but it should be interesting as well.  I also signed up for two self-placed courses that I still need to do.  I decided it is time to start dealing with drawing faces.  I am terrified.

Finally, I am taking a digital file organization class from Jessica Sprague.  If you have brushes, png files and SVG files you know that it is a nightmare to try to organize them.  Do you organize them by topic, by artist, by purpose? I have no idea so hopefully this will help.  I'll let you know what I find out.

I also have to finish Tim's Creative Chemistry 2-I have a few more tags to make for that class.  So much to do.  But first I have to clean the mess that is my studio.  We had a broken water line spray water into the ceiling of the basement and make a big ol' mess.  Thankfully, my studio wasn't directly affected but stuff had to be moved out of the guest room and off the floor near the break so my studio ended up full of boxes.

We are getting wood floors put in the upstairs bedrooms so Rick is cleaning all the rooms out so the installer can come tomorrow and start.  I am so excited to have new beautiful dark wood floors.  It is time to reorganize, repaint and get this house in order.  It is a big mess after 11 years of living here.  We haven't ever lived anywhere this long and you can tell by the amount of major cleaning and purging that needs to be done.  Time to get rid of the baby blocks.  Ok, it isn't THAT bad.... but just about.  Wish me luck :)