Orange Art Box - December 2019 ... and a Giveaway!

Our December Orange Art Box arrived this week! Grandma was here visiting and joined in with the unboxing and crafting. There are affiliate links throughout this post. 

Orange Art Box is a monthly subscription box for kids age 5 and up. Each box has a theme with everything you need to make multiple projects. This was our second box and is was awesome. Trevor and Grandma jumped right in with making cards, then moved on to drawing arctic animals and playing with Model Magic.  

We crafted right up until dinnertime, then put the extra supplies away. We'll be able to make a bunch more stuff before our supplies run out. I love how packed each Orange Art Box is.

Here is what we've made (so far!):

Orange Art Box is having a fantastic Black Orange Friday special! With the purchase of a 3-month subscription, you get a FREE Canvas Set with paint, brushes, a palette, and 2 canvases. With a 6-month subscription, you get the Canvas Set plus an Orange Art Box Apron. With a 12-Month Subscription, you get the Canvas Set, Apron, and a fabulous Birthday Box! This box has all sorts of crafts and supplies to make your birthday extra special. 

Not only that, but I get to give away December's Orange Art Box! To enter, leave a comment on this post by Sunday, December 8. I'll announce the winner on Monday, December 9. I apologize to my international friends, but this giveaway is only open to US addresses. Good luck!

Lucky Alphabet Block Photo Holder... and a WINNER!

Sometimes crafts come together exactly how I'd imagined them. Such is the case with this 'Lucky' photo holder made with alphabet blocks. I'm so happy with how it turned out! That's my niece, Allison, and my nephew, Timothy, in the photos. Both pictures are ridiculously out of date. (Hint, hint... Aunt Cindy needs new portraits.) Affiliate links below. 

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Lucky Alphabet Block Photo Holder

Materials:

• wooden alphabet blocks
• Folk Art white gesso
• Folk Art green paint
• hot glue gun
• Twisteezwire
• wire cutters
• large star punch / small star punch
• Folk Art Treasure Gold paint

Steps:

Find blocks to spell LUCKY. Color doesn't matter, which is fortunate because the one blue with four yellows looks ucky. Literally. 

Give each block a coat of white gesso. It doesn't matter if you can still see a slight color difference. That will be hidden with the next coat of paint. Use a glue gun to connect the blocks. 

Carefully paint the letters and the border of the blocks green. Let the paint dry completely. Punch out some stars from scraps of cardstock and paint them gold.

Cut two lengths of green twisteezwire, one approximately 12" and one 10". Curl one end of each wire around something round with a small diameter, like a pencil. Make two complete loops, then remove the pencil. Gently bend each wire against something round with a large diameter, like a basketball.

Arrange the two wires so that their arcs bend outward. Check that the length of the wire puts the photos where you want them to be. Trim as necessary, then attach them to the back of the center block using the glue gun.

To display your photos, just slide the pictures between the loops. I opted to sprinkle the stars on and around the photo holder without attaching them permanently to it, but you can glue them in place if you wish.

It would be easy to adapt the design to display more than two photos. Simply add a third or fourth wire with enough space between them so that the photos aren't crowded. I don't think I'd add more than four wires on a LUCKY design, but you could squeeze in a whole bunch if you spelled out something like GRANDCHILDREN. That would be really cute and would make a great gift. 

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Now, the winner from the Diamond Art giveaway! Thank you to everyone who entered. All of you correctly identified my latest Diamond Art project as the Hot Air Balloon. It's soooo pretty in real life. The sparkle is amazing. I loved reading which kit each of you would pick if you were the lucky winner. Congrats to....

AMY MARTIN!!!

Please email me your address and I'll have Leisure Arts get the Rainbow Tree kit out to you asap! Thanks again to Leisure Arts for sponsoring this giveaway and for being such an amazing company. For those of you who didn't win, think about adding the Diamond Art kit you wanted to your holiday gift list. Or buy it for yourself before the holidays... you deserve it!

Giveaway!!

Just a reminder - you only have today and tomorrow to comment to win a StickTogether kit. You get to decide which one you'd like to win! Follow this affiliate link, browse through the designs, then leave me a comment here or on the original giveaway post with which kit you'd most like to win. If you can't decide, list the ones you like best and if you're the winner, we'll surprise you! 

Bunny Week, Day 1: Pixelated Bunny Craft and a Giveaway!

Welcome to Bunny Week 2019! Bunny Week is an annual tradition here at My Creative Life, a chance to celebrate All Things Rabbit. I'm starting off Bunny Week with a pixelated rabbit craft.

Pixelated Bunny Craft

Materials:

• leftover stickers from a StickTogether kit (tan, black, pink)
• construction paper
• scissors

Steps:

Place a tan sticker in the upper lefthand corner of the construction paper, leaving a small (and hopefully even) gap between the left and top sides. Line up three more tan stickers immediately below that, leaving no gap between the stickers. Start the next column down one square to shape the bunny's ear. Continue to fill in with stickers. It is easiest to first work down the left ear, across the top of the face, then up the right ear.

Complete the rabbit's face. Use the scissors to carefully cut away any excess construction paper. 

That's all there is to it! And obviously, this isn't limited to bunnies. Use your extra StickTogether stickers to make any sort of animal, design, or pattern that you can dream up!

Now for the exciting news- my friends at StickTogether are giving away a kit to one of you! Even better, you get to decide which one you'd like to win! Simply follow this affiliate link, browse through their designs, then leave me a comment with which one you'd most like to win. If you can't decide, just list a few you like and if you're the winner, we'll surprise you! I'll announce the winner on Monday, April 1 (no fooling!) so get your comment in by then. 

Happy Birthday to Me... and Congrats to One of You!

Today is my 47th birthday! I told Steve and Trevor that I only want one thing for my birthday. I can't wait.

Baskin-Robbins makes the best cakes.

It's my birthday, but one of you is getting the gift! Thanks to all who left such nice comments on the VIP Swag Bag Challenge Hop.

The lucky winner from my blog is.... Georgann! You've won an AWESOME collection of adhesives from Supertite. Please supply your information here before March 19 so the hop organizer can get your prize to you. Enjoy!

For everyone else, be sure to visit the rest of the stops along the hop to see if you're a winner. There are six more fabulous prizes!

And don't forget that my Brightech Lamp giveaway is still going on! You have until March 17 to enter to win my all-time favorite lamp. You'll definitely want to win this!

Brightech Lamp - GIVEAWAY!

I've told you how much I LOVE my new magnifying lamp. So I'm really excited to tell you that Brightech is giving away a Lightview XL 2-1 Magnifying Lamp to one of my readers!

This energy-saving lamp has the widest viewer of any magnifying lamp on the market, offers 225% magnification, converts easily from a floor standing lamp to a table lamp, and produces bright white light without glare. The heavy base makes it really sturdy, but I have no difficulty moving it from room to room. 

So far, I have used my lamp to read fine print, thread a needle, sew patches, work on a jigsaw puzzle, remove a splinter, fix the missing part of a rub-on, do Diamond Art, color match at night, and about a million other things. I really do love it and am so happy that one of you will win one. 

Follow the link below to enter the giveaway. Good luck!

WIN A BRIGHTECH LAMP!

SF MOMA

Our family loves to visit museums when we travel, yet there are quite a few museums close to home that we've never visited. When my friend Kirsten of Twenty Stitches offered up guest passes to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I happily accepted! We'd never been there and this was just the incentive we needed to plan a visit. 

We invited Steve's parents to join us at SF MOMA. Here they are with Trevor and me, sitting at an ingenious table. The table stair-steps across the entire length of the room (seating maybe 20) with each tabletop and chair slightly larger than the next. No matter how tall or small you are, there's a spot that is just your size. 

There's a spider that's just your size, too. Different artist, equally cool, somewhat less utilitarian. 

The special exhibit, which runs through October 28, features the later works of surrealist painter Rene Magritte. 

Surrealism is not my favorite, but I still thoroughly enjoyed looking at his artwork. This gallery was particularly fun. When you looked at a particular 'window' or 'door,' you might see yourself projected back in a different location, or you might see somebody standing elsewhere in the building. We enjoyed trying to figure it all out.

I can't believe Trevor is already 12 years old!

We had only gotten through 2 of the 7 floors before lunchtime. We ate at the delicious, albeit somewhat pricy, Cafe 5. Everything was fantastic. You can choose to eat indoors, which we did....

... or you can eat in the sculpture garden. I didn't realize SF MOMA has one of Robert Indiana's famous LOVE sculptures. (Turns out there are 23 in the United States and more worldwide.) 

We recognized the work of Tom Otterness right away. We first discovered his artwork in Phoenix while doing the Urban Adventure Quest. 

I love taking pictures of Steve taking pictures of Trevor. I should make a layout with all of them one of these days. 

This artwork was very interesting. It's a collection of all the ways you can arrange three or more adjacent sides of a cube, arranged by number of sides. The wall has diagrams of all the combinations. The picture only shows a small portion of them. 

This piece by Chuck Close was one of my favorites from SF MOMA because it was just so interesting how the viewer's perspective made such a difference. Up close, you see colorful diamonds filled with circles, triangles, and irregular shapes. 

Back up, and those shapes have meaning. 

Keep backing up and you see the whole face.

Here's another portrait by Chuck Close but done in greyscale. When you back up far enough, the huge painting looks like a grainy photo.

Move closer in, and you see the many shapes that create the face.

Stand close enough, and it's hard to see anything but the shapes and the shades of browns and greys. 

We passed on the bunny light in the gift shop, but I can't say it wasn't tempting.

Huge thanks to Kirsten for the tickets! We thoroughly enjoyed our day.

Because admission to SF MOMA is always free for kids, we only used four of the six tickets Kirsten gave me. Which means I have two tickets to give away to one of you! There is no expiration date on them, but I would like for them to go to someone who will actually use them. If you're local to San Francisco (or will be visiting in the next year or so) and would like free tickets to SF MOMA, leave a comment and I'll pick one of you.