Pinterest challenge

in a attempt to redeems myself for my lack of blogging i have two projects to share with you today :) I am a recent Pinterest member (follow me here) and am jumping in to join the bandwagon for the Summer Pinterest challenge :)

some awesome bloggers (Sherry, Katie,Kate and Michelle) are hosting this quarterly challenge.

Basically the challenge is to take an idea you saw on Pinterest and make it in real life :) i had two projects i wanted to try: the first one is this (the picture shows up really small). Basically its redoing a pair of basic flipflops

I cut the straps off and used scraps left over from recovering our couch to make new ones

You need two straps for each shoe

Cut the ends into points to help with pushing it through the hole

tie a knot to stop it from coming through again 

I tried it on at this point (in my stockinged feet) to check the strap lengths

repeat with the second shoe and volia you have a jazzed up pair of shoes :)

the second project I was dying to try was this:

 source

you will need a canvas , a printout ( by a laser printer of the picture you want to transfer), gel medium and a paint/foam brush.

I could only find a huge bottle of the gel medium so I was really hoping that the project would work :)

I trimmed my picture to make sure the borders around it were even

basically you spread a fairly thick layer of the gel medium on the canvas and lay your picture print down on top of the canvas. the picture will come out reversed so if you have words on the picture remember to take this into account.

smooth out the picture with a credit card

leave it to dry (I would recommend leave it overnight), I only left it for about two hours which wasn't quite long enough. take a spray bottle and wet the paper and start rubbing it until you can see the picture appear

don't wet too much or rub to hard or you will remove the print from the canvas too (which is why I think leaving it to dry longer would be better, so it won't come off)

it makes quite a mess

the end result was quite rustic but pretty. the big white spots are where I rubbed to hard...

the one thing I did notice this morning ,after leaving it to dry overnight , the paper leaves almost a film over the picture so its important to make sure you get it all off, it makes the picture dull if you don't. I would also emphasis using a photo quality print which is more saturated with ink on it to transfer (hopefully that makes sense)

paint another layer of the gel medium over the picture when you done to seal it :)

so that's my attempt at the Pinterest challenge :) 

hope you enjoyed and take up the challenge to stop pinning and start doing !