<a href="http://www.makebeautifulthings.com" title="Make Beautiful Things" rel="home">Make Beautiful Things

Making Soap for the First Time

02.12.2013

Learning a new craft is sooo much fun! If you don’t know by now I am, by profession, a soap teacher. I teach others how to make handmade soap. I have a classroom and lots of supplies where I share my craft of soap making.I feel like I have the best job in the world!! I had the great pleasure last week of teaching a two day class with Mansi. Mansi is a trained artist in Chicago and teaches others how to paint. She does a lot of wonderful work with nursing home and Alzheimers patients showing them how to paint. Mansi was interested in learning how to make soap and sharing her new found craft with her students. We had a wonderful two days making all kinds of bath and body products. Here’s a few pics of some Mansi’s creations. The first thing Masi learned to make was a loofah soap.

Loofah Soaps

We then went to make a rose loaf soap made from shea butter soap and organic roses. So pretty!

Shea Butter and Organic Rose Soap

It was a great day teaching Mansi how to make bath bombs,bath salts and lots and lots of soap. These little aliens in spaceships are really soaps!

Lost in space alien soaps

These are some bath bombs Mansi made. Have you ever attended a creative workshop like this just learning new things? It’s a lot of fun but it’s also very satisfying learning a new craft or skill. I hope you enjoyed looking at these handmade goodies. If you’re learning a new skill or craft right now I wish you many hours of crafting happiness!!

Make Beautiful Things……..Christine

show hide 1 comment

Aurora - Hi! I found your blog via pinterest and I am looking for some soap inspiration. I usually make CP soap, but am thinking about making more melt and pours lately. I’m curious if the rose soap is CP or M&P, as it looks like it could potentially be either!

Either way, gorgeous soaps!

Little Bitty Bird Houses

01.18.2013

I’ve bought these little tiny wooden bird houses at Joann’s for only fifty cents apiece. I could wait to bring them home and craft them up. I bought 10 of them and I’ve finished three. The rest I’ll decorate for Christmas gifts next year.

Trio of Altered Bird Houses

I used lots of fun glitter to them. To get get good glitter coverage and spread Mod Podge on and pour the glitter over. The Mod Podge worked great. I also used Mod Podge for the the Little French Bird house.

This Little French Bird House I covered with scrapbook paper, ribbon and buttons from the French General.

The Little French Bird House

These houses were covered with glitter and decorated. I gave a little bling to my bird.

My bird has some bling!

My little Christmas Bird house is embellished with paper and garland.

Speaking of glitter I found these beautiful glitters over at createforless. They have so many beautiful colors and in those beautiful bottles too.

Vintage Glitters

I hope you enjoyed these mini bird houses. When I make the rest I’ll be sure to post them.

Christine

no comments

The 52 Week Photo Challenge Week One

01.01.2013

I’m so happy to be participating in the Clickin Moms 52 Week Photo Challenge. They have a Facebook group where all the photos are posted. This is my first week and the theme is New Years.So here’s my photo with my daughter with all of her New Years gear on! One of my New Year’s resolutions is to really take my photography skills up a couple of notches! Wishing all of you a Happy New Year.

Week One Challenge New Years

no comments

5. Recollections Glitz or other white glitter

Altered Clay Pot Let It Snow Tutorial

11.26.2012

With the holidays upon us you can make some quick stunning gifts with a few items you have around the house. I’m sure most of us have some clay pots around or if you don’t you can go to the Goodwill (that’s what I did) and get a few for fifty cents or less. In my previous post I made some quick and easy glittery snowflake soaps, so to make my soap presentation a bit more dramatic I made this altered pot to present my snowflake soaps in.

Here are the supplies I used

1. Clay pot

2. Martha Stewart Pearl Paint in Aquarium or other blue or blue-green color
3. Acrylic Paint in White

4. Craft Sponges

6. Scrapbook paper for rosette

7. Rubber or Acrylic stamp (Let It Snow) for banner on rosette and small piece of white paper for the banner

7. Metallic Pigment in Silver and Light blue Pigment Ink

8. Silver Wired Ribbon 1.5 inches wide

9. Glue Gun

DIRECTIONS

1. Paint your clay pot with your white paint. Let it dry and repeat this 2-3 times until your pot is covered with paint. Be sure to paint the inside too.

2. With you sponge paint brush, brush on the Martha Stewart Pearl paint. While the paint is still wet sprinkle some glitz on the top of your pot.

3. Make your rosette. Make it large to fill up the front of your pot.

4. Paint on some of your Metallic Silver on the sharp edges of your rosette.

5. Make a bow to go behind your rosette.

6. Cut a 1/2 inch by 5 white piece of paper and make your banner shape at the end (see photo) Stamp with the Let It Snow stamp and edge it with the light blue pigment ink. Glue your banner behind your embellishment and glue your rosette and embellishment together. Now glue bow behind your rosette.

7. Glue your bow/rosette about a third down on your clay pot. You’re done!

Now you can fill it with those beautiful snowflakes we made in the last tutorial or use fill it up with some pretty glass ornaments.

See you next post!

Christine

no comments

1. One pound of ultra white melt and pour soap base

Christmas Snowflake Soap An Easy Gift to Make

11.15.2012

Christmas Snowflake Soap. Looking for some quick gifts that are pretty and inexpensive? Try making these pretty glittered soap snowflakes. This soap uses white melt and pour soap and is very easy to make. I am including the links to the products (disclaimer, I own this online store!) The snowflake mold is very durable and can be used again and again. I’ve used a Peppermint Creme fragrance oil in this soap so it smells crisp and fresh but is creamy at the same time. The glitter that is applied gives the soap plenty of sparkle. Adding glitters and mica to soap is a good way to give soaps depth and some drama. If you get any bubbles on top of your soap when you pour it into the mold you can spray some rubbing alcohol on the bubbles and this will remove them. This tutorial will make you three soaps that are about 5 oz each.

A list of supplies you will need

2. Soap Glitter

3. Snowflake soap mold

4. Peppermint Creme Fragrance Oil 1/2 oz

5. Microwavable glass measuring cup

6. a fork or small whisk to stir your soap

7. A small paintbrush to apply your glitter. An inexpensive one is fine.

Directions

1. Cut your soap base into 1/2 inch chunks of soap and put in your glass measuring cup.

2. Melt in microwave for 1 minute. Remove from microwave to see if there are large chunks of soap. If there is still unmelted soap microwave again for 15 seconds and repeat until you have very small pieces of soap. Stir with your fork or whisk until the small pieces of soap are melted.

3. Slowly stir in your fragrance oil into the melted soap. Don’t stir to vigorously or else you will have too many air bubbles in your soap.

4. Pour your soap into your snowflake soap mold. Pour right to the top.

5. Let your soap harden. Leave in the mold at least 6 hours.

6. Once your soap is dry remove from the mold. Dip your paint brush into the soap glitter and lightly brush into your soap. Be sure to get into the groves of the snowflake. You can repeat this if you want a bit more sparkle to your soap. Now you are ready to package your soap.

In my next tutorial I’m going to show you how to take an old clay pot and turn it into a glittery gift basket to hold those handmade soaps.

That’s it! Very easy! Have fun make soap gifts!

Christine, Make Beautiful Things

no comments

Crazy for Candy Corn

10.27.2012

I love Candy Corn. The colors, the taste, the shape of the little treats. Here’s some Candy Corn Eye Candy and a little video how these goodies are made. Here’s my Candy Corn board on Pinterest…full of all kinds of Candy Corn stuff.

These Candy Corn Soap Cupcakes are from my other blog. I used Candy Corn Fragrance oil….very yummy and no calories.

How about this cutie in this Candy Corn hat? What a sweetie..From the Etsy Shop MitziKnitz

Go over Hoosier Handmade she’s put together a collections of Candy Corn Cupcakes, Cookies and more!

Enjoy this last weekend before Halloween!

Christine

no comments

Handmade Halloween

10.22.2012

I buy a lot of craft books and craft magazines. Everyone once in a while a craft book comes along and I know I will have it forever. This is one of those books. But this is isn’t a book review. No, I just want to tell you HOW INCREDIBLE THIS BOOK IS. If you are a crafter and you LOVE Halloween you will love Glitterville’s Handmade Halloween: A Glittered Guide for Whimsical Crafting Written by crafter extraordinaire and founder of Glitterville, Stephen Brown , he takes Halloween to new glittery heights and really puts the happy in Happy Halloween. There are so many things to love about this book but I’ll tell you just a few. The first is the projects aren’t hard but they are amazing (start now and you can make everything in the book in time for next Halloween). The other thing I love about the book is it just keeps giving you ideas. All these Halloween projects can be turned into Christmas and Easter projects with a little imagination. The instructions are very clear and the photography beautiful. I hope there will be a whole series of these Glitterville books. If there is I’ll be the first buyer.

no comments

Altered Witches Hat Tutorial

10.07.2012

Altered Halloween Witches Hats. In this tutorial I will show how I made my Altered Witches Hats. I had so much fun making these I just kept going…but I kept a few blanks for next year! I will be using the Black Crow Witch Hat to show you step by step how to make these bewitching Halloween hats. I will also show you a few examples of other witch hats I’ve made, you can use these for reference. These hats are easy to make and kids will also have a great time making them. I purchased some hats at Michaels Craft Store. But they only had a few. I also found some at Craft Catalog. If you do a Google search you should be able to find different hats in different sizes. For my trim I used one of my favorite black trims from Joanns. I also used some netting under my trim on a few of these hats. To make the rosettes on the top of the hats I used paper on some hats I used black leaves (I just formed the leaves to make a circle). If you don’t have a die cut that makes rosettes you can see how to make rosettes here using a scoring board.

Find yourself a cardboard or paper witch hat (a nice blank canvas) and let the creativity flow! You just need a few things to get started and I’ll show you that below. Before beginning my witch hat I started with a theme and a color scheme. You can see in the photos below I have a black raven and my colors are a grayish-green and black. In some of my other witches hats I have more of an eclectic theme. Pull your items together like the photo below to make sure everything will go well with each other. When choosing the black paint to paint the rim be sure to get a true black or the deepest black you can, or you’ll be painting several coats.

Supplies

1. Cardboard witches hat

2.2 pieces of 11x 14 Scrapbook paper

3.Mod Podge

4. True Black paint

5. Glitter (optional)

6. Sponge brushes (at least two)

7. 18″ of trim

8. Glue gun

9.5-6 Fall leaves or large rosette for top of hat

10. A few embellishments for my hat theme.

To make your hat paint the underside and the top rim of your witches hat. Paint about a quarter inch up the hat.

Paint the front side of the rim.

Paint the underside of your hat.

Apply a medium layer of Modge Podge on the backside of your paper

Apply the paper to the hat, trim where needed.

place items on hat to see where they will be placed,don’t attache yet.

Attach trim on hat with glue gun. If desired apply a line of glitter on the outer rim.

Attach your embellishments to your hat

Glue your embellishments and add finishing touches

Kids love to make these cute hats! You can even add candy.

show hide 3 comments

https://twitter.com/thecharmingfrog

The Charming Frog - WoW! Can I say WoW! How beautiful!! It just so happens I have all these materials – including the hat~ I know what I will be doing in the next couple days! Thanks Christine for the inspiration!

Vicki - WOW, Christine. They are all so beautiful. Thank you for sharing your tutorial.

admin - I’ve had some emails asking where to get the hats try
http://www.cdwood.com/12-in-Paper-Mache-Witch-Hat-p/27-0760.htm

Some Charming Soaps from the Charming Frog

08.28.2012

For those who don’t know me, my business is soap. I sell soap supplies (it’s a fun job!) and along the way I get to see some really beautiful soap designs. It really is an art and I’m sure you’ll agree after seeing some of the Charming Frog’s soap designs. Tracy, the co-owner was kind enough to take some time so I could interview her about her business.

1. Tracie your soaps have such a unique look to them, do you find that your “soap style” is now recognizable? In other words…do people now know you by your soaps?

Hi Christine and this is a great question! I would like to think that by now people know us by our soaps however, we receive emails daily from people that did not know we existed! We hope to gain better recognition as time goes by through as many social events, networks etc that we can introduce to the store!

2. I saw what a wonderful job you did with your Wonderland Soaps. Really beautiful. When you’re creating a new soap how do you begin? What do you take into consideration?

Thank you so much for the compliment! Coming from such an experienced soap maker-it means so much! As artists, we look for new trends in colors; i.e. HGTV, Vogue, Martha Stewart, etc. but in this case, we wanted to stick to the colors based on the animated and current movie of Alice in Wonderland…we are all big fans of both!

3. You sell on Etsy and you have quite a following! Do you have any other venues you sell through?

Yes! We sell through Facebook now. The network offers a way to link our Etsy store directly to their page. It has not yet taken off from there (at least I do not think it has) but we are hoping for more traffic. We also plan to build a website store to gain more exposure and plan to do more “in-the-field” events so people can be able to see the beautiful colors and smell the wonderful scents!

We have other ways to get to our store:

http://pinterest.com/thecharmingfrog/ and http://thecharmingfrog.tumblr.com/

4. Your soaps a always photographed so beautifully. What kind of light do you prefer? What else can you tell us about the process?

Thank you again for the compliment. Light, bright photos are best. Going through the suggestions off Etsy, natural light is the way to go. After taking the pictures (I always take at least ten of each and pick form there), we then tweak the exposure levels through Photoshop.

5. What’s next for the Charming Frog?

For the future, we plan to add many more products. We have just launched our line of felted soaps and sugar scrubs (better recipes to come!). We plan to add sprays, perfumes, cold process soaps, and many others. It will be quite the process but hopefully will work out. One day, we would love to open our own B&M to showcase our beautiful products and offer them locally.

no comments