Thursday, March 1, 2012

My Heart goes out to you.......

Hello all!!!!
Sorry for the lack of articles this month been having a lot of stuff going on this month with getting engaged on Valentines Day... Yes I know big softy huh? OK at the end of our last article I promised you guys a special on my Valentines day gift to my Girlfriend (now fiance) so lets take a step away from costuming for a minute and do a little arts and crafts.

I have been planning to propose since about November but have been looking for a great (and geeky) way to do it. One day I was looking at the Wedinator picture site and this picture jumped out at me and stuck into my head:
 
I thought this was an awesome picture and decided that  this is what I was going to and bet that I could make it a little cooler. So away we go to our neighborhood Hobby Lobby. I walked around hobby lobby for a little bit looking at first for the items to copy this. I found them and then proceeded to look for ways to make it better. I have to give props to the staff of Hobby lobby for not looking at me like an idiot while asking questions about things. While I was walking thru the wood section  this jumped out at me For some reason this wood box just jumped out at me:

 I had found my box now I needed to find something for the "ring" to sit on. I walked over to the paper items section to see what I could find. I walked around a little bit till I found this:
 This is just a paper heart made form newspaper. the final things i picked up at Hobby Lobby was a few paints and then off to Wal-Mart for the "ring".

At Wal-Mart it took me a few moment to find out where they hid the rings at.... If you haven't figured out yet what the ring is.........:
YES !!!! Ring Pops!!!
This was the part that was geeky and fun for me. Now we get to the meat of the project making the project. The box its self was not that much work besides paining and sealing. The cool thing that happened was another one of what I call a "happy accident". I was trying to apply a clear glaze to the wood when it started to peel off. I decided to sand it off and start over, while sanding I noticed that the paint was taking on a very aged look:

So after stepping back and looking at that I decided to sand the whole box for that aged wood  look:

The heart was the most simple part all I did was cut a slot for the ring and painted the heart with maroon paint. The most work I did to the "ring" was painted the base silver since my Girlfriend dosent like gold. So after about a month of work here is the final piece:

The Girlfriend loved it so much she said YES!!! She decided that she wanted to save the ring pop so she actually took a small piece of plastic wrap and covered the "gem" with it to preserve it. 

So remember guys and gals that you can also make other things besides costuming look awesome and save your wallet .