Thursday, April 30, 2015

Birthday Pool Party Invitations

Here are the birthday invitations for Tommy and Kelly's birthday pool party. I really like the shark, think I did a great job on it. I like the mermaid too, it really surprised me, it turned out better than I thought it would.

As you can see, I took out some information on the invitations, its gone for safety. The general public doesn't need to know when and where this pool party is happening, and they don't need my friends number. The one thing that I thought I could have made better was the gradient in the background. I thought the blue at the bottom may have been too dark, but you could still read the info after it was printed. My friend said the gradient looked fine.

I must go, have many things to do and a little one to look after; very busy, but please stay tuned. Happy Imagining!

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

The Birthday Shark

I've been busy, taking care of a baby is busy work. Right now, I'm designing a birthday party invitation for my Godson, Tommy, and Kelly, his little sister. Their birthdays are 5 days apart, but they are 6 years apart. This is the shark for the invitation, the theme is underwater because it's a pool party. For Kelly's portion of the invitation, the design theme will be mermaids.

I also have a wedding that I'm going to be in this Saturday for my very good friend, my Sis Janice. I'm tired, but I do promise that I will be coming back and blogging more. I know I say that a lot, but, I think things are starting to lighten up.

Stay tuned. Happy Imagining!

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Looking Through the Barrel of a Canon

This is my Christmas present. I have wanted a DSLR for years, and found a good deal on this package. I got a camera - Canon EOS Rebel T5, 2 lenses and a camera bag; and the store even threw in a 16GB memory card.

Here is the inside of the bag.

The front of the Canon.

The back of the Canon.

I am still familiarizing myself with the camera. It is fun to practice by taking Pictures of Mara Jade and MadCat. Once the weather warms up a little, I can take Mara out for a walk and take some outdoor pictures.

Well, I better go, I hear my little one asking for me :-). Happy Imagining!

 

Friday, January 2, 2015

Happy New Year! Now to Get Back at It!

It has been a long time since I have posted on my blog. I was pregnant, then had my baby girl on October 17th. It is awesome, I love her very much! It can also be exhausting, which is to be expected since this is my first child.

I will be back with projects, I am starting to get back to normal and am getting use to toting a little one along with me. And, maybe someday, she will be my little helper.

My husband and I are Star Wars fans and named our daughter Mara Jade. He has read a lot of the expanded universe books, and that is how we came up with our daughters name. For anyone who has read the Star Wars books, they know Mara Jade is Luke Skywalker's wife. I won't go into her whole story, you can Google it.

Happy New Year to everyone. Happy Imagining!

Monday, June 2, 2014

Concrete Countertop Tutorial - Making the Countertops

There is a fix in this post about the paste wax and what it was used for. You will see what was originally written with a strikethrough through the words, and after is what was revised.
I know I said awhile back that I would have the tutorial for the kitchen project and the concrete countertops on here soon, and that was a few months back. I'm splitting the kitchen project into smaller tutorials, so there will be a few. This one is the start of the concrete countertops, so final pictures will be posted after awhile, I want to clean and de-clutter my kitchen before taking pictures of it... you know, so it looks nice. I'm not a slob, my kitchen is just well used and sometimes there is a spill or some dirty dishes... you know, like normal people's kitchens. Well, enough about my cleaning habits, onto the tutorial.

These first four pictures are of my husband placing together existing cabinets to make an island. We had a peninsula of cabinets and decided that we did not like the layout and we would much rather have an island, plus, where the peninsula was connected to the sink counter was where the dishwasher had to go. Yes, we didn't have a dishwasher when we moved in, but it didn't deter us.


 
Here is our new hot glue gun. My little pink one wasn't going to cut it for this project. We used the hot glue gun to glue together some wood slats to make the template for the molds, as you can see above in the first four pictures. The molds are the next four pictures.




After gluing down the boards for the molds and adding a bead of silicone to the edges to round out the corners of the countertops, we added paste wax to the whole mold to make sure the concrete would release from the mold easily. After gluing down the boards for the molds, my husband added a layer of the paste wax to all of the corners of the countertops. This is so the bead of silicone can be rounded out with the edge of a PVC pipe (to give it a nice edge) and the excess silicone can be pulled away easily from the boards.
  
   


Here's the concrete mixer that we rented from The Home Depot.
  


Here is James mixing up the concrete, it is a dusty job.


We had to pour the concrete real fast, so I didn't get many pictures of that. We needed a textured roller, so we use package tape and taped straws to a paint roller so it would put bumps into the wet concrete.



Here's James pouring some concrete, you can see the bars in the countertop for the sink. We put the bars on either side of the sink to reinforce the thinner parts of the countertop.




After pouring, we covered the molds with plastic so it wouldn't dry out so fast.



So, after the countertops set, we took them out of their molds and checked to see how they turned out.



We then mixed up some cement, which is concrete without the aggregate. The cement is used to fill in little pock marks left from air bubbles.


I have pictures of the countertops mounted with a clear, shiny epoxy coat on them. I didn't get any pictures of us applying the epoxy coat because we had to work real fast on that process before the epoxy set. The next post will be final pictures of the countertops mounted in the kitchen.

Please stay tuned. Happy Imagining!

Friday, May 16, 2014

Some Self Promoting... Check Out My Sites

I decided to do a little self promoting today. Check out my Facebook page facebook.com/caliradan. You can also follow me on Twitter twitter.com/caliradan, and on Instagram instagram.com/caliradan. I am getting back my energy, so there will be more posts. Of course, I have to warn you, there may be more posts about baby stuff.

Stay tuned. Happy Imagining!

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Space... The Final Frontier... Again

This is an update on a post I did before. The title was "Space... The Final Frontier" and it was posted on 02/13/14. I stated in my post that this was a painting that my Father didn't finish. Awhile back, I found out from my Brother that my Dad painted this specifically for a background image for displaying his spaceship models.

I will be back with more post, please stay tuned. Happy Imagining!