Family Beehive Art Knock off

I grew up in Utah and as you may or may not know Utah is the Beehive state.  Throughout Utah you will can see beehive symbols in odd places, even the Utah Highway Patrol’s logo feature the beehive.  I like beehives, perhaps Utah rubbed off on me but there is just something so amazing about bees and their homes.(source)

On a recent trip to Deseret Books I saw this framed personal art.

Sadly, I couldn’t afford the $229 price tag, and then I remember a post at I Am Momma Hear Me Roar found HERE about getting cheap prints at Staples, by using the blueprint option, and thought and I can replicate this, for cheap.
I went to work and searched for a beehive image that I liked.

(source)

I didn’t want all the hoopla around it so I used my paint program and erased everything but the beehive.  I then went to The Graphic Fairy’s and found a bee image I liked (hind sight say’s I should have just used the bee’s in the original image, I think they kind of came out as looking like fly’s).
After I placed my bees where I liked them I went to Picnik and using tips from I Am Momma Hear Me Roar found HERE placed the final touches.  This was a gift for my brother so I but on his last name, the year he was married, and the little decoration underneath, the five bees represent my brother, his wife, and three sons.

I went to the Staples website and placed my order, within 10 minutes they called me back telling me that my order was ready, it was so quick.  This is what it looked like when I picked it up.

I took out my colored pencils and colored the beehive and bees yellow, and my vision was beginning to take place.

I then took wet black tea bags and rubbed them all over the paper, to make the paper not so white.

I had an old frame that the glass had broken out and had cardboard backing I originally planned on using a piece of extra white board that I had on hand but it wasn’t quite big enough.  Instead of buying a sheet of wood I decided to just use the cardboard, because I was trying to replicate a canvas look I wanted bubbles so I Mod Podged the paper directly onto the cardboard.
I still didn’t think that my paper was dark enough so I took some black acrylic paint and mixed it with my Mod Podge brushing it on top of the art work.  Once it dried I brushed on a few more layers of regular Mod Podge and framed it.

I am so happy with how this project came out.  My biggest regret?  Leaving it on the floor to dry, my mom’s dog walked on it and ripped a piece of the paper, whoops.  One reason I don’t have dogs. 
A break down on the pricing:
Printing                              $3.17 (tax included)       
Colored Pencils                   FREE (already had)                
Tea Bags                           $2.00                                
Picture Frame                      FREE (already had)                 
Mod Podge                         FREE (already had)           
GRAND TOTAL                  $5.17
Original Image                   $229.00                               
SAVINGS OF                  $223.83 
I saved a huge amount and even managed to make my image larger, BONUS!  I am so excited to give this to my brother and his family.   I originally planned on doing it for a family Christmas gift but I really couldn’t wait to make it.  Happy Birthday big brother.
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10 Year Old Support

First of all I apologize for the EXTREMELY long absence from the blog and unfortunately I don’t think things will be picking up very soon.  Summer has kept me busy and I have been doing work down at the Oneida County Crisis Center, which means I have been staying down at my parents house as it is too far to drive everyday. 

We also went on a vacation and I will be sharing pictures later in the week.  We went down to Southern Utah and did a lot of the National Parks down there, Bryce Canyon, Zion’s, The Grand Canyon (sort of), Cedar Breaks, and spent a few days at Lake Powell.

Today I want to share with you an amazing discovery I found at Barnes and Noble the other day.  We like American Girls in our household and unfortunately I discovered them just a bit to late, or so I thought.  While in the children's book section we were looking at a tower that had American Girls books and we found  The Care & Keeping of YOU.

Princess and I butt heads A LOT.  I love her but we have different personalities and we don’t always get along.  She is also now 10 and seems to be getting in the “Mom doesn’t know anything!” phase.  This book has been a blessing. It seriously covers everything for a growing girl.

Princess is not much of a reader but for the last week she has taken this book with her everywhere and every chance she gets she has her nose in the book.  In fact this morning she stopped before getting in the shower to read if there were any tips on cleaning.  There weren’t other than taking showers more often but I love that she is stopping to think about taking care of herself.

The table of contents is broken up into sections of: Heads Up!, Reach! Belly Zone, Big Changes, On the Go, and The Girl Inside.  It really does seem to cover everything.  I don’t expect it to cover our talks together and in fact this book encourages talking to adults about some of the issues, but I like that we have one book for all of our resources and I don’t have to look everywhere for resources.

The book was really cheap as well only $9.95 but biggest regret is not buying the entire set that they sale together that was right around $30.  I highly recommend this book for your growing daughter and had to express my amazement with this book, it really has become a blessing.

Mamma Mia

Well, I survived the trip but just barely!  I don’t know why I thought it would be easy to take for girls on a 4 hour drive.  We survived though and had a blast. 

My biggest regret is not giving ourselves more time.  The girls really wanted to go swimming and I wish that we would have left earlier to give us more time in the city.  Once we go there it only gave us 1 hour to swim and quite honestly we could have done without the swimming.  I was hoping to do nails and have time to actually eat dinner but it just didn’t work out. Summertime in Idaho means construction city and because the weather has been less than summerly lately I didn’t even think about construction.  We ended up eating only a block away from the venue but because I didn’t really know where it was we drove up to the parking garage and ended up almost being late as it took us 40 minutes to drive one block.  Which made pictures before not possible.

We made it though and the girls had a blast!  Some of the highlights:

The dresses!!!  The girls LOVED them!!!!

The binoculars!!! As before I didn’t buy the best seats so I wanted to make sure we could see every detail of the show.  We bedazzled them before hand, and got a lot of compliments on them.

Because of the time issue my pictures were after the show in the dark, yuck.  As I was trying to get a half way decent picture with the trailers in the background some of the cast came out.

We were able to meet Donna Sheridan (Kaye Tuckerman) and the daughter Sophie Sheridan (Chloe Tucker).  For those who don’t know this is a really rare opportunity, regular local plays it is common to meet the cast but not with these touring productions.  I must say Kaye Tuckerman was simply beautiful too, honestly I don’t think I have ever talked to anyone so beautiful in my life.  She was so nice and the girls were so impressed that she knew we drove such a long way to watch and that it was Princess’s birthday.  Apparently, they didn’t listen to me talking to her directly.  We spent about 5 minutes with them and it was really neat to be able to talk to them.

On the way back we stopped off and had lunch at Twin Falls.  The girls were too scared to go all the way on the observatory when they discovered that some of it was off of the ledge.

We are home and I am very glad that I was able to give the girls an opportunity to see an amazing show.