Zach's Treasure Chest

My nephew Zach is very much into pirates and likes to play-act as Captain Jack Sparrow. So one day as I was browsing in Joann and saw an unfinished chest similar to this one:

I thought, Aye a nice present ye be.

I also purchased two types of brown acrylic craft paint (Americana's Dark Chocolate and Joann's Chocolate Brown) and crackle medium. The dark chocolate coat came first, then I painted on the skull with white pain I already had. I also used white to paint "Cap'n Zach" on the top. You don't see that now, but more on that later. The last coat was the chocolate brown, which looked really red compared to the dark chocolate. It looked OK on most of the chest but the skull looked too pink.

That night I actually had trouble sleeping because I hated the look of the hand-painted Cap'n Zach so much. The next morning, I sanded it off and repainted it. I then created the Cap'n Zach we now see on paper (using GIMP and the font "Pieces of Eight") and decoupaged the letters on. I also still hated the pink tinge of the skull. I told myself to leave well enough alone, promptly ignored myself, and applied a wash of water & dark chocolate over the skull. I then Modge Podged the whole outside (except the bottom, which is unpainted).

I also couldn't figure out why there wasn't any "crackle." I hadn't used crackle before, and I suspect that the browns weren't contrasty enough.

I painted the inside lid and bottom edges in the same way (minus the crackle) and decoupaged the "Dead men tell no tales" (used GIMP and the font "Bones" to print on paper) inside the lid. While some of this was drying, I found some scrap material, cut it to size, and ironed fusible interfacing to the back. I later glued in the material using Modge Podge.

The last step was writing Zach a little message on the bottom and going to the Dollar Tree to buy cool stuff to put inside. I think I'll go back and buy a couple more bags of gold coins before I wrap it up!

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Paper doll Christmas present

I have been wanting to try my hand at making paper dolls for some time, and so decided that would be my niece (really cousin once removed, but who's counting) would get for Christmas this year. I later found out that she wanted some anyway, so peachy keen!

I'm not great at drawing by hand, so I opted to use the use the program with the unfortunate name GIMP, which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It's free, open source, and terrific. Next, I needed a body. 'Cause I can't draw one. I searched Google Images for "Paper Doll" and "Paper Doll Template," finally settling on Betsy, from McCall.

What I found quite difficult to do was graft my niece's head to Betsy's body. The colors were never quite right; I couldn't get the head size to look normal, and I couldn't get the Zoey head to look cartoony-enough to match Betsy. Ultimately, I opted to cartoonify fully Zoey's head using directions found after a Google search (of course I can't find the URL now). Basically, you place an image in GIMP and use the tools to re-draw the image. I did the same for Betsy's body, then merged the head and body together like this:

I used GIMP to create all of Zoey's clothes, always keeping the doll Zoey on screen as a template so that arms and legs would match. In all, I created two princess dresses (blue and yellow), Daphne (from Scooby Doo doncha know), a Scottish girl, a ballerina, a mermaid, and fairy.

The doll is printed on glossy laser printer paper and adhered with Modge Podge to chipboard, which was cut to size (EXACTO knife and scissors). The clothes were all printed on the same glossy paper.

When all was said and done, I thought, how am I going to give this to her, in a Ziploc bag? I didn't feel like making a box, particularly as at the time I was finishing her brother's pirate chest (stay tuned for that). I decided to put everything in a "book." I created a little map called "Zoey's World" that featured places Zoey the Doll may wish to visit using the particular outfits I made. I included a castle (natch), horse stables and pasture, a village (that would include libraries, museums, theaters, shops), an animal sanctuary, a haunted house, an amusement part, a magic pool, and a pirate cove. Zoey & I recently spent time in an amusement park, and I thought the pirate cove may encourage Zoey and her brother to make-believe together.

In the book, each outfit has its own two-page spread: the verso depicts the Zoey Doll in the outfit somewhere in Zoey's World; the recto holds the outfit itself.

I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, though I wish that I had been able to make more outfits. Also, I learned so much more about GIMP as I worked and, as I said, have really come to enjoy that program.

So, below is the book I made for Zoey. I wanted to put the images in as a slideshow, but now that Picasa is Google Plus images, I can't seem to figure out how to do that. (??)

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