Bacon Roses

Finding gifts for your husband is difficult. While you would be happy with flowers or a cute resin statue for your garden, but him, not so much. This is a great Valentines Day gift idea for your meat eating man who has everything. 

Materials:

• 1 Package of Bacon
• Tin foil
• Fresh Spinach leafs
• Toothpicks
• Bamboo skewers

First you want to roll the bacon into a rose shape. About half way through rolling your rose, you may want to fold the bacon in half and continue wrapping around the center so that your rose is thin at the bottom and chunky in the middle.

Wrap the tinfoil tightly around the bottom of the rose and use additional foil to mold a flat bottom so the rose can stand up in the oven.  If you shove a toothpick through the bacon rose, that helps keep the rose in its place. It is important to keep the bacon standing up while baking, or else they are just laying in their grease and lose their shape.

Bake in the oven 350 for 20 minutes. If you like your bacon crispy, you may want to test out your roses to make sure they are the desired crispness before taking them all out of the oven. 

Once the bacon rose has cooled, push 2 spinach leaves through the bamboo skewer then put the bacon rose on top. 

I paired the bacon roses with a dark chocolate fondue dip. Ever have chocolate covered bacon? Its da bomb.

Grade: A

Skill Level: Low 
Difficulty Level: Low
Frustration Level: Low
Cost: $$

Mixed Media Art Dresses

 Yikes, I've been so busy with a back up of creations that I don't have time to blog the directions. It is more complex with mixed media art because the process is creative and haphazard. I grab a bunch of papers, paints and doodads then just start gluing and decoupaging. After an hour I've created an absolute mess I look up and think "Oh No, I forgot to take pictures. The very first time I did canvas mixed media art I was very careful to write the directions (see here). However now, i'm an unorganized mess, so if I skip a few steps here, please forgive me.

My friend opened up her new store in the summer and I wanted to bring her something that she could hang up that was personal. She loves bling, accessories and the Disney Princesses so I decided to make her 3 mixed media canvas creations.

Materials
Acrylic paint
Piece of bubble wrap
Canvases
Scrap book paper
Butter fly stamps
Wire
Aleene's craft glue
Rhinestones
Modgepodge
Fuzzy things, tulle or any fabric you found around the house
Modpodge

First I painted the canvases a base of 3 colors, red, burgundy and black, using the bubble wrap to blend the colors together.

I drew up some paper tracers on card stock as a template so I could make dresses hats and purses out of the scrap book paper. I wish I could share the template with you, but I forgot to scan them in DOH!

Once Upon a time is my most favorite craft paper (hint hint if anyone is looking for a gift for my up coming birthday). I used this paper for part of the back ground because it blended in nicely with the background I painted. I ran the scrap book paper through the printer and printed out: 

"A pair of shoes can change your life, Just ask Cinderella"

"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that bling"

"Where friends come first, style is a bonus" (this happens to be her store saying)

I used the gold wire that I had in my beading kit to create mini coat hangers for the dresses and added rhinestones, tulle or fuzzy to them to give the looks you see here. 

After the glue on the canvas dried, and I stamped the background with butterflies and white ink then used Modpodge all over the background. When the modpodge finally dried, I glued on the dresses. 

You can see them in person at Girlfriends On Main