Hello friends,
Here today with my first post in the weekend community! @cmplxty has told me of the cool things that go on here during the weekend so I wanted to partake! Thank you Galen and others who made this cool concept possible! I don’t know you well but my husband does and is here often so he tells me that it’s great!
Tile Crafting
One of the things that has been taking off recently is our little online small business. It’s consumed the most of my time lately which is why I haven’t been able to get onto hive much. Good problems to have for sure but time consuming! It’s nice when efforts pay off, hopefully we can keep it up.
One of the things that I wanted to share is one of the little things we are trying to expand into, online crafting sales. Crafting and making cool decorations for people to buy seems to be really taking off, before this whole scenario happened. The businesses online can make a fair amount of money if you already like crafting and have the supplies. I’ve been into scrap booking and crafting for a long time, way before I met my husband so it’s always been a passion of mine.
One of the things we have is a great laser printer for our actual business and we have plenty of supplies we bought for other things so we figured let’s try to make some tile crafts. These can be versatile; used as coasters, ornaments or hung on a wall or something but they look pretty cool!
The things we needed for the quick project:
- water slide paper
- square tile, preferably white
- mod podge
- cup of water
- paint brush
- decal
- scissors
- Cricut cutter and app
One of the fun things is the children can help too since it’s pretty easy to do and mostly mess free.
The first thing to do is print the decal on the laser printer using the Cricut app, if you aren’t sure what a Cricut is, it’s a staple and very versatile machine for anyone doing all types of crafts! Ours was one of the best purchases we made, we love it. If you have an inkjet paper the process is more involved but I can explain that if needed. Once you have the decal printed to fit on the paper, cut them and leave some room on the sides, it doesn’t have to be exact. Once you have it cut, you are going to stick it in the water for about 15-20 seconds to separate the decal from the paper.
While it’s sitting in the water, it’s pretty easy to get the mod podge going on the tile. You want to squirt a bit of it in the center of the tile because we are going to spread it out on it.
Once it’s on the tile, use the paint brush to just roughly spread it out. It doesn’t have to be perfect since the decal is going on top of it.
Now that that is taken care of, it’s time to take the decal out of the water and remove it from the paper. This was something that I wasn’t sure about at first but then it makes sense once you see it! The decal is delicate so you have to be careful not to let it bend or fold into itself otherwise the ink will get messed up. If you’re a perfectionist like me, you can’t have that so we might be scrapping some. The first few will definitely be something we keep ourselves and not give away so it’s not a big deal. Practice makes perfect!
So now you can see that you have to hold it a certain way. This one wasn’t easy because I was also trying to take a picture so it folded and ended up coming out poorly. That’s okay, I won’t be taking pictures of these ones to sell, unless someone wants to buy them lol.
Once the podge is there and the decal is on it, it’s now time to smooth it out and get it sealed up. There are technical things you could use but we didn’t have that handy so we used a piece of cardboard lol. You could use a credit card, or even better a silicone edge tool. We found one about an hour later so once we make more we will use that, it’s far better. The cardboard didn’t work so well but that’s okay.
Now that each one of them were made it’s time to dry them. It takes about 15-20 minutes or so for the stuff to dry so we went and did something else while we waited. They didn’t come out perfect which is a little tough since the water slide paper is pretty expensive but that’s okay, we will get better with time. The bottom left and to right ones came out the best I think but we will keep those other two for ourselves or donate them somewhere.
Your Crafts?
What do you think of our little craft project? It’s a lot of fun and it’s a good way to get the kids engaged in doing some crafting!
Do you have the crafting bug? I would love to see what you have done recently! Please share something with me, I would appreciate that!
Stay well and positive, each day things get better!
Ssiena [A Hive original and exclusive]
We don't have kids, but if we did this is what we'd be doing with them; Craft stuff, outdoorsy activities, board games and things that inspire their imagination, get them using their hands and bodies and developing an interest in a wide variety of things, just like my parents did for me. Some parents thrust an iPad into their kids hands, plonk them in front of the TV or video game...That's not what I'd be doing though, and both of my brothers who have children 4 and under, don't do it...I think it's smart. It seems like you guys feel the same way. Nice post and great effort with the tile crafting.
Thank you Galen! This is absolutely what we try to instill in our son. He was right there with us for this entire thing and kept my husband on track with doing it when he kept doing other things haha. He’s such a little builder though, no joke we have big wooden 2 by 4’s in our living room every day for the past 4 months once he found them. It’s really special the hardware store Home Depot does a kid crafting thing for free once a month and when we started to bring him he went bonkers he absolutely loved it!
Picture doesn’t want to upload but yeah our son never used an iPad and we are getting him out of watching TV more and more lately. Some of our friends just stick their kid in front of it or a gaming system and let them go nuts. That’s not at all what we do and it shows with the bond we have with him. He always says please and thank you, wants to be with us and actually plays with us instead of just existing in the same room. Some close friends of ours have a daughter that they don’t sit on the floor and play alongside her and it shows with their relationship, she’s not right there with them for anything like ours is. Different ideals but these are things we cherish!
Long winded response but I appreciate you leaving a heartfelt comment :). I’m sure you make a wonderful uncle even if you didn’t have children of your own, you can still enjoy it that way. Our son won’t probably ever know his biological uncles and that’s sad but reality.
I think you guys are on track with your son and it speaks well of you for doing what you're doing - It's more work and time for you however he'll grow up better in my mind, more like it used to be in the old days.
I think I'm a good uncle; A balance of leading the little ones astray like all good uncles should and being a good influence. I hope they grow up knowing they can come to me and Faith for anything, it's an open door. I think my young niece and nephew will be good kids though, and adults afterwards, their parents will see to that.
Have to lead them astray sometimes! I'm an aunt (friend) to twin boys and you have to let them have a little fun at the expense of the rules from the parents!
The older ways of respect and family are exactly what we are going for. It's not easy but the right things never are, in our opinion! We hope he keeps up what he does now, for as long as he can. He’s such a little sweetheart with his words and actions and it’s not just because I’m his mommy, we are glad he’s more respectful then kids his age or our friends kids that have gone through his age.
I'm sure if you keep giving him good examples to follow he'll have a good base to work from and will continue those respectful and family-oriented ways moving forward.
Glad you found the time to share this with us. I've featured your post in the @HomeEdders weekly curation.
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Aw thank you very much I will take a look! :)
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STOPI love that your business is taking off! Busy is really good unless you are a fireman or an undertaker.
This is a very attractive piece. I could imagine lots of sets of coasters that might sell like classic cars or motorcycles. At least they would sell to me :)
Glad you stopped in here on the weekend engagement. Hope we will see you again soon.
Thank you! I was seriously considering quitting and giving up but for some reason the health stuff that started this year causes a lot of people to look for alternatives to things and found the product we sell! It’s been good because I have a masters degree and have been a working woman my whole life until we had our son so that was tough.
Hopefully the tiles will sell once we get better at them! I’ve got a few local people willing to check them out and some others but they will be well priced, we think! We got a real steal on the price of the tile so we want to try and make it very reasonable. Fingers crossed.
I will definitely post when I can, I like the people here but the business demands have been exponential. Gotta do what you can though so not a complaint here!
Appreciate the comment!