Balzer Designs

Pysanky Inspired Easter Egg Place Cards

I know that Easter has come and gone, but I wanted to share the eggs I made this year!  I've shared before that I looooove pysanky eggs.  I think they're beyond gorgeous. 

What is pysanky? In the simplest of terms: you dye eggs multiple times adding wax at each layer to preserve the various colors.  If you can't quite visualize it, there's a clear photo step-out post on a Ukranian website here.

Inspired by pysanky but looking for an easier process, I made these pysanky inspired Easter Egg Place Cards...

...for my Passover seder:

I started with a carton of hard boiled eggs and a package of dye cups.

Put the pellets into the cups and then add vinegar and water and you've got dye:

I applied vinyl letters to each of the eggs and threw them into the dye.  After a while, I added new vinyl shapes to each of the eggs and kept throwing them into different dye baths.  Once I had peeled all of the vinyl off, I had a collection of gorgeous eggs!

I am definitely going to play with this idea again because I looooooove how they turned out!  AND they were a big hit at Passover.  Everyone was tickled to get an edible place card!

Thanks for stopping by!

ScanNCut + Simply Applique + Brother Embroidery Machine

You can make magical things happen when you combine the power of multiple Brother products!  In today's video I will show you how to make this absolutely adorable stitched snowflake wall art:

I know it's difficult to believe, but it really is an easy project that even a beginner can do -- no sewing experience necessary!  The "magical" part of this project is that your Brother embroidery machine does all of the sewing for you!  For real.  Watch the video for the how to: 

Here are some detail photos of that stitching:

So beautiful!  And so super easy!

I hope you'll give this project a try.  It's lots of fun to combine ScanNCut with Simply Applique with your Brother Embroidery Machine!

Thanks for stopping by!

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I am a paid spokesperson for the Brother ScanNCut.  It is a machine that I love and use.  All projects and opinions are my own.

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Exploring Easy Marble by Marabu

I tried a new-to-me product for the first time: Easy Marble by Marabu.  You can watch the video below to see my explorations -- including the moment that I lose my mind over how cool and easy it is to do!

Here are some of the marbled pieces I made:

Tags:

Papers:

Buttons:

Rocks:

And a necklace:

You can see some of the "real" paper marbling I did in a class last year here.  You can't control Easy Marble in the same way, but it is a much easier process and I think you'll agree: the results are amazing!

Thanks for stopping by!

Art Journal Every Day: My Traveler's Notebook

If you're new to Art Journal Every Day, there is a short introduction here.  All of the previous posts can be found archived here.  Remember, it's just ten minutes of nourishing your creative self every day!  No need to finish anything or even like it. If you've done some art journaling this week, use the hashtag #artjournaleveryday so that we can all take a peek.  Even if you're not on social media, you can see everything (from twitter, pinterest, instagram, and facebook) that uses that hashtag here. 

I have finally finished my Traveler's Notebook!  Hooooooray!  Before I show it to you, I've decided not to use it *gasp* until my current Bullet Journal is full. :(

I'm about half way through my current Rhodia book and it feels silly and wasteful to leap into the new book.  So...for now I'm allowing myself to use the sketchbook part but everything else is on hold until I'm ready to migrate.  Before I take you on a tour of the book, here's a quick video of me trying out the new sketchbook -- which is made from regular drawing paper -- with watercolor:

And now, the grand tour:

Here are links to the three tutorials I found most useful when I was putting my Traveler's Notebook together:

• What is a Traveler's Notebook
• Magnetic Dashboards
• Placement of Elastics

I hope you enjoyed this peek into my brand new homemade Traveler's Notebook!  I'm looking forward to finishing up my current Bullet Journal so that I can slide on over into this beautiful book!

Thanks for stopping by!

A Hand Carved Botanical Stamp!

I don't know how I missed sharing this here on the blog, but I carved a big beautiful new floral stamp in January! 

In the photo above you can see:

• my pencil sketch on the right
• the stamp on the left
• the first print in the upper right corner

It was 100% inspired by a stamp I made during a printmaking class in 2016:

I wanted something with a similar feel, but slightly more substantial feeling. 

The carving process was an act of patience.

And once it was carved, I stamped it on everything! 

In my art journal:

On deli paper:

On deli paper I then glued into my art journal:

(And notice the black tag to the right of the art journal page -- also stamped!)

I even stamped on a t-shirt:

Super duper easy and I love being able to wear my art around!  

Two tips for printing on a t-shirt:

• Use ink meant to be washable.
• Place something between the two layers of the t-shirt in case of any ink bleed-thru.

In every other way, it's exactly like printing onto paper!

Thanks for stopping by!