Beaded Bowling Pin

It's sleeting here in Tulsa, as we are caught in the middle of a huge winter storm. Yikes! I've got a pot of chili on the stove, and we are hunkering down in the house for a quiet weekend. We have no fireplace, so Scott and I are hoping that we are in a happy place on Tulsa's electric grid. We have a gas stove, so if worse comes to worse, we can stand around it to get warm. But so far, so good. It's a perfect time for Scott to bury himself on the computer, and for me to CRAFT!

As you can see, I've spread my crafting out on the dining room table. (It's too cold in my basement studio.) I am working on the craft segment for Monday morning on Channel Six. LeAnne Taylor and Carina Sonn asked me to help them decorate a bowling pin! It is for a charity bowling tournament for the Tulsa Big Sisters organization to raffle off. We decided that since it's a bowling "pin" ... that it needs a "pin-up" girl. So, I surfed the web for a cute pin-up girl to print out. I had to add a flippy little skirt, so that she was cute, but covered. I like how it turned out. I also printed out the Six In The Morning logo to put on the pin.

First, I painted the bowling pin with Krylon's plastic paint. It took 3 coats to cover up all the bowling alley marks and the stripe. The next thing I did was decoupage the pin-up girl and the logo to the pin. Then I applied double-adhesive sheets to the entire pin. Whew! What a job. That's as far as I've gotten in this picture. I'll post again when I get further along.



Here is a better look at the bowling pin after I covered it with the adhesive sheets. I used a craft knife to cut all the way around the pin-up girl, so that I can cover her with clear beads as the last step. In this pic, you can see where I've cut angles and peeled the pink sheet away from the bottom of the pin. Then I stuck pre-cut star adhesives on that area so that I can bead them separately.



Oh man! I've started beading as you can see. I decided to do the whole bowling pin in red, white and blue beads. The red beads are at the bottom of the pin, with white in the middle, and blue above the white. I'm putting different sizes of beads on each section for more texture. The little bitty beads don't have holes in them, so they are absolutely beautiful.



I love it! I accidentally got a few stray beads in the wrong sections, so I'm having to flick them out with a craft knife. Scott walked by and laughed at the beads flying around the room. I guess I'll have to get the vacuum out and de-bead the house when I'm finished. Yes, the electric is still on. I have my flashlight nearby in case the ice storm knocks out the electricity.

I really was worried about LeAnne and Carina's autographs showing up after I applied the clear beads over them. But, it looks great. As you can see, I am leaving the beading on the pin-up girl for the last step. When I do the PattieWack-n-Craft segment on Monday, I am going to let LeAnne and Carina peel off the pink sheet that's covering the adhesive and dip it into clear beads for the viewers to see.
I can't wait!



Tada! It's as done as it's gonna get until Monday morning. I am dying to finish beading the girl, but it will just have to wait. This pic is so bad, with the glare. You can barely make out the Channel Six logo. It looks much better in person. I'll have a better photo for you after it is finished. Now I think I'll go have some chili and then watch a movie while the sleet keeps coming down.