Flip Pal Scan Your Heart Out Blog Hop Week #4--Hammered Copper Hand Sculpture and Recipe Card Holder

How in the world do you make a copper sculpture anyway?!

Have you ever seen one of these mobile scanners? I had not ever heard of one until I got a special message from Kathy Peterson asking me to participate in this blog hop. The last three weeks I have been honored to participate in a small hand picked group of designers for

The Flip-Pal™ mobile scanner Design team.

Here's what I made:

Easy Illuminated Crystal Ice sculptures

Retro love bubble cookie tins

retro spice racks

Special thanks to the The Flip-Pal™ mobile scanner Design team leader, Kathy Peterson. Kathy Peterson is a Design Expert, Best Selling Author, TV corespondent on LIFETIME TV, Product Developer/Licensor and Master Gardener. It's an honor to be part of her team! For the blog hop, Kathy picked 6 designers across the country to help create some unusual craft projects of their choice using the Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner. So far, I have been not only excited to see what the other creative minds have devised...but also excited to have new friends. Can I just say how zany fun it has been to get to know these gals on Face Book these last few weeks?

Please don't forget to enter the drawing for a free scanner of your own Here. Yes! They're giving one scanner away a week!

So this week...I wanted to do a kitchen craft dedicated to my sweet mother. She will be so surprised!

I remember going into a lot of cooking and kitchen stores with my mom as a kiddo. We did a lot of window shopping. I learned that art early on. Mom was particularly fond of the copper pans and pieces, but we never really had the money for them. Dad is a master gardener for our church. He has been my whole life...and mom worked full time just to help keep food on the table. I got my first copper trivet as an adult from a flea market and felt like I finally had a piece of my mom's dreams in my kitchen. It was loved. Used...and adored. Eventually it was joined by a few other copper trivets. Now I have a very small collection that I keep in my home to remind me of my mom. I decided this would be a perfect piece to scan with my Flip Pal Mobile Scanner and turn it into a piece of kitchen art that would represent my mother.

My mom is also a belly dancer...and baker. She has a bachelor's in Home Economics education, a Master's in Business. She's also a paralegal for one of the largest law firms in Utah. So, now you know how I got to be so cool--and smart.

I'm going to give some credit here to an amazing friend of mine. As it turns out, I have a lot of creative friends. I was visiting with my friend Erica Miles...a kindred artist spirit like myself (http://www.edmiles.blogspot.com) and she showed me her hand. No, not the finger...goof. It was a paper mache replica of her amazing self.
Well...I started to think that I needed to do a recipe card holder in a similar fashion, but I wanted it to be a little more durable than regular paper mache and hold up in the kitchen. I also wanted it made at least in part out of copper! So...I started with masking tape and plastic wrap around my hand so the tape wouldn't stick.
Decided to go with aluminum foil instead...as the plastic was lame. It was not holding onto my coolness at all. Dorky plastic wrap.
After applying a thick layer of tape, I carefully cut through the layers with scissors and removed my hand.
Black spray paint was applied...but I didn't like it. It didn't have enough texture or something.
Contact! I found black leather contact paper that worked like a charm magnet.

Enter my personal high. I mean...I didn't inhale...but I did use it to excess. Yes folks...there's not a single bit of copper on this piece. I am a cheater. It's a LIE. A LIE. I'm confessing to you now.

I still don't have a "random-play-with-copper budget". We're working on that dream. Instead I used this...

But still...doesn't it look freakin' wicked decent?! I mean...for a fake? Okay...and added the scanned pictures of the trivet to the bangle jewelry-retread that I gathered from a thrift store because it reminded me so much of my mom's belly dancing garb. Okay...seriously...how many people can say their mother has ever put on belly dancing garb?--Actually, my brother saw mom dance at a competition show...and said he needed serious therapy after that. But, ya know...he's a professor. (Smooches bro'...you know I love you...)

The ultimate test of it's coolness of course, was if it could make my recipes look good. The recipes that my sweet sister Em painstakingly downloaded from my blog for over 2 years and transferred with love...to recipe cards for me to use in my kitchen. Can you just feeeel the love in my family right now? Yes...I'm seriously blessed.

So there it is.

Now hop over to the other gals in the design team and see what else crafty-cool is being made today on the The Flip-Pal™ mobile scanner. Don't forget to enter the drawing for a free scanner of your own Here. Yes! They're giving one scanner away a week!

Kathy Peterson is a Design Expert, Best Selling Author, TV corespondent on LIFETIME TV, Product Developer/Licensor and Master Gardener.
Linda Peterson is a wonderful multi-talented designer of jewelry and mixed media projects!
Chef Stephanie Petersen baker, food display artist, and cooking instructor.
Christy Tomlinsonis a fabulous paper and mixed media artist and more!
Amy Andersonis a delightfully talented decoupage queen, knitter and loves to sew!
Melissa Langer is a fun and energetic pug artist. Her art is all about crocheting and painting pugs!
Pat Sloan is a very talented designer and quilting expert!