Sunflower Bumble Bee Wreath - My Favorite Creation/ BeeBeeCraft Unboxing - What Did They Send Me?

Hello my crafty tribe, this is Artsy Maddie and let's get creative. But before we do, I have something really exciting. I've gotten my first package from BB Craft and I am going to do an unboxing with you guys. I'm so excited about this, I haven't done this before and I just wanted to do this. I can't wait one more day to do this. So we're going to do this quickly before I show you guys my favorite craft of all time that I've ever made. So be sure to stay tuned for that because I don't want you guys to miss out on it and we'll get to see this exciting stuff together. So I'm going to be doing some Day of the Dead crafts coming up. Oh look at those, oh they're awesome. Look at all the detail of them. Oh those are going to be perfect. Look at all the colors, I love it. Yes, so I am planning on doing an altar, an ofrendas for my mom and my other loved ones, my other ancestors for Day of the Dead. I don't want to say it in Spanish, I'm scared I'll embarrass myself. But I love the Day of the Dead Mexican festival, I love the idea of it and I just have always wanted to try that. So I'm really excited. I ordered, oh look at those, oh the detail of those is awesome too. Yeah so I'm really excited, I can't wait to make this altar and do a few crafts to go on it. These are awesome, look at that detail. Oh that's going to be perfect. So I'll be doing lots of sugar skulls and I want to do a, I have an idea for a tray to do with these and put these in little flowers. Oh this is so exciting, look at this. This is so heavy, there's so many. Oh I'm so excited and impressed. So this actually came quite quickly. I always worry because I I'm in Canada and things tend to take a little bit longer to get here than all my friends in the U.S. tend to get things. Oh these are so good, they're so heavy, they're glass. Oh look at the details. I think this one had lots of different designs, I'm trying to remember how many. Oh that's awesome and there's so many of them, look. Can you guys see them all? Isn't that wild? These are going to be perfect too, everything's just like I hoped. Yay, I'm so excited, I can't wait to work on these projects. So I'm going to be doing those soon, in the next few weeks here we're going to be working on those so be sure to stay tuned for those crafts. I can't wait to share them with you and then we'll move on now to my favorite craft I've ever made and it's funny because it's a bee and I love the name of their store, BB Crafts. So they specialize in a lot of jewelry products which you can tell like by these wonderful beads. They have all kinds of like handcrafted really detailed beads, lots of sales, like all the time sales so be sure to check it out. I started a wish list and before I knew it there was like 50 things in it and it was so hard to decide so definitely be sure to check them out and look for these crafts coming up in the near future. Before I forget I just want to mention also that there is a YouTube partnership program for BB Craft so if you are a fellow creator on YouTube you can apply to that as well. So I'm going to have a link to that in my description box as well as a link to those awesome products that I received from them. And now with this bee here I am using the same preview picture from that metal embossed bee from craftoutlet.com that is still sold out. It does say it's coming in one week so we'll see. We'll see if it's sold out again but one day I will have that metal embossed bee but I just blew it into like a larger size and split it onto four eight and a half by eleven sheets so that I would have a nice big picture of a bee to work from. So I am building a wire frame and I am using coat hanger wire so that it's really strong and it will support the bee like stay together really well. So it is a little bit tricky to work with I'm just having to use some pliers and some strength to kind of bend it to get the shape really of the wings and the body that you'll see coming here. So it just takes a little bit of patience but definitely worthwhile because the bee ends up being really strong like I can tell it's going to last for a lot of years. So the wire form doesn't have to be perfect you just want to get it as close as you can but it's a little bit forgiving so just do your best and try and shape it just to the size of the bee more than anything like you don't want one wing to be much larger than the other one. That's what I was using the picture of the bee like as reference for that just to keep everything proportional and then the coat hanger wire is nice and strong but for the legs I'm just going to use this garden wire it's like a garden tie wire it's a little bit more pliable just because these shapes are smaller and I just thought it would be a little bit easier to make them out of this. So I twisted two pieces together to make it like give it a little bit more strength and stability but it's really easy to bend so really easy to get the skinny shape of the legs. Just tried to follow it closely it's not exact but just as close as you can get it. So I didn't show footage of the the middle wire but that is also a coat hanger as well and I just took my time and got it shaped closely to the body of the bumblebee and then same thing just wrapping around two pieces of the pliable wire together just to give it that extra strength. So once I had all the legs shaped I just went through with some hot glue just to stabilize them to the coat hanger wire to the wire body frame and I just have a little silicone mat underneath to keep the glue from sticking to the paper behind it. If you don't have a silicone mat maybe like if you have a silicone spatula or something to put underneath it that would work as well and then I'm just using this large styrofoam ball that I've cut down. It actually came it was in a thrift store bag with a bunch of craft supplies and it was already kind of hacked in half but I just did a a nicer cut down so it's actually a little bit less than half of a big styrofoam ball but it'll just help keep the shape of the head just keep it nice and round and then I'm running kind of a spine piece you know even though a bumblebee doesn't have a spine but just for strength and stability just start it out with this one piece down the middle and then I'm going to create the little ribs for shaping the body keeping it nice and full and round so I just took the time to bend each little rounded piece there for the body and then once I had them all in place just lots of hot glue to keep it all together and because the wires kind of has like a powdery coating on it like a paint coating it actually stuck really well like better than most metals stick with hot glue it actually held together really well and then I know this will seem crazy but I didn't have any black spray paint so I just opted for wrapping it all with electrical tape but definitely treat yourself to some black spray paint and just spray the whole thing black probably would be easiest so once I had it all wrapped in electrical tape I'm just moving on to the eye shapes so I just had a smaller styrofoam ball and you can see I'm just squishing it down to give it more of a oval shape like the shape of the bug's eye and then I just split that in half as well with a box cutter and just use my sharpening stone to make sure the blade was nice and sharp and then here I just had a flashback to my good old days of styrofoam carving I actually did some commercial styrofoam sculptures big huge ones and I was always covered in styrofoam so that brought back a lot of memories but I just had to do a like a little concave part on the inside of the eye just so that it would sit flush with that rounded piece underneath so I just kind of made like a little divot on the flat part of the eye and just gluing it all together with some Aleene's tacky glue and that held together really well they worked out good so then just to give the legs a little bit of stuffing for lack of a better term I just rolled up some tinfoil and then just cut them down to the size of the legs so this is just going to give it a little bit of padding underneath just so they're not totally flat just so they're a little bit more three-dimensional and then what I'm using here is the black parts of the bee reusable bags from Dollar Tree so just any reusable bags that are black and plastic would work for this it just helped with the strength and I think it'll be like durable and kind of resistant to maybe a little bit of weather although I do kind of plan on now just keeping it on the inside of my door just because I really love it and I want to take care of it and have it last for a long time so I was just trying to think lightweight and durable and this fabric came to mind and it worked out pretty good and that way I'm using it too it's just the black part of those bee bags that I had used in earlier videos so just wrapping it around I did a few wraps on each leg just to make them nice and strong and it really made them much more stable and yeah just gave it a lot of strength so just putting them on with hot glue you can see it kind of wrinkled up the plastic a tiny bit but I like it it gives it character and then just getting a coat of black paint onto the eyes and to the green wire to that pliable green wire that I had put around the face as well because I didn't need it to be as strong but it's just going to be to tie some of this plastic onto so now this technique I learned from Nadia my friend Nadia at DIY with Nadia highly recommend her videos I just love watching her Wednesday wreath videos so almost every single Wednesday she comes out with a wreath video I just love them I look forward to them every week so this technique I learned from her and it seems like she has it perfected so I just followed her step by step I will have a link to both of the videos that I've seen her use this technique in and she will walk you through step by step how to cut up this plastic how many you need for a wreath she's really perfected this technique I can tell just by the way she talked about it that she's made many of them and just seeing her do it so I had a lot of confidence in this and I'm glad I did because it worked out really great and I just love this technique it's so neat to have something other than the deco mesh kind of thing to do some wreaths and get that fluffy texture I just love it so great so I just cut down these plastic tablecloths two yellow two black just exactly like she tells you to do and then I'm just rounding the tips of them just to give it kind of a nice flowery kind of technique and then you're just tying them on really lightly you just take your time you don't want to pull too hard because you can distort the plastic a little bit but she'll kind of give you all the tips and tricks to follow and definitely check her videos out as well she actually made a really cool watermelon one I can't wait to make one of those next year as well so then look at that it's so fluffy it reminds me that little girl in despicable me when she sees the unicorn and just yells it's so fluffy I just love his little fluffy body he's so cute so just cut down the black same as the yellow get them all cut out and ready to go for your project and then I did I just tried to follow what was on that picture so I did the three rows of yellow two rows of black two rows of yellow and then I'll do two more rows of black and you can just see like when you really fill it out like do as many as will fit onto each row then you get that really nice fluffy texture and then I just painted some white highlights on it just like the just like the preview picture has so I'll actually share that with you in my google drives I just enlarged it I can't remember the percentage but just to fit the four sheets exactly just so he's a nice size to have on the door so this is just giving the kind of technique where like as if the light is shining on it just kind of those highlights and then to make the eyes look nice and glossy I'm just using gloss mod podge to go over everything so I just went over the white too that I painted onto that black plastic just to keep everything shiny and secure and scratch resistant can't have a project without some mod podge in it right so then for the face I just wanted them to be a little bit smaller so I cut down some of the black pieces to be a little bit smaller and then just around the face I'm going to have those smaller pieces just so you can still see the details of the eyes I didn't want to lose his eyes and the fluffiness of the of the plastic so they were a tiny bit trickier to do I'm not going to lie this isn't like a quick afternoon project I did work on this for a couple of evenings so it is quite an involved craft but I absolutely love it it was worth every moment it just is the best it's my favorite craft so now I'm just cutting down some sunflowers because he's a combination of things that I love sunflowers and bees and fluffiness so just combining all that so I just glued down the sunflowers to the stems just so they'd be nice and sturdy and ready to go onto the body and then for the wings I am going to use this technique again so these are the dollar tree placemats they come in gold and silver and then I'm just painting it white and I had some leftover from the previous project you may have seen this in another bee video as well so I'm just going to lay those wings over the back of this placemat and then I'm just going to take my time with the hot glue and I'm going to build like a little bridge over top of the wire to hold it to this placemat so I just took my time I held the wire down firm to the placemat while it was drying so just holding it in place take your time build those little bridges over top of the wire and then it held really well it's been on my door now for about a month and it's holding up great and I'm super happy with it so then I'm just cutting it out I left about a quarter of an inch just so that I wasn't cutting into any of that hot glue and then it gives it a nice clean edge as well this dollar tree placemat is really easy to cut through I actually really like crafting with it it's come in handy a few times and my dollar tree has hundreds of them so hopefully yours does too and then I just hit it really quickly with the heat gun just to get rid of any of the hot glue um what do you call them like spider webs all the little webbies that come from all that hot glue and then just gluing down the other one as well and then once those are done I'm just putting them into place with the zip ties so again I just used that preview picture to make sure I had them lined up evenly and kind of spaced them right on the body and then once I had them in place so I just did it loosely with the zip ties until I kind of was happy with him on both sides with the wing placement and then once I was happy then I just tightened them right up and this actually worked really well because that frame is so stable with the coat hanger wire that I was able to just pull them in tight and it's kept them in place really well and then once you have them all tightened up as tight as they'll go then you can just trim off the ends and then just as the final touch I get to add in those sunflowers so these ones are those little makeshift ones I had made from daisies before sunflowers were readily available I love that they're so popular I just see them everywhere this fall and I'm loving it and then I have some of the Dollar Tree ones that I found as well so I just alternated with the lighter brighter yellow and then the paler yellow beside it and then once I had them all in place so I just took my time and got them all placed how I wanted made sure it looked good and then once I had them placed where I wanted them I just took them back out and used some tacky glue some of the Aleene's tacky glue on the back of it and just kind of put some all around so that it would actually glue to the bottom of the plastic and keep it in place so you just kind of dig like a little hole to put it back into and it worked out great those are staying in place too so I am just super happy with this project hopefully you guys will like it please let me know if any of you are are encouraged enough to try this project that would just make me so happy you guys have been sharing so many projects with me and I just love it I love getting to know all of my crafty tribe it's just awesome if we haven't connected yet be sure to come over to Instagram and connect with me there as well and I love to share my ideas on Pinterest as well if you have a Pinterest account definitely follow along and I'll probably follow you back same as Instagram so I can't wait to to be in contact with you guys and have you guys share your crafts with me as well and thank you guys so much for watching be sure to check out bb crafts for all their daily deals and great sales that they offer as well thanks so much for watching guys talk to you soon