How to age something...

[espoirperdu.livejournal.com]

I'm getting started early on thinking about and working on Christmas presents for this coming Christmas.  I was wanting to make some clay props for my friend's kids (a sheriff's badge mainly right now) and was wondering how I'd go about making it have a kind of aged looked to it.  I'm going to be using sculpey clay and Krylon metallic gold paint. 

I want it to kind of have the look of this one;

With the color and such.  My shape will be different.

Anyway, what's a good way to go about doing this?  I don't have any kind of distresser ink or ink pads of any kind and I'm really  not wanting to buy some just for this one project.  So what's a good, cheap way to go about this?  Would an acrylic paint work?  I will also have words stamped into the object as well.  Probably Sherrif and their names.

Preserving cardboard blocks

[momsalive1]

My kids are older now, but in their youth they had a much loved set of cardboard boxes that became forts, race tracks, stages, whatever.  Its time for them to go, but I'd like to preserve a few of the smaller ones for them.  The cardboard is colored like a brick, and is about the half the thickness of a packing box.  I have no idea how to proceed, but I know you will!  Thanks!

Ruffled Tote Tutorial

[lindapendant.livejournal.com]

I had sewn a tote like this a few months ago, and I made a second today and prepared a tutoral for those who were interested. You can find the tutorial on my craft blog here

(no subject)

[ilea.livejournal.com]

::Hint hint::
::nudge nudge::

Starting in June there's going to be some contests going on over on the Cg facebook page. So! if you haven't popped over there and liked it you might want to now.