What I've Been Up To -- A Round-Up

I've been crafting as much as possible, but it's much, much harder being a single Mom than I expected (and I grew up with a single Mom, so I knew it was tough already!)  Also my supplies are here, there and everywhere, and that's a challenge: I have almost no craft paint--where did it all go??  But this also means I'm using and de-stashing what I do have, and that's excellent.

 

It's hard to take credit for these, because it was mainly arranging jump rings in the right way, but these are three of my jewelry pieces I completed in the last month.  These blue crystals are ones I've had since 2010!!  See what I mean about needing to de-stash?   The picture on the left is a crude attempt at wire-wrapping, which is harder than it looks, people!  The 2nd photo of a jumble using a large dark blue crystal is simply on a large jump ring with several wire-wrapped pieces I bought from other sellers, which I took apart and re-arranged.  The 3 light blue crystals are attached to a wide-link chain using jump rings, and I'm so glad to get all 5 of these crystals onto necklaces!

This is a 16x20 canvas with 2 coats of crimson acrylic paint and hearts cut out from a pad of black, gray and white patterned paper.  The shiny paint worked out well with Mod Podge Gloss, so I'm glad I didn't have to handle the sheen issue with this one.  I'm very into black and white decor right now, with red accents, so this piece became my inspiration for decorating our new place (when we get one.)  And my beloved turquoise fits in well too, which makes me happy.



As far as a sketchbook, I've just started one this past week.  I'm using a Blick 9x12 Mixed Media wirebound journal.  I have been low on inspiration, but decided to let my desire for organization and order lead the way.  When in doubt, make a color chart!  :)

I have 19 Caran D' Ache Neocolor IIs now, {but no craft paint!!  LOL!!} and I bought myself the 12-piece set of Derwent Art Bars for Christmas, and they're extremely similar so far.  I've seen where other artists greatly prefer one over the other, but I haven't done much with either, so I have no strong preference yet.  

This is an attempt at a side-by-side color comparison chart.  I wanted to see color families together, rather than going by their names.  I've written the name of each in its space, so it's a great way to see what color I need.  (The whole violet/purple/magenta thing gets me every time, and my reds go purple or my purples go red.)  

Up next features this graph which was made on one of those insomnia nights, when I just could not go to sleep.  Allowing myself to go a little insane over straight lines and perfect squares keeps my mind off the clock, so I'm more focused on the page in front of me than on "Oh man, I have to get up in ... hours!"

 These are my markers.  These are everything from Crayola markers to Faber-Castell Pitt Big Brush Artist Pens, and also some Sharpies and "Power Liner" alcohol markers from the clearance section of Hobby Lobby.  In this case, it's about the color and not the quality.  I was also able to throw many markers away that had dried up over time.

I also have a blending marker, and the alcohol inks react with it and makes a kind of watercolor pencil thing happen, and I'll be exploring that in the future.

This last craft is more fun than craft, but whatever.  My son is totally obsessed with Batman right now, and I think we own every single Imaginext Batman toy there is.  Guess who comes with almost every set?  Batman!  We were drowning in Batmen, so James asked me to paint his extras into new costumes.  The lime green paint is a free sample of Liquitex acrylic spray paint, and the dark gray was made using black acrylic mixed with a tiny bit of white.  The 3rd one got painted red, but you can only see a little of him in this photo.  

James named them Grass, Oil and Fire, but I'm not sure if they are bad guys, good guys, goons or sidekicks. 


The Liquitex spray paint is AWESOME!!  It is seriously fun to use, it's not anything like normal spray paint.  There is a depth of color, it's basically the same as their regular acrylics except in a format that is easy to use, inexpensive and I even used it on some papier-mache shapes from Michael's with a brush and it worked beautifully.  (I had no other green to use!  Ugh, I hate moving!!)  I took pictures of the cute lil' flower, but they mysteriously disappeared and I have nothing to show you, but you should try out the Liquitex Spray Paint.

Thanks for seeing what all I've been up to.  I love this last picture of the newly-painted Batmen, so let it inspire you to do something totally crazy with your art supplies!

Coke Bottle Cherry Blossoms: A Pinterest Success Story

I love cherry blossoms.  I went to college in Macon, GA, where there's a Cherry Blossom Festival every year.  Walking to class was amazing--the blossoms were like magical snow blowing in the warm southern spring air.  I keep promising myself I'll go back, but somehow year after year passes by and Life sends me on a detour....

Source: alphamom.com via Kimberly on Pinterest

I've had this pin on my Pinterest board for a while.  I admit I was skeptical, but this actually is quite simple.  I don't have any experience with stamps, so make sure your inner perfectionist is taking a nap while you paint.

The instructions on  Alphamom are excellent.  I did mine a little differently, but I love how it ended up anyway.  I'll add a couple more tips:

1. See the bottom of the bottle in this photo?  You want paint over the entire bottom, not just the obvious five "petals."  It gives you the perfect teardrap shape as well as a centered dot.  So be generous with the paint on your plate!

2. I used a 20oz Coke bottle rather than a 2 liter.  It was fine for my 11x14 canvas panel.

3. I painted the canvas sky blue before stamping.  Well, technically my 6-year-old did :)

4. I stamped blossoms first and then made the branches.  I do NOT recommend this--follow the instructions on Alphamom and paint the darn sticks first.

I also made a smaller version on an 8.5x11 blue cardstock and had equal success, so don't think you have to buy a canvas.  You can also use any color for your flowers--this is by no means limited to cherry tress.

I'm not feeling the "Spring Fever" as so many others are, but doing this painting is a reminder of why Spring is awesome.

Materials: 11x14 canvas panel, craft paint, brushes, and a 20oz Coke bottle

Me+Art Journaling=True Love

Epic Art Journalist Julie Fei-Fan Balzer has a great blog, and today she answered the main question: How To Get Started.  At the end, she asked everyone to list how each of us started as well.  So this is my story:

I'm very much a beginner, and totally new to "art."  I started out using Crayola products: watercolors (I'm still using these,) crayons, colored pencils, etc.  I figured that if I didn't like them, I hadn't wasted any money because my son plays with the same things.  And of course, with Crayola, the total for a little of everything was less than $10.

Well, and craft paint too--I've been what I consider a "crafter" for years now, so I had plenty of craft paint acrylics to use.

I've written in my journal my entire life--my mom encouraged this and I've never stopped.  She gave me my first journal at age 5!  So I started by adding a few pictures to my journal entries.  And then one day last year I leaped and created a full "Art Page."  It was a total failure but I LOVED it!!  I was hooked, and I've been consistently learning and experimenting ever since!

So I'm going to show my first Disastrous page and some others that stand out in my mind.  My apologies to these artists who inspired me--at the time, I never thought about showing my journal, so attribution was not important.

I had no plan, no idea of what to say, how to use the supplies I had just bought or anything else, but it was SO-MUCH-FUN!!  It reads "Don't let the Gray blind you from the Sparkles all around."  The inspiration was a cute pin on Etsy, a cloud with little heart crystal raindrops.

Luckily, even with this disaster, I had the idea to keep notes of what I'd done.

 And some favorites:

 I spent hours, an entire day actually, creating and making flower stencils of my own.  I've never used them to this day...but I felt the need back then.  I really liked this quick entry I made, using a printed page from something online and my Pitt Big Brush pens.

I used a black and white printable, colored over it with my Pitt Big Brush pens, and pasted a photo of my son on the next page, and covered both with tons of Mod Podge.  This is in my top 5 favorite pages :)

 And my FAVORITE:

 It's a sketch I found on the web somewhere that I printed out in black and white and then painted over myself.  This was my first time using watercolors, which made the ink run, so I really turned this into a jumping off point for my own version.  I loved (LOVED!) what I'd made, and then used acrylics on the sky and learned the hard way that acrylics are OPAQUE and ruined my piece!  I was able to remove most of it, and ended up starting over the next morning once the page had dried, and was able to make something I love.  The quote above says "Yearning to hear the whispers of my soul."

All these pages are from last year.  I have some more recent works to show as well.  These are not necessarily in a journal, but I've been happy with these pieces:

 I had this page complete--my first "real" ART JOURNAL page, and then I ruined it by adding glitter to the words.  So I covered them with the same paper, but I no longer liked my quote, so it's been sitting for a while.  I finished yesterday, using "ART and Courage Becoming Friends" as a title.  I covered the entire page with packing tape, a move I may later regret, in order to protect it from paint overflow from other pages--I get messy with the edges :)

Another recent favorite, I have no idea where the title came from, but once I had the 3 pink pictures together, the title "Only Wake Me Early If You've Brought Me Pink Roses" jumped into my mind.  NO IDEA where this came from--hubby never buys me flowers, and I thought I was fine with it--he gives me gifts all the time, just not flowers--and I get up early for no reason all the time.  Oh well, I'm putting this in the Art For Art's Sake column.

And for last, this is the outside of my current art journal.  The cupcake is white, brown and red felt, with marker "sprinkles" so it stands out against the white page, along with a flower and a K both painted with metallic paints.  I've titled my journal "Flowers and Cupcakes" to reflect my recent obsessions.  I couldn't use the flash because the entire thing is also covered in clear packing tape for protection--why did I choose white?  Oh well :)

Adding a "Pin It" Button To Your Blog Posts

http://fuckyeahryangosling.tumblr.com/

Pinterest is a brilliant source of the best of the Internet, a new way of using and sharing ideas and images, that is so new that the rules are being written as it grows bigger and bigger each day. There has been an interest lately of the ethics, rules and etiquette of this source of information.  The image above is from a great article on Pinterest's appeal and creative new ways to use it.

I've had my "Follow Me On Pinterest" button on my blog gadget list since the day I joined the site.  Following the advice of several articles on bad Pinterest manners, I've added a "Pin It" button at the end of each post.  This button is supposed to make it easy to track down an original source and let your readers easily attribute your work.  Use it to post new pins to your boards rather than just "repinning" at random.

So I wanted that cute little button at the bottom of my blog posts, if only to show my love and support for Pinterest...but learning how to add it to every post was easier said than done.  "Copy this code, paste it here," no problem, I can do that!  Instead it turned out to be a little harder than that....

Okay, it was A LOT harder--2 hours of teeth grinding frustration for me!  Pinterest seriously needs to clarify their language for us Hobby Bloggies!  They have both "basic" and "advanced" coding, but neither helped.  It took me a while, but I had finally found a great source: Add Pinterest Pin It Button To Blogger Post literally spells it out for you.  Kind of......

If you also use Blogger, and you are as clueless about HTML as I am--follow his steps, one at a time, and you'll have it done in less than 5 minutes!  He even tells you how to customize the image to match your site!!  

My problem was using my Ctrl+F button to find "<data:post.body/>." At the time, I had about 10 tabs open, 2 Word docs and a notepad...massive confusion was the inevitable outcome of such chaos--don't do that to yourself!  I finally managed to find that line of code in my blog template and was able to move on.

But here's my other mistake: if you want the pin to be at the bottom of your posts, you paste it "below" <data:post.body/>.  "Below" can be a relative term, especially for the HTML-disabled.  Does it go immediately after that code, on that same line?  Should I hit enter on that line and paste it on the new line in the middle of those 3 lines??  Does it have to be in line with the rest of the code?  I swear, I can make the simplest task difficult....

For me, it goes after the last ">" of that last line of that little group of code. In my code, it looked like this originally:
      <data:post.body/>
      <div style='clear: both;'/> <!-- clear for photos floats -->
    </div>

      <more code

And now it looks like this:
      <data:post.body/>
      <div style='clear: both;'/> <!-- clear for photos floats -->
       </div>
Copy and paste the new code from this article here
      <more code

"Pin it" button: conquered!!  

It Helps If You Can See It

I've been trying to organize my craft supplies lately, and I've learned one very, very important lesson: if you can't see something, such as a great piece of fabric you bought 2 years ago, then it will continue gathering dust while you spend hours a day looking on Pinterest for a Muse.  But I also came to this important lesson through my mom.

It's beginning to be actual Fall here in Northwest GA now, and the leaves are beginning to fall.  My mom was raking leaves in the yard of their new farm, and burning them once the pile was large enough.  She was using a rake, thank God, because when she went back to stir the pile and make sure it was a controlled burn, a black snake jumped out at her!!  It wasn't poisonous, but still, it scared her so badly she said she went from the yard to the porch in 2 steps!  She didn't know she'd raked a snake until it was too late.

So this story, along with this very awesome idea of Ashley Connelly on The Creative Place, I made my own version of a frame and twine inspiration board.  I plan to use it to display fabric swatches, craft ideas and inspirational "crafty" sayings. 

I happened to have a large picture frame where the glass had broken.  I measured the sides and made the decision to create my twine lines every 2 inches all the way around.  Ashley used nails and tied her twine, but this frame is most likely plastic, so I went with the good old hot glue gun and burned fingers route. 

Here's the finished frame, it'll help my explanation make sense.  I've not written "tutorials" before.

I marked where the lines should lay and started gluing all the way up one side (let's call it north, for my sake.)  I then moved onto the adjacent side (east) and glued twine lengths there as well.  To connect the east twine to the opposite side, I pulled the twine as taunt as I could and made sure the glue had a good hold (hence the burned fingers.)  For the last (south) side, I braided the twine in and out of the east/west lines and again made the twine as taunt as I could.

Now, I love my glue gun, I really do.  But there are times when it fails me, and I did not want this to be one of those times.  So as a precaution, to keep the twine from popping off, I glued a long piece of twine all the way around the frame (on the lip where the glass would normally sit) covering the ends of the twine, giving it one more layer of stay-put-it-ness.

The back, nice and smothered in glue

Another view of the back, for perspective

Leaning against some cardboard, waiting for me to decide where to hang it

Wow, I didn't realize those little metal tag thingies were so noticeable, I'm going to break them off, and get to swatch clipping!

Oh, and the other thing I've made today (so far) is a headband with rolled flowers.  I used the tutorial from Craft Snob except I didn't sew any of mine.  Did you know my sewing machine hates me?  It does.  I can hand sew a few stitches, that's about it.  That may be why I'm co-dependent on my glue gun....  Anyway, normal headbands from the store always slip up or off my head, so I took one that almost fit, added a couple more inches and voila!  It really was the easiest thing ever!

It's blurry, sorry, totally not used to taking pictures of my own head

The other night I made a monogram in all my favorite colors.  It's now hanging together with my lace frame here:

Chocolate brown, turquoise, lime green, pastel pink and cream--all against the unfortunate and hideous mustard wall.  Eventually I'll give in and paint this darn room, but in the meantime, I'm killing it with as much stuff I can hang on the walls as possible. :)

So, that's about it for today.  Thanks for hanging out for a bit!

Let's Play Ketchup!

Well, we'll play catch-up, not ketchup, but ketchup sounds more fun. 

Up first: "upcycling."  I looove that word.  It's taking something old and making something else entirely with it.  I can honestly admit that I've never been careful about recycling.  Now, though, everywhere I look I see things I can use.  Those soup cans?  Cover them with fabric and let them hold craft tools.  Those soda cans can be turned into these beauties.  Even my brother-in-law's beer bottles can become something beautiful!


(Quick side note: the last site I just linked is called "Choose To Thrive," and she's all about using the craft supplies you have along with whatever nature and human consumption can give us to make a house unique and amazing.  Go check her out, I promise you'll find at least one craft you're passionate about among her archives!)


My mother is in the process of moving right now, and I've taken just about every item she was going to toss or donate, lol.  Some are real treasures (lots of broken and mismatched jewelry and several flower pictures that go along with my flower obsession) and others...need love.  Or covering, lol:

Delightfully Noted's Wine Bag w/ Fabric Flowers

Let's discuss Mod Podge for a second.  Does anyone else do this?

The school glue's bottle is just the perfect size for my crafts.  I hate lugging unnecessary supplies around, and since I craft all over the house, this makes my life easier.  It's cost-effective to buy the largest bottle of MP and then fill my little bottle up as necessary.  OK, on to juice box canvases:


One of the most memorable posts I read on Mod Podge Rocks was Soap Box Canvases.  Alma Stoller actually made them, and she can be found here.  (You should go check her out--she has a great tutorial from early August for making paper pendants!)  ANYWAY, while the idea is brilliant, I love Bath and Body Works, so we don't buy much soap in this house.  We do, however, buy juice boxes.  Lots and lots and lots of juice boxes.  And I noticed one day a few weeks ago that they have a very soap box-like shape....  Combine this idea with my "fall fever" demanding that Halloween decorations make their appearance, and a new craft is born!

L-R, juice box, covered with masking tape, then covered w/ paper

Goodbye Mater, hello blank canvas!

I covered the box with masking tape, then just Mod Podged green cardstock on top.  On my first attempt I thought I needed another layer between the tape and the paper, but I skipped that step on the rest of them.  It is literally as simple as wrapping a present!


Why green?  Well, my plan is to write B-O-O on one side and J-O-Y on the other, so these lil' boxes will be pulling triple duty (holding juice, Halloween craft and Christmas craft.)  This was not, however, my original plan.  The boxes are very light, so they'd be perfect glued onto a wreath or even strung on a garland if holes are cut.  Being so light though, they will not stand up on their own.  I will have to at least tape these together to keep them upright.


If you too are covered up in juice boxes and want to make these, I'd advise you to add a little sand or something else to weigh them down.  Actually, as I sit here and think about them, I may make a rectangle version of this great wreath made out of circles..... Hmmmmmmmmm............


On to the next one: (cue song lyrics repeatedly running through my head)
When we moved into our house, my son was young and we'd planned on making one large room a playroom with a camping theme.  A few items made it in here and up on the walls, but not all.  Then LIFE happened, and now the pictures of wolves and bears from Yellowstone just don't match anymore.  

My son is VERY into anything "Lego" related, such as Lego Harry Potter or Lego Star Wars.  Like all children, he's also growing like a weed, so I managed to snag one of his shirts that was still in excellent condition to make some new art for the wall:

I made a point to NOT glue the shirt to the back of the frame or the glass so that it will be easy to replace this at some point in the future.  James vacillates between his toddler favorites like Thomas and his new interest in superheros, so I'm saving myself money this way :) 


My last crafty item was inspired by this post at Busily Spinning Momma.  I literally had the silverware in a box of craft items I didn't think I'd ever use, ready for hubby to take to the garage to get it out of the way when I found this awesome project.


Long story short: hammer a spoon flat, bend the handle to make a bail, and MP pretty stuff on it.  I must add, however, that it is best to do this project on the cheap type silverware you can buy 4/$1 at Dollar Tree as opposed to old sterling silver, which was what I had.  I'm happy with my pendant, and the other spoon I successfully flattened (mostly) is going to be a Christmas ornament.  The third one, well, it simply refused to do anything except mock me with its scooped shape.  I used Gorilla Glue to fill the space between the handle and the back of the pendant, and the directions warn you that it will expand.  They're not kidding!  Live and learn....

The "&" was a rub-on, and I'm very in love with this paper.  I think it's Christmas without being obvious.  I didn't plan on this being a Christmas pendant though, and it looks great with my lime shirts.


So, tons of crafts and pictures today.  I hope you enjoy it, and that you are as inspired by other crafters as I am.