Art is Her Bag!

I had a bit of fun creating a gift for my daughter's best friend. Now this young lady is a blooming artist who loves to draw and is dabbling in other media including crochet. She also has a birthday that falls on Dec 26!! Now that is the pits!!! She and Becca gather and paly as children but then there are times when they draw or paly computer games or just talk. Typical young teenagers finding their way into womanhood- bless their hearts.
We had a gift from Becca all wrapped and ready . I wanted to give her something that I had created that she could use as a place to stash or carry her art STUFF! Some time ago, I had picked up some canvas bag blanks at a clearance table, at Micheal's, I think. So I used this as my starting point.
I started playing with paint on the morning of Christmas Eve and every time I passed the piece , all laid out in my studio, I would add something more. After playing with paint (cheap acrylics), I stitched on patches of some of my other painted fabrics and added a few buttons. I was not sure that I was done so I let the whole project rest for a bit. In the end I added initials to a patch on the back of the bag and an enthusiastic ART ON to a patch on the front. One thing is for certain, she will never run into another teenager with the same bag!! What a fun project!! There may be more such bags, started from scratch, in my future plans!!

Fabulous Ornament Swap!

Now I finally have a chance to share the results from a fabulous ornament swap that I participated in this year. The Crazy Quilted Hearts above were my contribution. I used lots of bits of recycled mens ties to creat the heart shaped fabric and then went at each one with embroidery thread silk ribbon and beads and charms. It was hard to decide when enough was enough. I was on a deadline so that basically helped to curtail my embellishing!!
I stitched each finished top to some stiff heavy interfacing and then backed the heart with a piece of silk brocade salvaged from a vintage dress. Each one was unique and that made it much easier for me to make multiples. I do not do exact copies well at all!!

This wonderful snow man was created by Laura . She stitched muslin to make the basic shape, stuffed him and painted him and sprinkled on glitter.Laura used a sewing machine bobbin for his jaunty hat, clever girl!!! He is a wonderful addition to my growing snow man collection!!!

Lyn created this wonderful decoupaged and stamped diamond ornament. She used lots of Stickles glitter glue to make it extra sparkly!!

Here is a close up of the Heart that I made for myself.

This wonderful piece was created by Heather. She used some wonderful metal pieces as the basis for this whimsical and unusual creation. I love this piece. It is very unusual!!!

This wonderful ornament is made entirely of paper save for a bit of glitter glue and a piece of a transparency. Heather created this wonderful ornament using her Cricut machine. It is so very delicate looking but is actually quite sturdy. The back is almost as wonderful as the front!

Here is the back. See what I mean!! I love this sort of attention to detail!!


This wonderful stitched a stamped ornament was made by Tina. She packaged it in the wonderful pink green and white apinted waxed paper that you see here stamped with the word Joy. It was so simple and so elegant!! I plan to keep the wrapping as well!!

This fun piece was created by Marilyn. She used a vintage optometrist's lens to frame her piece with the handle piece serving as the hanging loop. So very clever and sweet!!!



Where ever possible I have provided links to these wonderful artists blogs or web pages, if they have them. It would definately be worth your while to run on by their sites for a little visit!!

All of these delightful ornaments will claim a very special spot on my Art Tree. I think that I might have to look for an additional tree to be able to display my ever growing collection of beatiful treasures!!

Snow Dyeing Experiment

I am sure that you have all heard the phrase, "Got Lemons? Then make Lemonade!!" to me this has always meant , make the best out of a not so great situation. Well, WE GOT SNOW-so Try Snow Dyeing!!! I loved the storm and the snow but then we had no disappointments or inconveniences because of it. It was hardly a bad situation. However, one requirement for Snow Dyeing is SNOW!! I had heard tell of this technique last year when other parts of the country got lots of the white stuff and we went without. Then this year I was reminded of it by Dye Queen Extrordinaire, Vickie Welsh.
Vickie has been involved in all aspects of fabric dyeing for quite a while and has all of the necessary supplies and dyes.Vickie is very disciplined and creates beautiful hand dyed fabrics in color groups and then creates beautiful quilts with her own fabrics. Someday we are going to get together as she lives not very far from me! You MUST visit her wonderful blog (link above) to see how this technique and oodles of others, are meant to be done. So Vickie's undertaking , having benefited from the same snowfall as we did, sewed the seeds of inspiration. I , however , have none of the Right supplies, just lots of supplies that might servea as good stand ins. I saw this as no reason to squwelch my enthusiasm , and forged ahead. After all , we had PLENTY of snow!!

This technique si meant to be undertaken with fabric dyes. Well I ahd Setacolor fabric Paints. Ok , so try those instead. I did not have any soda ash for pretreating the fabric. But Setacolor paints don't require pretreating other than washing , so this might actually work.

So here we go !! A totally unscientific stab at Snow Dyeing probably best described as messing around!!!!!

The whole idea behid Snow Dyeing is that the snow will melt on thefabric carrying the dye down into the fabric at varying rates and thereby the resulting fabric will show variations in intensities of color. It is kind of a resist technique, I suppose.

So we begin.

We have snow.

We have prewashed fabrics of various weights and sizes, Setacolor paint concentrates in yellow, cobalt and fushia. A glass vessel for easy viewing of melting and dyeing .

The fabric was wadded up and stuffed into the bottom of the jar. 4-5 inches of snow was packed in on top. I drizzled the diluted paints onto the snow layer and put it aside in the kitchen to melt.

I love the way it looks with the snow colored by the paints.

This is what it looked like after about an hour sitting inside.

After 3.5 hours it was time to end the process. The snow was pretty well melted and the paint had been carried down into the fabric. I was a bit concerned about the muddy pool at the bottom of the container. Soda Ash soaked fabric would have mitigated that problem somewhat. ah well.

After rinsing and drying , this was the result.

Too pale and not very colorful and prety gray- yuck!!

Oh Well. I used what I had. I played with the snow. I watched the pretty colors run down into the fabric and I got a far from stellar result!! I have decided that I am not a fan of Setacolor paints except for sunprinting. Can anyone tell me why I often get blackened edges on my fabric pieces with these paints???
I will probably try this technique again but ony when I ahve access to all of the correct ingredients, using actual fabric dyes. I would like to do it once , successfully and that will be enough!!
To se some great results, go and visit Vickies Blog or Gayles blog. These gals can show you all the right steps for fabulous results.
These fabrics will go back in the "To be DYED Bag" and will get overdyed on the next dye day at Artistic Artifacts. It was great fun to try a "What IF" moment and play about a bit. I need to let myself do more of this sort of thing in 2010!!

Tough Day to be a Bird, or a Small Dog For That Matter!!!

Yesterday we awoke to about 12 inches of snow, with still more to come. The snow fell throughout the day and provided lots of opportunities for some fun for all. Tom took the Jeep 4 wheel drive out for a drive and found not a plow in site but lots of people trying to navigate through the snow ,who had no business being out!!!
The rest of us stayed at home and hunkered down for the duration!!! Here are some of my photos from the day. I will have more later of the aftermath and the sunshining on the final snowfall!!

Pepper thoroughly enjoyed a good rousing romp with Becca, at this point it was snowing heavily and the temp was 26 degrees!!!

Now poor Buddy on the other hand, was NOT amused!! Especailly when a certain 17 year old tossed him ont an unshoveled portion of the deck and he was almost submerged in the snow!!!! What is a little guy to do!!! Needless to say Matthew is on the top of the Least Favored list at the moment!!!!
I hope that everyone is safe and warm!!!
Holiday Hugs!

Glue, fabric and sequins!!!

Well, the weather outside is TRUELY FRIGHTFUL and since we have no place to go, I will stay inside and make this years Christmas cards. It is still snowing and we already have 18 inches on the ground- unheard of in these parts!! We have not seen a plow and probably won't for awhile, but we are all safe, we have power and plenty of provisions, so all is well here. We did break out the new Star Trek movie- it was to be in a stocking,- so we had some fun entertainment.

So back to my cards!! I decided several years ago that I would call them Winter cards as I always stack my work deck far too high to ever get the cards in the mail prior to Christmas. This has really helped to take the pressure off and has allowed me to play around and have some fun with my cards!

This year I am using scraps of my monoprinted fabrics, some torn papers and sequins and glue to create the cards.

I don't want to give too much away, but each card has three tree's on the front and each one is unique. Some have drifts of green paper sponged with white paint and some have drifts made from sheet music. I added highlights of glitter bits along the drifts , the camera does not pick up these details. I still have to addthe interior message and then get the family to sign them all. Hopefully I will be able to get them in the mail by the end of this week. This year the limiting factor is definately the SNOW!!!

I hope everyone is happy ,warm and safe!!!

New Hands for Organization!

Despite having an injured paw of my own, I have been creating additional hands to enhance oragnization!!! My good friend Leslie has a source for these amazing porcelain hands from a disassembled factory in upstate New York. The hands were used as forms for the production of Latex gloves. The hands were mounted on wooden braces and then were dipped into pools of the liquid latex.
I purchased several of these wonderful forms from Leslie and I ahve been working on them to create gifts for several Jewelry Mavens on my Christmas list.(THe blue ocean hand is for my 17 year old neice who loves all things sparkly). They are almost complete. I am on the hunt for a blue and green edged porcelain plate to mount to the bottom of the Ocean themed hand. I have already found a wonderful plated bordered by roses for the Garden hand. The plate will serve to stabilize the hand and will provide a spot for jewels that cannot be hung from the fingers.

Because of the glare form the flash, you can't see that I placed a stamping on the palm of the hand of the Ocean hand.The quote is "Dreams are the touchstones of our characters". I thought that it would be a nice quote for my niece to see everytime she plucked a necklace from her helping hand!!!

These hands have been such fun to work on! I think that I am going to have to create one for myself!!

A Fabulous Gift for those who are hard to buy for!!

In the margin on the right hand side of my blog I have a button titled End World Hunger. If you click on this button you will be taken to a web site where you are invited to click again and help to feed the hungry. It is all free and every time I go to my blog, I click on the button to send out more food. I hope that you do this every time that you visit, as well.
This site has a wonderfull on-line store. It is a wonderful place to shop. There are gifts and clothing from all over the world, all fair trade and handcrafted.

There are also some fabulous gifts that are called Gifts That Give More. So this is where "the difficult person to buy gifts for" comes in.
This year I have purchased a stove that will be made by people in Sudan and given to a family in Darfur. This stove is called a Berkley Stove and it was designed at the University of California in conjunction with Engineers without Borders. This is an organization that is completely volunteer run. THe stoves have been specailly designed to be very durable but lightweight, collapsible, use less fuel (very important as so many women have to risk their lives to go out far from the camps to collect fuel), emits less smoke and is specailly designed for high heat and high wind cooking conditions. As the stove is built by workers in Sudan, it supports families there as well. The cost of this stove is 20.00. What an incredible gift to give!!!
The person in whose name I bought this stove will recieve the above certificate along with details about the stove and a thank you from the organization that supports the distribution of the stoves. What could be a better gift??????

So here is the link to take you directly to the store.
And here is the link that will take you right to the wonderful stove.

This is an amazing opportunity to give the gift of food, life and freedom from poverty, to those suffering so terribly in Darfur.
Giving ,with the expectation of nothing in return and anonymously is what the season is all a bout after all.

Happy Holidays to all!!