How's this for strange?

In honor of Halloween ... a Zetti deco page.

Beaded pin dolls

Remember those doll blanks I made a couple of weeks ago? They aren't blank anymore ...

I'm not the world's best beader and I learned a lot doing this. I have SO much respect for beaders - these took me ALL day long! They aren't even beaded heavily either. My favorite is the red one.

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These are for the Doll Street Dreamer pin doll swap that I'm hosting. If you're a Dreamer you should play!

Domino Necklace

One of the gals in the Embellished Circus suggested that I make pendants to put inside the boxes I embellished yesterday. So I did!

This is that domino that I painted using alcohol inks a couple of weeks ago. I stamped it with a permanent ink - nasty stuff! Then just melted three layers of UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel) on it. Twisted some wire and added a couple of beads. I don't think this will end up in a box - I think it's going to end up around my neck!

I didn't plan for the green ink to be where it is .. the shading was totally serendipitous - but it's just perfect!

Treasure boxes

Been working on some presents the last couple of days. Saw a neat project on an episode of the Carol Duval show so I took the basic idea and ran with it. I've made four of these little treasure boxes .. but only took pictures of three since two are the same.

These didn't take long to make. I timed it today thinking these might be good craft fair items, they only took 50 minutes to make - not counting drying time, etc. So that's not too bad. They begin with inexpensive plain wooden boxes I bought at the craft store, then I painted the outside black, and the inside in a color that matched the papers used on the outside. I did various faux paint treatments on all the boxes with lumiere paints, they look much prettier in person. Then stamped the faces and used my new big square punch to get the portion of the image I wanted to use. I've never used one of those punches before and I really like it. Then used the rotary cutter to cut the white background squares and my thumb. How I managed to cut myself on the hand that was HOLDING the cutter I don't know. You know how you are supposed to put pressure on a cut to make it stop bleeding? I figured if I kept cutting while pressing on the rotary cutter with my thumb that would be the same thing. Thought it was working well until I put the cutter down and both it and my thumb were covered in blood. But the good news is that I didn't get any blood on my work! So where was I? Oh, okay, after making three boxes I figured out that it's much faster to put all the little squares through my Xyron machine instead of painting glue on each piece. So all the paper pieces are on the box and I gave everything a coat of Paper Glaze. Which, after a special trip into town to buy it, I found out is the same thing as Plaid's Dimensional Magic, which I already had. Guess I won't run out of the stuff. The Paper Glaze works great as glue too - that's what I used to stick the jewels on the lid. The feet are little wood pieces I had in my stash - just painted them and glued them on.

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The colors show up better in this photo of the lids.
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My husband thinks I could get $5.00 for them. I couldn't see selling them for less than $15.00. But they are kind of small - only 3 1/4" tall and about 4 1/2" in width. What do you think?

Two more CDs done

I'm supposed to have lunch tomorrow with a few of my old girlfriends - we've known each other for about 17 years but we rarely get together. We all were in the dance troupe together and I just thought it would be nice to make them little presents. Although they seem strange at first glance there's a story behind why I did what I did for each of them.

This one is for Angie - I guess it might seem odd to call your friend a 'Shameless Hussy' but this is a scan of a button that she bought. She actually bought one for each of us.

This one is for Anne. I used the same photo but used a distortion effect to make us taller and thinner, LOL. The longer I look at this the less I like the letter stickers - so I'm just going to stop looking! The gold paper doily gives this a nice Victorian feel - I had to use some burnt umber glaze to tone it down. Reminds me of a story Sue used to tell . We had just finished a show for the Chamber of Commerce at a hotel ballroom and had gone to the adjoining bar to cool down and have a drink. She overheard a woman calling us 'soiled doilies' instead of 'soiled doves'. Guess we weren't what the tourists expected, LOL.

The photo was taken back in, oh, 1990 or so. Our whole troupe had gone to Alaskaland where we were having photos taken by a professional photographer to be used for the cover of the Fairbank's Visitor's Guide. It was my birthday that day and after the photo shoot we had cake and took these pictures of our little clique. We sure don't look like that anymore, sigh.

Done with Paris!

Got done with everything Paris today! The final thing I had to do was to make two decos, one for me, one for my swap partner. Although they both get mailed to my swap partner, she'll work in mine before she mails them both out. I made them pretty small - about 4 1/2" by 2 1/2". Here they are:

Collage with Eiffel Tower embellishments.

Too much swapping

I've decided I really need to cut back on all the mail art I've been doing. I seem to be making things I need to make to meet commitments but not things I want to make. I like making these things but I'm hearing the call of the dolls. So I'm going to concentrate on finishing up everything for this month in this next week. Today I made two paper Artist Trading Cards that had no theme for one of my swap partners. I got this image in the mail today from Penny and I liked it so much I used it right away.

I used a paint color sample that I picked up at Home Depot the other day for the background. They are big enough that you can cut a whole background out of it without getting any of the writing on it.

Altered CD

Finished up a present for my best friend today. For about 8 years we were in a dance group that performed for tourists, for local events, and we even got to travel to perform. It was a lot of fun and a huge part of our lives. We haven't danced for about 10 years now but we have fond memories. She recently sent me a photo of us in costume - our can-can costume. So I thought I'd use the photo to make a wall hanging for her.

First, I took the photo she sent and changed it to sepia tones in my Paint Shop Pro program. Then I covered a CD in papers - you can't see it really well but some of the words are "old friend", "memories" and "the language of friendship isn't words". Added some microbeads in a couple of spots, an old rhinestone earring, and edged it with gold pearls. Had a hard time getting the pearls on - tried two different glues but they didn't work. Finally figured out that if I made a circle of cardstock a tiny bit bigger than the CD the pearls would have a ledge of sorts to sit on. Had to break out the hot glue gun to stick them on though - it's been a long time since I've used one of those! The hanger is funny - it's the top piece of a garter. Yep, using underwear in my art now.

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Oh - that's me on the left.

It's a Paris kind of a month

Seems like I have a lot of projects this month that have a Parisian theme. I have two decos yet to make, worked in another Parisian deco, and I just finished up my Paris ATCs. This is my 2nd Paris ATC. It's simple but effective. I think a good background is key to a decent ATC. I've tried different techniques but I keep coming back to direct-to-paper with the stamping pads. On this one I glued on crumpled up white tissue paper then sponged on three different color inks then added some colored gauze fabric. The rest is obvious. I like it - too bad I couldn't keep it,LOL.

I'm experimenting again!

My daughter is staying with me now that she's out of the hospital and that has actually given me time to do some projects. Today I got inspired by some papers and images that I received from Heather yesterday. In the package she sent me were two Paris decos - one for me and one for her. You don't work in your own deco but you do in your partners. So this is what I did in hers.

Then I decided to try printing on a piece of sheer organza fabric. I cut a large piece and taped it down with low-tack painter's tape on a piece of cardstock. Ran it through my ink-jet printer hoping all the while that it wouldn't get stuck. Luck was with me and it ran right through. Now this is cool - it makes kind of a ghost image on the fabric and also leaves a decent print on the cardstock. How the image looks will also depend on what fabric you put it on top of when you use it. I chose an orange/yellow batik. You can see the rest of what I did ... a couple of columns of another batik, free motion embroidery clef symbol, then I burned the organza around the symbol in a quasi sheet music design. This goes off to Australia next week. Hmmm .. I think I have some sheet music fabric .. bet this image would look neat on that. Might have to try this again!

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It feels good to be back in the studio!

Life, not art

I haven't disappeared from the face of the net .. life sometimes gets in the way of making art. Various things are breaking down and having to be fixed, one daughter is in the hospital (she's okay though) and so on and so forth. So there's been no creative time for me! Soon though ... soon!

ATCs .. again

Just when I think I have enough fabric Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) on hand something comes up so I need more. I have six on hand now .. including the three I made today .. but I just realized that I need one or two more, sigh. I have a private swap I'm doing with a gal in Australia, and to make it worth the postage we are going to swap 2 fabric and 2 paper ATCs. So it will be back to the salt mines!

Here's the three I made today. I'm totally nuts for that gold mesh, although I'm not sure I understand why! After making two of the vintage photo cards I figured I'd better do something different. So I dipped into my stash of little triangles and patched them all together. If you recall, I went 'trashcan diving' at the quilt store one day and now I have a couple of hundred batik triangles to use up.

The metal tag says "The Sweetest Thing' and the washer says "Friendship".

Starter fabric book

After nearly a week when there was so much 'stuff' to do that I didn't get to play in my studio today was for me! It felt so good to be able to get back in there and make something. Still trying to get caught up on presents and swaps though. Today I made a starter fabric book for my friend Heather. I seem to be making quite a bit for her lately. She sends me boxes and boxes of supplies for paper art and, since she doesn't sew a lot, I make her the things she'd like to make for herself but can't at the moment.

She had mentioned that she'd like to make a fabric book .. so ... I made her one that she can embellish. Each page is 6"x6". These are so simple to make - cut your fabric 1/2 inch larger than the finished size - sew the fabric right sides together with a layer of batting on the bottom (use 1/4 inch seams). Leave an opening to turn it right side out. Flip it - sew the opening closed, and then topstitch. Sew the layers togther with a seam down the middle. There are two layers -which equals out to 8 pages to work on. All the inside pages are batiks with nothing on them so she can do whatever her little heart desires. I dyed some dimensional trim to match and added a vintage photo to the cover just to give her a head start. It was hard to stop at just two embellishments - guess I'll have to make myself one of these next!