Can you hand me a pin?

Remember that hand I made out of wool felt that I was supposed to send to some exhibit in Michigan? Well, it never left the house. But it has been put to good use! It's a pincushion! It makes me laugh every time I walk into my sewing room. Kind of makes me think of Thing from the the Addams Family - remember that TV show?

The glove is from an old costume and since the pattern is my own hand I figured it would fit! I get such a kick out of it that I decided to made another one to put up on Etsy. Figure it will be a good Halloween gift for a crafty person!

I just finished painting the Dye-na-flow on the new one and it's dripping into the sink. Kind of a Kai thing, eh?

Fiber Art for a Cause

Today I completed two postcards which I will send to Virginia Spiegel who is the heart of Fiber Art for a Cause, a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Virginia has raised over $50,000 through the sale of fabric postcards just in the past year. These postcards will be available at the Houston Quilt Show.

Two totally different styles!
This piece is kind of interesting. I quilted the background and then I cut and fused the little blue-green pieces over the top of it. I tried to find a quote about balloons to use but had no luck finding one so I wimped out and used a stamp. I need more stamps with words - this is all I have besides one that says Art and a bunch of greeting card style stamps. Maybe I should have used Get Well Soon, LOL. This little girl doesn't look happy at all!

This postcard was made from pieces of a scrap bag that my friend Heather sent me. All the fabric was sewn into little tubes so I opened them up and used parts of them. I even left the seam on one piece for extra interest. The center piece is a neat embellishment that was in the bag. A lot of quilting and it's done. A nice simple piece.

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Button washing day

A few months ago I bought a huge bag of vintage buttons. Enough buttons to fill a 40oz peanut butter jar. The buttons were soooo dirty that I hated to touch them. I spent a couple of hours over the last couple of days cutting off the fabric and threads that were left on some of the buttons and today I washed them. Which was an interesting project all in itself. Some of the mother of pearl buttons are tiny and I couldn't just wash them in the sink - they would go down the drain. So I ended up sewing a really huge tube out of cheesecloth - put the buttons in it and then soaked them in the sink. Then to really clean them I put them in the dishwasher in a special basket that holds utensils. Worked well - now they just have to dry.

My first homer

I got a great surprise in the mail yesterday - a deco I sent out into the world a year ago. It's my first homer (that's the term used when a deco is ready to send back to the owner). It's really fun to see how everyone interprets a theme.

The theme for this deco is blue and silver. I did the cover art. Five other artists contributed to this piece; all of them are from my Embellished Circus art group. Thanks, ladies! I love it!

Cover by me

by Jacey

by Zhenia and Penny

by Kirsten and Linda

Art Magnets

I needed to make three art magnets for a swap I'm in. They all have to go to the same person so I had to really think to make them different. Have you noticed how everyone is making the same kind of art lately? Vintage photos of people with butterfly wings and party hats? They all look great but they are getting old. I love using the vintage photos too but I'm trying to find a different way to do it.

The first magnet is a business card magnet. Kind of blah - but I found out that you can use your paper punches on them - notice the corners. Just had to turn the punch upside down and lean on it.

Click image to enlarge


This magnet was a horrible orange and fuscia wooden frame from Michaels. I repainted it and did the swirlies and dots with Sharpies. The wings were a pain in the butt to attach.


This last one is a laminate sample which I painted and sprinkled with embossing powder (that's the red pebbly looking stuff). I cut out some hearts from cardstock and painted and embossed them. They are 3-D as they are raised from the surface with foam squares. Then some wire and beads were added.




Nothing special but at least each piece is different.

Vintage Faery

I am the Member of the Month for one of my art groups - which means it's my turn for fabulous, fun presents. It's like having a birthday all month long! Today I received this Vintage Faery from Kelli Perkins - isn't this absolutely to die for! The little fairy is sooooo cute! I just love it!

Cowgirl up !

Thanks to everyone for their insightful suggestions about fixing the cowgirl. I went to the copy store today and got a couple of color copies to test some ideas out on. Thanks for that tip, Kathy! It was a good one as I was afraid to do ANYTHING to her in case I really messed it up. I probably should have made copies of the flyleaf before I cut it up and used it. Oh well. Too late for that! Here's what I ended up with ...

I added a lot of red into it .. there is a lot of spatter which is hard to see .. I added red into the snakeskin as well as gold and brown on the edges. I also added some gold around the cards and one side of the cowgirl but you can't see it in the photo. It's a pretty subtle change but I like it. Near impossible to photograph though!

Click image to enlarge

Help please!

My husband reads western novels and a while back one of the pages fell out of his book. He was reading a vintage 1950s book and the page was from the flyleaf and it absolutely captivated me. I've been wanting to do something with this page for a while now, but now I'm not happy with what I did.

The values are all so similar that the piece kind of blends together. I'm not sure what to do with it to make it pop. I can't do a whole lot to it because everything is glued down, LOL. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Click image to enlarge

and yes, that is real snakeskin, LOL. But it is a shed skin, no actual snakes were harmed in the process of making this piece.

I'm counter art !

My good friend Judy, who lives in Pennsylvania, asked me to send her an Artist Trading Card so she could enter it into an exhibit at the Transit Fine Arts Gallery in Oil City. They were hoping to get one from every state. I sent her one of my favorite fabric ATCs. There are about 1000 ATCs on the wall in 9 pocket displays but mine is in a frame on the counter! I’m so pleased! The gallery director was afraid that the fringe would get damaged in a plastic pocket plus it's probably one of the only fabric ATCs. Whatever the reason I'm just tickled pink!

Click image to enlarge
This is the whole display - fun, eh? See the frame on the counter? That's my ATC.


Here's my ATC up close and personal. My friend wrote the little bio blurb for me.


These are my friend Judy's watercolor ATCs. Don't you just love them?

Posted by judi at 5:33 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Plastic Spoon art !

My friend Kai has been making art dolls using plastic picnic spoons as the base. I thought I'd give it a whirl myself. I don't know how she makes hers but this is how I made mine ...

I cut a piece of foam board and covered the bowl of the spoon. Then I took a leftover piece of fabric and covered the top of the spoon, then glued the face on. I took the ends of the fabric and folded it into a turban shape. The fabric was actually part of a leftover cuff from a doll design. Then I took some thin quilt batting and wrapped it around the base of the spoon to pad it out. I covered that with fabric strips and yarn. Then I took another cuff and made the shirt. A little embellishment and it was done. Lots of fun! I bet this would be an awesome project to make with kids. Its all glue!!!

Thanks for the inspiration, Kai!

Search engines

Sometimes I really wonder about search engines. I have a statistic generator linked to my site so I can see how people have found my website. Here's some of today's searches that ended up here ....
How to treat a barfing puppy
Trolls under the table
Girl stuff you can buy

I wonder what the person who was searching for trolls under the table was actually looking for! That person ended up at the post with the photo of the 'Dragon Ladies' troll dolls getting 'drunk', LOL. It's actually one of my favorites ... see it again here!

Paper beads

I haven't made these in years! We are going to be having a paper bead swap through my Embellished Circus art group and a couple of the girls have been posting photos of their beads. I just had to try my hand at it after seeing theirs.

I hadn't tried dipping into melted UTEE (Ultra thick embossing enamel) before so I thought I'd give it a go. I had bought a little glue melting pot when our JoAnn's went out of business so I used that to melt the UTEE. I think it got too hot because my clear UTEE turned brown. It made my dark blue papers look black. But when I wrapped those with holographic sliver thread it looked really cool. I even figured out how to stick holeless beads on some of the beads. It was fun.

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Ultra pink, ultra feminine

I had an order from a gal in Canada for one of the Barbara Willis 'Sew Lovely' corset wall hangings. She wanted it in baby pink. I didn't have baby pink anything so I had to go shopping, LOL. Gosh I just hate when that happens. I think she will be happy with this ...

Want to swap magnets?

I just have a blast making these altered business card magnets! So I created a swap over at Swap-bot. You'll make three magnets and send one to each of three partners. This is the first time I've tried using swap-bot so we'll see how it goes. You'll have to sign up for an account but there might be other swaps you'll want to do. If you want to give it a go, then click here!