30 October 2011

Ornament Project Continued

Hello Everyone!

The ornament project is coming along nicely! I need to sit down and make a list of all that is done and what needs done still.
I'm hoping to have a dozen different ornaments for the project. 
What is the project?
Christmas gifts for all the families I know.
Again, I need to make a list of all the folks on that list.
I'm thinking there are a total of 16 on the list but I'm not certain without actually making a list!

I've been busy since the last post:

Magazine Reed Star
I only made one of these just to see if it could be done. I found a tutorial for wheat straw stars and adapted it to fit with the magazine reeds. I need to go swipe an electric motor off the pile on the patio and unwind the copper wire on it for use in the stars. I'm all but out of this particular wire used on this one. 
I will make more of these for the project. Shouldn't take but a few hours to whip up a couple dozen of these.
It's made with 4.5 inch long reeds. I still have hundreds of reeds from my marathon reed making session last winter.

Tufted Paper Ball Ornaments
I didn't have a tutorial for this particular ornament. I was searching on Google for inspiration for something else and these came to mind from a few different sources. Sorry, the old brain didn't retain that info or I'd send you that way. These are about 2.5 inches round. They started out as a wooden bead with a wire bale glued in the hole before I covered it with Medical Dictionary pages with hot glue. The papers are roughly an inch square. I didn't measure, just eyeballed it as I cut strips from the pages. The little squares are wrapped around the nonworking end of a paintbrush, dipped in hot glue and adhered to the wooden bead. Not all my wooden beads are the same size, nor are they all the same shape. That didn't seem to make a heck of a lot of difference in the finished ball. Some of the beads were perfectly round, bout half an inch. Others were about 3/4 inch, shaped like a squarish oval.


I made these pear shaped tufted paper ornaments before the bead idea sunk in. These start out with a large christmas light bulb...outdoor lites...if you read the blog, you'll remember the spiders. the bulbs are the same ones. 
My Medical Dictionary from 1940something (I tore out the copyright page) has red page edges so some of them look a bit pink. I like the effect of the pinkish tone it gives the ornaments.
The pear ornaments are about 5 inches long, big around as your fist. These took forever to glue all those little tufts of paper on. 
I think these need some bling. Something red....a tassel hanging over the top? Red seed beads glued randomly? Needs something, I know that!
 The bead center ones go much faster! And the littler ones are a lot cuter too~!
I don't think I'll make anymore of the big ones....all depends on if I can't come up with enough ideas to end up with 12 different ornaments.
At this point, I have 6 pear shaped balls and 17 round balls.

I sewed another elf shoe the other day.
I had one of these yellow elf shoes already sewn. The one that looks like it was squished is the second one sewn. One shouldn't wait for better than a week to sew a matching pair of shoes. 

I sewed the green elf shoes with white thread and then colored it green with a sharpie after sewing. 
Embellishments are white plastic beads and gold sequins on both pair.
I now have 5 pair of elf shoes.

I thought these little houses were adorable until I put this one together. They ARE adorable but they take forever to put together! If time permits, these may end up in the ornament project. They're made from a cake box, foil tape, an eye pin and some green aluminum chain.  The roof is supposed to open to reveal a hidden compartment but my roof is taped shut cause I didn't cut the sides straight and there was a giant gap between the top of the house and the bottom of the roof. This is a terrible picture of the little house ornament, sorry but it's the best I could muster at the time. 

All is well in my world. The body is still in rebel mode but complaining about my aches and pains does not make those aches and pains go away so it's just wasted energy to do so!
Hope all is well in your world!
Be good to one another!
Peace, my friends!
831

27 October 2011

Ornaments and A Cat


I can't keep my hands still for long.
I worked on the first item(s) in this list for five days running.
I wish I'd of taken pictures of the process of making these Polish Star Ornaments. They look a whole lot harder to make than they really are. If you're interested in trying to make your own; check out this link:


I ended up with, I think, 23 of these paper ornaments.
They're made from orchard paper. I used an empty cardboard spool that wide ribbon came wound around for my template. You'll need something round, bout 3 inches or so for your template. You'll need 10 rounds of paper for each ornament. Sit yourself down in front of the boobtube and start cutting, folding and gluing your way to assembling. 
This was a fun, if tedious project and the finished product is quite impressive in hand.
When I make more of these, and I will make more!, I will use colored paper or I will put glitter on the points before they're assembled. They could stand a bit of bling!

Blue Wire Beaded Bangle #3
I still have blue beads to make other things out of! Same basic bracelet as the two I showed you all in the last post. 
And beings there were just a few glass beads left, I  made this
Blue Wire Beaded Dangly/Ornament.
It's about 2 inches across, made with galvanized wire and glass beads. 

And beings I was going through beads, this Dangly was created as well. 
It ain't pretty. 

The kids came for a visit over the weekend. Terah, her friend Chanun and I stayed up way passed our bedtimes making things. Terah took one of my storage boxes and prettied it up!
It started out as a 4 inch square box, 3 inches tall with a separate lid. The box was lavendar colored and Terah gave it some bling! I'll use this box for a Christmas wrapper!
Chanun blinged up a couple of wood cutouts; a heart and a star. I'll put magnets on the backs of them and stick them on the fridge!

Before I got started on the Polish Stars, I was folding maps into wreaths.
These things are so easy to make, it's sinful!
 I used maps of Oklahoma for my wreath ornaments, but you could use any paper your little heart desires!
I painted them with green glitter paint to keep them together and to give them a bit of sparkle. The hanger is 6pound test monofilament fishing line. 
I ended up with 16 of these. I'm not done making wreaths though, there will be more. They might have a different bow on them as these do though. Not sure just how many of those bows are left....
If you'd like to make some wreath ornaments, check out this link:


I made all of my wreaths in an afternoon and finished them the next day. Very quick, easy project.

I have other projects in the works. Need to finish up a few obligations for swaps and then it's back to elf slippers, ice skates and red flowers with bells!

Be good to one another!
Miss Lola fixing to take a nap on the kitchen floor after a rousing game of 'catch those rodents'!
Her all time recorded record for kills in one day?
5
She deserves a nap! I just wish she wouldn't bring the dang things in the house before the kill is made! (Or after for that matter!)

Peace
831

21 October 2011

Couple Magnets, Some Angels and a Wayward Bird

Hello Readers!
It's a cold morning! Only 35F out at 7 a.m. I am not looking forward to winter.

I'm still trying desperately to keep up with the muse!
 Enjoy the fruits of my labors of love! 
This isn't work. It is play!
Green Tree Magnet
This started out as a bottle cap. I added some stringed sequins to the inside of the cap, some nagahyde, a wooden stick, a green glass donut bead and a Monopoly house. All glued in with tacky glue. The bottle cap is about 1 1/4  inches. I rather like all the different shades of green in this magnet.

Ma and I made angels on Tuesday. This is one hers.
We adapted the instructions from a book. The angels in the book were 10 inches tall when finished. Ours are considerably smaller at about 4 inches tall. The body is a wooden skewer wrapped in quilt batting with cotton string. She's gold glitter glue for hair, her facial features are drawn on in brown sharpie and her wings are copper wire and wired ribbon. Her halo is galvanized wire.

Ma and I made 12 of them on Tuesday and then when I woke up on Wednesday there angels screaming in my head so I made another 16 of them. 
Some have ribbon roses on their chests, some have plastic gemstones and some have regular ribbons and some have a ribbon and a rose on their chests. I put whatever I thought would fit and look halfway Christmassy.
Some have irredescent glitter all over their bodies. Some don't.

These are the results of hair experiments. I ended up going with the gold glitter glue for hair cause it was the easiest of the choices to apply.

Number 11 Magnet
This one started out as a gold colored metal bottle cap. Came from a bottle of spirits of some sort, I do believe. The butterfly hanging off the '11' is a broken earring, the "11" is a chipboard game piece from some game I don't know the name of, the red disk on top the '11' is plastic bingo marker, a wooden disk, a couple of buttons, some sequins, a few small wooden beads, a red sea shell (resin, it was purple before I got a hold of it with the sharpies) and a velvet star. There's a Coca-Cola bottle cap inside the metal bottle cap to adhere the magnet to.That '11' is a 1 inch square to give you scale.

This little bird finally got some legs!

In the works this morning are more elf shoes. Got one and a half pairs sewn so far, more to come. I'll show you these when I get them finished and their pictures taken. I'll do a couple more pair before I take any pictures of them.
I've two dangly things made from beads and wire, quite similar to the bracelets in the last post but on a smaller scale. And I've another bracelet done also. No pictures of those yet either.
I started working on more ornaments for the project. 16 folded paper stars, made from road maps and painted with green glitter glue.. They are not finished yet though cause they need a ribbon and a hanger added before I can take their pictures.
I do believe paper mache is on my agenda today. We'll see what transpires.
You all be good to one another! It matters!
Peace
831

16 October 2011

Some Things I Made

Hello Readers!

All is well in my world so long as the old arms keep working half way decent. That neck and shoulders of mine have been giving me some trouble here of late. Minor inconveniences, nothing that will kill me, fortunately. Hasn't really stopped my muse though so nothing to worry too much about. I will talk to the doc about these troubles when I see her next.
All in all, all is well in my world. 

I did a touch of cleaning on my desk and discovered a small vial full of blue beads the other day. I had found a tutorial for a wire wrapped bracelet the day before and decided those blue beads would work out just fine for that endeavor.
The results, 15 minutes later:
and there were still beads to use, so 15 minutes later:

Another blue bracelet. This one is a bit smaller than the first one. The first one is made for an Amazon. I have big wrists but it's even too big for me. 
Easy peasy project to whip up in a jiffy and it's quite nice considering the time spent in the making of it! What girl doesn't like a bracelet? Any color combination would work...great way to make a quick gift with leftovers from other projects.
There were still blue beads left after making these two bracelets. You'll get to see the what happened next when I post again.

I had felt food on my mind. The hands cooperated and with the help of my friend Google and my muse, food was cooked up!

The bacon has stripes on both sides. Two different colors of felt glued together with tacky glue. Next time I make fried eggs out of felt I will sew the yolks on and stuff them a bit with fiberfil so they aren't flat. The bacon pieces were glued on, let dry and then I trimmed the pieces to bacon shape.

Lil A's mama said Lil A needs some food for her play kitchen so all this fake felt food will be given to her. Little girls LOVE fake food! And Lil A has a play kitchen already.

The sandwich was fun to make! I didn't use a pattern, just winged it with the scissors and eyeballed it all as I cut it out. Took me about 6 hours, might of been 8, to sew it all together. Not a great deal of time spent on it. It would have sewn together a whole lot faster on a sewing machine! Well, it would of for you who get along with your sewing machine. I'd of been bald from pulling out my hair fighting with a sewing machine!

We have two slices of bread, a slice of cheese, two pickle slices, two tomato slices, a lettuce leaf and bright pink slice of bologna! It all stacks nicely into a sandwich. I didn't have a piece of red felt so the tomato slices are made of fleece. I have plans to make a burlap bag for the sandwich to fit into if I can remember where the devil that tote full of burlap is! If I can't find the burlap, I will make a sack of some sort for the sandwich.

More elf shoes! 
Some of the elf shoes sew up nice and neat, some of them don't. All depends on how careful I am with the cutting of the toe and the sewing of the tip of the toe. Ma is on the hunt for some tiny jingle bells she's sure she has so hopefully she can find them and then all the elf slippers will get a tiny jingle bell on the point of the toe and hide my stitching. (I am a terrible seamstress! But I am a fearless one! I'm not afraid to sew by hand.) I already have another pair of slippers sewn. They just need the sequins glued on and their picture taken. They are green with green thread. 

I made paper pumpkins with two of my grandsons this afternoon. I've no pictures of that endeavor. Miss Lou took all our pumpkins home with her to hang in the picture window in their house. I had a good time with the grandboys! Grant made some paper ghosts to go with the pumpkins. Another easy peasy project! Construction paper, scissors and glue stick!

My drawing muse has flown the coop for the time being. Haven't seen hide nor hair of her in a week or more. She'll show up again when the sewing muse gets tired! :) 
I'm not gonna complain about which muse is in residence...at least one of them is always present!
Life is good, Smile often, Bitch never and live like today's your last day!
Be good to one another!
I'll be back another day with more things I have made!
Peace
831

12 October 2011

elves left evidence and birds hatched



Hello Readers!
(Hi Joss! :) )

Ok it may be a far stretch to say elves were here. If they were here, they weren't very helpful. I thought elves were helpful little beings. I could use some help with the vacuuming. But I do have elf slippers to show you all and the birds materialized as well! And of course I can't just stick to one or two different projects. Oh, no! No! I must go with a variety of things to keep me occupied!
Enjoy!
I wanted to make some 3D stars but that isn't exactly what I ended up with this experiment. I found a tutorial for these folded paper stars on the internet. The instructions didn't specify how long my 1/2 inch strips of paper should be and I thought for sure the magazine pages I cut into 1/2 inch strips would be plenty long enough. Nope. Change of tutorial! Well, I didn't really change it, I just stopped halfway through it cause my strips were not long enough! So instead of 3D paper stars I ended up with flat stars that are perfect to be made into a garland of some sort!
I made 37 of them one afternoon and I took them out to the art room in the burnt house and spray painted them with gloss enamel. They aren't exactly white, but close enough!
They look pretty cool left as they come out with the graphics of the magazine pages too. They're 2 inches across from point to point. 
Mindless work accomplished watching reruns of Simon and Simon on hulu. 
I've a soft spot for detective shows, especially when good looking men are the main characters! 

 EVIDENCE
These elves must be really short guys cause these little slippers are only about 3 inches from heel to toe! And so fun to make. I do wish elves had left them! They will end up with ribbons sewn to the heel end and used as Christmas Tree ornaments.
We have a red pair with a white bead and pink sequins and

a light blue pair with a blue plastic bead and blue sequins.
You'll see more elf slippers as I've already made more, just haven't got a picture of them yet.

Pink Stone Bead Dangly
I was going through all this stuff on my desk the other day and came across a little baggie of beads. I dumped them in a bowl and made this out of most of them. It's about 3 inches long, all the beads are either glass or stone except for the white bead at the bottom which is plastic.

I really like this magnet! 
I'm a stone carver before anything else. That is my first art love....stone carving. Soap is the next best thing to stone. I can't carve stone anymore. My old body refuses to cooperate with that endeavor so I went the route of doing relief carvings on hotel sized bars of soap instead. Soap is a whole lot lighter than stone! I can carry soap from one spot to the next, can't do that with stones of any size.
I carved the pear sometime last year. I painted it with fingernail polish in three different colors just the other day...since the last post. I attached 2 strong magnets to the back of it. It's about 2x3 inches and 3/8inch thick.

I also had the paper mache going again too.
I made 8 birds but you only get to see 7 of them today as the other one is still laying on the kitchen table waiting for me to attach its legs. I was certain I had made 8 sets of legs but when it was time to put legs on, only 7 sets could be found. I've since found the missing set of legs, just haven't got them glued in yet. I blamed the missing legs on that Lola cat but when I found them laying on the floor in the deskroom next to the desk, I am certain I dropped them when I took the other ones to the kitchen. Making bird legs is a mindless activity like folding stars. I've gone through all of Season 1 of Simon and Simon and almost 3/4 of the way through Season 2. The Simon boys have been very helpful in the artistic department.
Course, only the viewer can say whether this is actually art or not.... I just make it! 
Weird Bird
All of these birds with the exception of the Big Green Bird (you'll see it in a minute) are between 3 - 5 inches from beak to tail.

Little Foot Bird
They are made with newspaper, drug brochure paper, acrylic paint, wire and crewel embroidery thread. There's more than a bit of glue in each as well.
Those feet are a bitch to form in a length of wire! I've yet to figure out how to make them ALL THE SAME SIZE. I can't even make them in proportion to each individual bird like I want to be able to do. Some of the birds don't have crewel embroidery thread wrapped around their legs because I ran out of that color. All that's left is blue, I think, and blue isn't gonna work for these legs!

Rust Brown Bird
For some reason the first batch of birds stand up better than this batch does. I had a devil of a time getting them to stand on their own. Some of them aren't standing pretty at all....like this one!
I really like the colors of the first batch of birds, not so much the drab browns I ended up with in this painting session. The green bird was a planned occurance. I had no clue what color the others would end up when I dragged out all the paints.
I think I might of overwhelmed myself by taking the paint basket to the kitchen. Gave myself TOO MANY colors to choose from! We'll just have to see what happens with the third batch of birds!

Big Green Bird
This one is about 7 inches from beak to tail.
This one ended up being so much larger than the other 7 because I couldn't get this thing to cooperate from the very beginning! To get a life-size bird you start with a quarter sheet of newspaper, wad it into a loose pear shaped ball and start taping it with masking tape into a bird shape. This one refused to transform into a bird shape without an extra quarter sheet of newspaper. It worked out in the end despite the trouble the darn thing gave me at the start. I almost trashed that initial ball of newspaper....glad I didn't! :)
I'm not crazy about his feet though. Big birds need a different foot structure....wire ain't gonna cut it. Least not that guage of wire. More experimentation to come with larger bird legs!


Big Beak Bird
Tails have me perplexed. The tutorial I followed (need to show you all that) have the tails attached across the top of the birds back. My tails didn't look right up there. But they don't look quite right sticking up in the air like that either. I like the little bird that got no tail. Somehow whatever you do works out OK.
It's all a big adventure when you don't know what you're doing with your medium. Paper mache is full of fun discoveries. There is no right or wrong way. 
I bought this house because of those green counter tops!

Big Foot Bird
There will be more birds in the future.

Tailless Bird
This one is my favorite from this batch. I made wings and tails all at once for all the birds. I knew the big one wasn't going to have a tail but I really thought I had cut 7 tails for the other birds. This guy ended up without a tail cause there wasn't one for him. This is also the smallest bird I've made yet. He's barely 3 inches from beak to tail end.
Yes, there will be more birds! 

 Couple of Chunky Pages were made....
Witch's Joke Chunky Page
The witch is done in markers on drawing paper and then glued to a cereal box base. The backside is decorated with green and purple papers. The dangly is a little 2 inch square neon green and black tiger strip print cardstock pamphlet stitched notebook with copy paper pages on which I wrote a bunch of witch jokes I had found on the internet.

Monster Chunky
I went with drawing and collage on this one. The monster is done in markers on cardstock and then cut out and glued along with the black paper spiders (I know, they only have six legs! Not sure how that got by the design team that made that punch.) and the green cardstock where I drew the web in paint pen and that's a piece of purple paper in the lower right hand corner.
I forget what the backside looks like but it is decorated. Can't look to see, I sent it off to Oregon a couple days ago.

Like I said, there are things made that need to be photographed to show them to you all. There are elf slippers, a beaded bracelet, some ribbon stars, another paper mache bird and I'm sure by the time I get around to posting again, there will be other things also. 
I'm still working on monsters and hot pot holders.
I started some more magnets this evening too.
I've started another project for Christmas that involves those elf slippers and the folded paper stars. I'm working on some ribbon wreaths that are ornament size. I cut the ribbons for those already but I made the ribbons about an inch too short so they're giving me a bit of trouble but I've got 5 of them done already, still about a dozen more to go. Ran out of ribbon or there would have been more! 
Always busy!
I just can't NOT do something creative every single day.
I sometimes count cooking in my creativeness but if truth be known I'm not a very creative cook these days...it seems to be the same ol' same ol' day in and day out where cooking is concerned!
I sometimes count writing poetry in the creativeness as well. I don't usually share the poetry with others though so don't expect to see much, if any, on this blog.
I keep you all busy enough with the artwork, you don't really need poetry too. Do you? 
:)

 I even got a bit of laundry done and the linens on the bed changed in the last few days! (Thanks for the help Ma! 831) Means the old body is behaving for the most part. Still need 12 hours of sleep or more in a 24 hr period. Can't seem to stay awake during the day... Up all night...sleep all day. 
My old body is still in rebel mode but that's nothing new. I had an attack on the right arm earlier today. That hurt like crazy! But it only lasted a couple seconds and that arm is, if sore, working like it should!
Sometimes when I reach for things in front of me that right arm will decide it doesn't want to be extended its full length and it will cease up. Won't move and it hurts like crazy! Only happens when I'm trying to reach for something though. I've never had one that hurt as much as it did this afternoon!
Time to make another doctor's appointment so will discuss those attacks on the right arm with her when that happens. She probably wants to sick the vampires on me anyway! Has been a few months since the last visit with them.....
All is well in my world more or less. More than less actually.

Until next time........

Here's hoping all is well in your worlds!
Thanks for reading and remember.....
Be good to one another! It matters!
Peace my friends!
831

01 October 2011

Something to look at....

Hello Everyone!
Yeah, I'm still busy trying to keep up with the muse.
She runs  me ragged some days....

I started this batch on Friday.
It's now Saturday. There's an Art-a-thon going on over at AFA this weekend so there's bound to be more art forthcoming before the weekend is out. 
That is, if all goes according to plan. 
Magnets are always fun to make. I've been playing with lids and doodads for that endeavor. 
And there's always little books to be made.
Enjoy!

Three Cats Magnet
This is a Frappacino bottle cap, metal. It has gold foil from a Reese's Mini Peanut Butter Cup wrapped and glued to it. There's a couple of silver metal disks glued to the bottom. They were a bonus from the clips I destroyed to steal the magnets from. There's a large polished stone atop the metal disks. Underneath everything and hanging off the edge is a spring that came out of a clock. I wanted to hang something from the end of it, but it's not strong enough to hold anything with any weight to it, so I gave up that notion. The three cats are a button glued to the edge of the lid. Everything is held together with E6000. The lid itself is about 2 inches across.


Tea Party Magnet
I'd been wondering what to do with the little metal pink tea set for a long time now! I paid 29 cents for it at the Goodwill Store some years ago. I was going through the lids in the sack on the counter in the kitchen (that's where I throw ALL lids) and came across this bright green milk carton lid. It makes a perfect table for the tea party. The square in the center is a piece of patterned cardstock. It's all glued together with Tacky Glue. This one is about 1.5 inches across.

Sparkly Blue Bird Watercolor Journal
3x4 inches
The covers are made from recycled chipboard covered in sparkly blue paper (I LOVE this paper! Wish I had more!) with a bird collaged with  fabric paper, cardstock and craft foam.
It would have been much better had I just forgone the bird and left it sparkly IMHO. But it ain't my opinion that matters in the whole scheme of it all. I just make the stuff. It's up to others whether they like it or not. I  just don't think this is a very nice blue bird. He'll do though.

Red Spider Magnet
This is the tray of a matchbox covered in a red napkin. Inside we'll find a chipboard game piece with a 7, an antique wooden red checker piece. small piece of white pipe cleaner, some red sequins, a few red velvet stars, a red gemstone (jasper maybe? not sure what kind of stone), wooden red bead, some dots of red dimensional pain and the spider perched atop the checker is  made from a length of copper wire, a gold metal bead and a red plastic bead. 
2x1 3/8 inches

Purple Book Pendant 
The covers are made from a game board covered in white paper with purple netting glued on top. The inside covers are black. It has 4 signatures of 5 pages each made from lavendar colored writing paper. It is sewn with navy blue crewel embroidery thread. The lanyard holding the book closed is plastic. The bail is copper.
2x1 inches

Palm Tree Magnet
This is a large white plastic lid with a sheet of cardstock glued to the open side of it and all the goodies glued to the cardstock. We have some copper wire, a green glass donut bead, another glass bead, a plastic bead, a wooden bead, some blobs of copper glitter pain, a tiny square of text from a book I destroyed, a puzzle piece tinted green with sharpie and three metal studs pounded into it. A string of green sequins coiled with a blob of copper glitter in the center, there's a green bingo marker with a clear plastic gem on top, a fabric leaf beneath it all, a green gemstone (jadite perhaps?), and another green bingo marker with a plastic palm tree button glued to it.
This one is a bit over 3 inches across.
I rather like it.

Elephant Book Watercolor Journal
3x4 inches
Covers are recycled chipboard from food boxes covered with magazine cutouts on the outside and scrapbook paper on the inside. It's sewn in the coptic stitch (with modifications that I don't know the name of and too hard to explain in a few words) in crewel embroidery thread. It has six sheets of watercolor paper sewn one sheet to a signature. I sent this one off to California.

I did ATCs as well.

Halloween #1 Bat and Pumpkin
ATC
markers on book page adhered to recycled chipboard

Halloween #2 Black Cat
ATC
markers on book page adhered to recycled chipboard

Halloween #3 Little Devil
ATC
Markers on book page adhered to recycled cardstock.

Halloween #4 Mummy
ATC
Markers on book page adhered to recycled chipboard


Halloween #5 Monster
ATC
Markers on book page adhered to recycled chipboard

I'm sure I'll be back soon with more things to look at.
Be good to one another!
Peace
831

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