As Usual....My Muse Has Been Busy

Hello Readers!

My page counts say there are not a lot of you, but readers do come and I thank you so much for giving my ramblings a read! 

It has been 19 days since I was here last.  I probably slept at least one, maybe two of those days away but the muse won't be quieted so in the waking hours I make things. 

I'm rather thankful my muse likes variety. I couldn't imagine making the same old thing all the time. 

Ma gave me a set of stained glass paints about six days ago or so. She found it in her closet while cleaning her extra room. In the red box were four new paint brushes, 7 bottles of the necessary paints to do the stained glass technique, 2 bottles of cheap craft paint (one of which was hard as a rock! That tells you it's been some years since the kit was originally sold), a little tiny black plastic spoon, a metal embossing tool, an instruction book and a bunch of stencils (vines, foilage, that type of stuff). 

I made a book cover from a piece of acrylic I had laying around.

There's another piece of that acrylic, the exact same size that will become the back cover of the book, sans any decoration. My concerns with using a plastic stained glass cover are very small, actually. That glass paint stuck tight to the acrylic! It has a lot of texture and is fun to touch. I'm not sure what kind of paper will go inside of it as the paper will show through the covers when the book is closed. You all will see this again when it becomes a book.

I was watching an episode of Wooster and Jeeves last week when an idea became apparent. Wooster and Jeeves both, at different times had gone in the pantry to put gin in a pitcher of orange juice to get Gussie drunk so he'd propose to I forget her name. Anyway, on top the orange juice pitcher was this pretty little cover. White cotton with a lace edging with bright blue glass beads sewn all around the perimeter. It was beautiful and just what I needed!  

So I made my own version! 

Just a round of fleece, about the size of a dinner plate. I didn't even make a pattern. I just eyeballed as I cut a circle the size I wanted. Then I sewed light blue stone beads all around the edge to give it some weight.

I flopped it over the pitcher and voila! Mine's not near so pretty as one you'd find in a 1920s pantry, but it functions nicely! I had a dishcloth over this pitcher of tea that sits out on the counter, to keep the flies out of it. 

I can't remember if you all heard about the leather skirt I paid a buck and a quarter for at the thrift store a couple Friday's ago. I cut it apart to use the leather for some book covers and other projects not yet determined.

I got to look at all my pretty buttons too! I do love me some buttons! 

This one is about 4x5 inches. The button is an antique glass one with gold gilding on it. The button is much prettier than the photo shows. It has a soft gray colored heavy paper from a medical book published in a three ring binder. I call this a watercolor journal. The paper strongly reminds me of a lightweight watercolor paper. I've painted on it and it takes acrylics and watercolor nicely. It has 7 signatures with 6 pages each, giving it 42 surfaces to do what you wish on.

There is still much leather left with which to make many more books. I wanted to use up the rest of the paper I used in the larger leather bound book. The leftovers were nowhere near large enough for a large book. The three here was the end of books made with that paper. It's all gone...no more to be had.

The button on this one is silver with a patina (in color only). It has little nubbies on it. I believe it came off a cashmere sweater I destroyed in a quest for monsters. There were more in the button jar than just this one.

The books are 2.5 x 3 inches. The one with the nubby button above and this one with the pink button have 4 signatures with 6 pages giving you 24 sufaces.

I had about 300 of those pink buttons at one time...I've given a good many of them away, a few at a time. I have a boatload of white ones that look just like the pink one. I'm figuring they're from the 1940s, or there abouts. I got them in two big plastic bags from somewhere years ago. There where a lot more pink ones than white ones though. 

I sewed them together with gray embroidery thread in the pamphlet stitch so each signature is sewn in individually.  The button on this one is a plastic button, nothing really special about it other than it's a nice button. This one has 5 signatures with 6 pages each giving it 30 pages total.

As I was cutting the remainder of the paper for the leather bound books, I kept the end pieces from them to make a basket or two.

I ended up with only one basket. I'm thinking it needs a paint job. A paint job would make it a VERY TOUGH little basket!  It's pretty tough without a coat of anything. I put the writing on the inside. This paper was the dividers between the chapters in the medical book.

This is the bottom of the basket. It's just a simple even weave basket. It's about 3 inches square and an inch tall. I could have gone much taller. I need a new pencil cup on this desk...... I still have enough to make a taller basket from this paper so we shall see if the muse is on board.

A few days ago I came across a bowl on the internet, I forget just where....sorry. It was made from 1 inch rounds of scrapbooking papers. Lots of different colors of it! It was cute as the dickens and I wanted something similar. The rounds were just glued together haphazardly so there were holes between some of them. I don't think this cute little bowl would have been very sturdy though.  I continued on my search through paper bowls on Google Images....I came across a tutorial on how to make your own paper bowl from newspaper using another bowl as a mold. 

The wheels started turning! I went to the kitchen and got the little glass bowl I had used as a mold for the shredded paper money bowl I showed you all awhile back on the blog. I covered it with cling wrap (clear plastic film) and got out the fusible interfacing that has been hanging on the closet wall for five years, maybe longer.

I knew it would come in handy eventually! 

I made a bowl! This isn't a good bowl, however. I cut the interfacing in a round that would cover my mold. It did not lay flat like I had expected it to do. I went ahead and tried out that concept with the scrapbooking paper rounds but used little stars instead. 

I wasn't happy with that result so I went a different direction somewhat.

I cut the interfacing into strips about an inch wide and three inches long. I wasn't neat about this. Neatness will not count in this step! Just eyeball it. 

Glue the interfacing to your mold. I used a plastic sheet under mine so it won't stick to what you're working on. Cover the mold completely with the interfacing using plain old white glue. You could water your glue down a tad if you like, but I did not.

The layer of interfacing can be covered with whatever suits your fancy as you'll see in the examples I'll show you in a bit. You can let it dry if you like or you can just jump right on in with the next layer.

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of each layer of the process. The more layers you use, the stiffer your bowl will be. The only layers that are going to show are the inside and the outside of the finished bowl so use whatever other layers of paper you want to use.

Once you've covered the mold to your liking, making sure you get all the way to the edge of the mold with the gluing, let it dry overnight, at least 8 hours. then cut the excess off the rim. I just used a pair of scissors on all the bowls I made.

The first bowl I made using the strips, I am pleased with.

Oh, Look! There's Fred! 

The stars look really cool all over the bowl. I used up some little scraps of paper to make the stars. There's some book pages, maps and construction paper stars in with the scrapbooking paper stars. 

I covered the inside and the outside with stars. You can still see through the bowl in places if you hold it up to the light. It's a nice little bowl but not extremely stiff. It is strong, what with that interfacing but it's easily squished. 

I like how it turned out though so I made a couple more bowls over the next few days.

I kept with the star theme on this bowl. It's made in the same mold as the star bowl, 4.5 inches across. The stars were punched from book pages written in German. I did the same thing with this bowl as the bowl above. Covered it with a layer of interfacing and one layer on stars inside and out. Then I painted the inside with the gold color stained glass paint from the kit I told you about a bit ago. The outside of the bowl is painted with the same red as the bird is above.

This bowl is flimsy but it's very strong! If you put a couple oranges in it, they'd distort the bowl but wouldn't hurt it any. 

This is the best picture out of four of the outside of the next bowl. I don't know why my camera wouldn't focus on the outside of the bowl. It's made in the same way as the star bowls except it has two layers of orchard paper on the inside and one layer of shredded money on the outside. We all know how tough paper money is! This little bowl is STOUT!

It took me a couple hours to put those strips of money on the outside of this bowl. There's a LOT of glue on this bowl holding that money on. This will be a one of a  kind. I ain't doing that again! My eyeballs were going buggy! The outcome is pretty cool though. This bowl isn't flimsy. It's a stout little bowl that will last for years to come so long as it doesn't get wet.

I wasn't quite done with making bowls yet but I was tired of the same size bowl time after time so I went and got one of my favorite bowls out of the cupboard in the kitchen and used it for the next bowl.

I totally eliminated the layer of interfacing from this bowl. I covered the bowl with a layer of tinfoil. Tinfoil works as well as plastic wrap, better in my opinion. I covered the foil with three layers of magazine paper torn into squares about an inch and half or so. No need for neatness here, you're gonna cover it up anyway. I let the layers of magazine paper dry enough that I wasn't sticking to it and then took the bowl off the mold and covered the inside of it with three layers of register tape paper. Register tape paper is about the same weight as copy paper. Use whatever paper you want to. It all works! I just happen to have about 36 rolls of register tape paper that I need to use up somehow! The outside of the bowl is covered with orchard paper that I painted with the gold from the stained glass kit.

I cut up a bunch of the strips of shredded money and sprinkled it all over the glued bottom of the bowl and then covered it with two layers of white tissue paper so the shredded money would lay flat. It has a coat of gloss varnish also. This bowl is 8 inches across. This bowl is very stiff. I think that's because of all the layers of paper it has. Interfacing would have made it that much stronger!

I have another bowl in the works right now so there may be a few more bowls to show in the next post.

I got the background for this ATC with a trade. I do wish I could remember which envelope I took it out of so I could give credit where credit is due. Only the line drawing is mine. The background is paint of some sort. Maybe a Gelli Plate print? 

The Vacation Beach

ATC

black marker on painted background

I've been itching to drag out the sewing again, maybe finish up that crocheted basket too. We'll see what the muse has in store in the next few days or so.

Thanks for coming round!

Remember 

be good to one another!

It matters!

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