A Late Holiday Greeting, some art and a few critters

Hello Readers!

A late Merry Christmas to you all. I hope it was a great day for you and you remembered the reason for the season.

I'm still waiting on the gift exchanges to cease. Sometime in the next week all the children will be here to get their presents. Then I can take the tree down and pack away the Nativity for another year.

If not for the Altered Envie Group I belong to, I probably wouldn't have gotten a drawing done in December.

I think this got sent somewhere around the 15th? I really don't remember what day I sent it. It's the first drawing done this month though. The little boy with the giant snowball is on the front of the envelope.

And Santa (after a HARD Christmas night) with a melting snowman on the backside of the envelope. All done in markers.

I have no clue just how many of these birds I ended up making. Somewhere around 60 of them. I gave a bunch of them away for gifts this year.

This big crock bowl full of paper birds lead to more birds....

This time made from 16mm film. 

These birds are burned into my brain. I will NEVER forget how to make them, as I have made a lot of them! The film birds are smaller than the paper ones. I still like the straight tailed birds better than the curly tail ones but others pretty much demand that those birds NEED curly tails so every once in a while I make a curly tail just to keep the peace.

I'm thinking I need to string these little birds on a garland. We shall see if that materializes in the new year.

I have reels and reels of 16mm and 8mm film. All are football games from the 1970s. The one I used for the birds and the basket below is from 1972.

As I said, I have reels and reels of this film and I need to make something out of it. I tried to weave 8mm film but it didn't hold up well to the bending of the corners. Bend it any amount and it snaps in two! The 16mm film worked great with the bending. It's not a very sturdy basket though. Floppy. I'm uncertain how I will finish off the top edge. I had hoped to not use any more tape on it than I have already used but that may be the way I have to go with it. This is a Work In Progress.

I'm still working on the broom bristle coiled basket. This picture was taken three days ago.

This one was taken yesterday. I've added two coils in three days. It's coming along though. 

I'm slowly getting all the wool balls embroidered. I don't think this one is actually done even though the last time I laid it down I said it was done. It needs a few more colors added to it, I think.

While playing around with the fabric for the stars below, I got tired of scoring all those lines and decided to see what would happen if I sewed two star shapes together after doing some marker drawing on the stars. It works, but it isn't anything special if you ask me.

Apparently there are nine of these since the last post where you saw, I think, 7 of them. 

These are really easy to make and scoring those lines really isn't hard to do.

All are made from a mystery fabric I got at a yard sale. The fabric is on a roll like wallpaper...it's about the same size as a standard roll of wallpaper. I don't think it is wallpaper though. It really doesn't matter what it was made for originally nor what the heck it's made from. I won't be using it as it was intended anyway!

And I made nine more owls like the ones in the last post. I'll not bore you with an individual picture of each of them. 

I made another dozen of these glittered glue snowflakes. This pile of snowflakes is the first batch made. The second dozen aren't done yet. I still need to peel them off the wax paper, add a hanger and glitter the backsides.

Fred and his kitties are all doing fine. Here's Tippy sitting on the coffee table in the living room staring at the Christmas Tree and Fred wondering why he likes kitties so well.

Murray asleep on the foot of my bed. Her favorite sleeping spot.

Fred and Lola hanging out by the front door.

They both want to go outside.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my ramblings!

I hope the new year holds many blessings and good love coming at you each day!

Remember....

be good to one another!

It truly matters!

Peace

831

birds baskets baubles and balls with some salad thrown in

hello Readers!

Christmas is fast approaching and I don't even have the tree out of storage yet. Fifteen days to get my act together! 

I have been progressing on achieving that goal! 

You can either settle in for a long read or just take a quick look-see at what I've been up to. Whatever you decide, thanks for stopping by!

You all know my old body doesn't cooperate like I would love for it to do. I missed a tree trimming party last Saturday. That is the day  my own tree should have been up and shining. Sister Susan said I didn't miss anything. Ma says I missed a great party. I've no clue which one to believe. I totally missed Saturday. Slept the whole day away and messed up my sleep cycle again. I just got back to being up during the day and sleeping at night like normal people do. It's almost midnight as I sit here typing and I'll be up till 4 or 5 in the morning.

I certainly can't complain that I get nothing done because people interrupt me. Everyone else is asleep when I'm awake!

I've woven a few more birds since I was here last. There are 3 unfinished birds laying atop some sweater material on the tiny chair in the living room.

I know this picture looks kinda like a mess and you're wondering what the devil you're supposed to be seeing here. The black and white paper strips beneath my phone's earpiece cord are strips of photographs to make another 3 dozen or so birds.

I don't need another 3 dozen woven birds but I do want them. I've narrowed it down to just over 5 minutes to weave a bird. They are portable...very portable. All that's needed besides the strips of paper is a pair of scissors. They're easy (for me) to part with and people really like receiving unexpected gifts. And it's even better if you make the surprise right there in front of them. Some people consider it magic. Others maybe sorcery? :) Guess it depends on what the gift is being given for....

Well, birds should go with good intentions, I think.

The bowl got a tad fuller since the last post and all the birds in the bowl, with the exception of maybe 2 or 3 of them, have copper wire hangers attached. 

I am going to have to find another container for the birds in the next few days. I'll be needing my crock mixing bowl when the Christmas Baking commences. 

I'm leaning towards cakes this year. Last year's cookies about killed me!

Speaking of giving gifts..... I told you all about going to Nebraska for my sister's birthday. My other sister told me the waitress LOVED the little straw shrimp I left with the tip. I love leaving little gifts!!!

This a picture of an empty green tea can. You will get to see some stars in a bit that are made from the aluminum sheets I showed you in the last post.

I really just wanted a picture of that beautiful apple I bought at the grocery store in town the day before yesterday. There was a yellow apple, bigger than the red one, sitting there yesterday. I'm in hopes the red one tastes as good as the yellow one did!  That tea can is slated to be turned into star ornaments. I still need a few more of those.

I was walking around the house taking pictures of random things sitting on the many surfaces in this house.  This is the coolest picture of the 253 that were on the smart card.

It's a box full of paper sticks. 

I went on a paper rolling kick a couple years ago. I was rolling sticks out of full magazine sheets. Stockpiling the damn things! I must of rolled well over a couple thousand of them... I used about a third of them on a box I made for a friend of mine. The box has survived for a few years but Cory tells me has glued a few of those sticks back onto the box when they fell off. That box of sticks sits in the cutting room taking up space. I've since learned that if you want paper sticks for weaving, you need to cut those magazine pages into thirds first. 

That box of paper sticks is kind of like the 2 boxes of words in the closet. (Yes, words.) They're useless but I just can't throw them out. I'm sure someday I'll figure out something exceptional to do with them. The words in the closet will NEVER be useful!

I've worked on some rattle balls. Not a lot of progress if truth be known. Been a couple days since I did any embroidery work. 

I worked on owl ornaments yesterday.

There was an athon over at AFA over the weekend. I looked in on what was going on but did not actually play in the athon this time. The muse wasn't on board for demands of any kind but her own. And when someone posted the owl ornaments they were making, the muse SCREAMED, LEt's make some too!

I got some chipboard boxes out of the cutting room and went to the livingroom to make an owl template that would suffice.

I dragged out some scrap book paper and covered 24 chipboard owls on one side.

I started putting paper wings on the owls but changed my mind after three or four of them and decided glittered wings was an excellent idea.

I sandwiched two owls together with a gold wire hanger at the top.

After the glitter had dried I put dots of white puff paint on the wings of each owl.

The eyes are little metal disks that are about 3/8 inch deep. They came out of some magnetic clips I destroyed for the magnets inside. These little disks are where the magnets were located. 

To hold the black plastic bead in the center of the eye I put some glass paint which is kind of like puffy paint.

Their beaks are a triangle of bright orange foam.

There is a plain white circle under each of the eyes.

For some unknown reason there are only single pictures of ten of the eleven owls in this picture! These guys are roughly 2.5 x 3.5 inches.

I actually started out to make a dozen owl ornaments. Somehow one of the owl halves decided to stay in the livingroom where I cut them all out of a big cereal box. I found it earlier today when I got out another cereal box to cut some more.

Only nine of them will come to be from this pile. The cereal box wasn't quite as big as the one used for the dozen owls. 

Stars

I had a devil of a time making the template for these stars! They're a bit larger than I'd like them to be but they'll have to do!

This one has copper foil tape around the edges because I made a big gash into the star while cutting it out of the sheet of aluminum. I don't recommend putting foil tape around the edge. It's a PITA! 

You can't really see it well in the picture, but these stars here have a bead of puffy paint around the edge of the metal. It is quite sharp and could be a hazard. I didn't have any wounds from cutting the stars out. I did get stabbed a couple times in that process but no blood was drawn, just words from my mouth!

These have graphics on the other sides of them. I'm thinking I'm going to 'glue' these two together with some silver foil tape. Cover the whole thing with it. Totally different than doing only the edges!! I only have five metal stars at the moment. I need at least a dozen of them if everyone is to get one in their pressies. I don't have enough aluminum to do them all that way. Will have to make a plan.

I was killing time, surfing the web yesterday and ran across an article about making glittered glue spider webs.

I said, "Not spiderwebs! Snowflakes!"

I really like the purple ones!

I googled 'snowflake designs' and it gave me more snowflake ideas than I really needed.

I experimented with glue. This is  foam glue---for gluing foam things together covered with gold glitter.

This is purple fabric paint covered in purple glitter.

This is tacky glue covered in silver glitter.

The purple made the best looking snowflakes. I believe that to be because the tip of the bottle was the finest of the three. The tacky glue didn't work so good coming straight from the bottle. The foam glue flattened out in the drying process. I'd say fabric paint is the best bet for snowflakes. Any color would work. It gets covered with glitter. I'm going to turn them over tomorrow and glitter the backsides too. They're adhered to wax paper in the pictures. They were nowhere near dry when I took the pictures.

I suppose you could make your snowflakes with any number of arms you wanted to. Mine all have 8 arms but as I checked back in the google images, it appears that some folks think snowflakes have 5, 6, 7 or 8 or more arms. Guess it's whatever floats YOUR boat!

I won't know till tomorrow if this is a success or a total failure.

I was taking pictures of the glittered snowflakes laying on the dryer in the laundry room, drying, when Tippy decided she needed to know what was going on in there. I'm really glad she didn't step on any snowflakes!

And Fred had to put his two cents worth in in the laundry room as well. There he is in front of the inside of the backdoor that he destroyed because someone put him inside when no one was home. I was down south  visiting my son and left that fool dog at home under my sister's care. That's an aluminum door, by the way! It's been haphazardly repaired with foam in a can and a cut up aluminum can to cover the hole he put in the insulation all the way to the outside of the door! That dog has always had abandonment issues. I'm unsure why that is beings he has lived with me since he was five weeks old and I've never left him for any length of time. He tries to eat through the back door anytime you leave him in the house. He doesn't like to be home alone.

I showed you all these two in the last post. They've progressed a bit since then, but nowhere near done.

The princess is coming along nicely.

The elephant warped badly. I know this happened because I used some cheap Roseart school glue to adhere that glitter to the matboard base. Too much moisture! I think it can be salvaged though.

I drew an ATC yesterday.

Future Fruit

markers on cardstock

Dottee Fairy

I made her back in November. I intended to take her with me to the craft fair but she's been hanging from that hook under the kitchen cabinets since I put her there so I wouldn't forget to take her along!

Wow, that houndstooth print on the sweater fabric covering that ball really shows up in this picture! I really didn't notice just how much it shows till now! I called this ball done couple days ago. 

Four more done rattle balls.

And six more in the works.

Another experiment. A candy cane mouse. Need to open that package of candy canes I bought and see if he's the right size. And if he is, I'll put some thread whiskers  on him and a couple seed bead eyes.

The beginnings of my newest basket and the materials from which it is made. Except for the crochet cotton it's all sewn together with. Those are some sort of plastic broom bristles in that plastic bag. I've woven the bottom of the basket out of them and have started on the sides. Sewing coiled baskets is really hard on my left hand for some reason. I am right handed. My left thumb always hurts after I do this kind of work. I'll do a little each day on this and it should be finished before too many weeks have passed.

I finished the fish picture! YeeHaw! I say that sarcastically as I hate this particular fish picture. I haven't started on the next one yet.  This one is some strange measurements....19x15 or something like that. I'd have to go all the way to the other end of the house with the yardstick in tow to give you an accurate measurement so you'll have to do with my guesstimate. 

I thought it would be fun to see the last four fish pictures done.

This pink and black one is only 12 inches square. 

This one is like 20 inches by 16 or somesuch. 

And this one is the same size as the previous one. This pink one is my favorite of the four. I tried to find pictures of ALL the fish pictures but they seem to MIA from my computer. 

Guess that's the end of the show for today. Who knows what will show up in the next post...nor even when the next post might happen! 

I'm betting it won't be too long to wait though.

Thanks for hanging around to the end!

Remember

Be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace

831