Hello Readers!
A lot has been going on since the last time I made a post on the blog.
I opened an Etsy shop on the 17th of November. Had my first sales the day before yesterday! I really thought it would take much longer to get my first sale!
I opened an Etsy shop on the 17th of November. Had my first sales the day before yesterday! I really thought it would take much longer to get my first sale!
Opening the shop has taken up a good chunk of my creative time! Also with opening the Etsy shop, I've been going through things trying to decide what to sell! That should be the easiest part of it all! I have enough stuff to keep a dozen mixed media artists busy for a few lifetimes! At any rate, the shop is open and I'm slowly making progress on what to sell there. We shall see how it works out!
I lost a few days somewhere last week cause I slept them away. I woke up on Saturday morning thinking it was Friday and I could go check out the thrift store. I got on the computer and seen the date said it was Saturday. I was thinking, "what the hell happened to Friday???" I didn't get my dose of Vitamin D on Friday cause I never stepped foot outside the house in daylight hours!
The old body has been in rebel mode for a few weeks now. Aches and pains as usual, but sleeping more than I normally do. I'm surviving, that is all that matters at this point!
Doing good! I won't complain! I will however make a doctor's appt as I got a card from them last week telling me it has been a long time since they have seen me. Even though I do have health problems, I don't see the need to see the doctor for things I know she can do nothing about! All she will do is pump me full of pills that make me sleep even more than I already do! I do need to have a check up though so I'll call her later today and set that up.
I've rather been stuck on making paper birds for the last three days. I do not have any pictures of the paper birds but you'll get to see a different bird later in the pictures. I forgot to take pictures of the paper birds so you'll see them in the next post (whenever that will be.)
It is 6:30 in the morning right now. My brain hasn't kicked in just yet. The coffeepot refuses to make a pot of coffee in less than an hour so I've put a bottle of vinegar through it this morning in hopes of unclogging the supply lines. I have well water here at the house and it is hell on coffeepots! Lime deposits are the culprit.
I just tossed all the furkids outside. OK. I didn't actually TOSS them out, they all four walked out on their own feet! It's rather chilly and a tad breezy out this morning. It's also still dark out there! The cats are mad at me because I bought new cat food yesterday and they do not like it one little bit! I may have to go buy a bag of the good stuff and mix the two together to stay off the cats' list! I should have just bought the good stuff instead of trying to save a few dollars till the first of the month. Live and learn, I guess!
I have a lot on my list for the day. First off I have got to get that damn turkey painted! Even if it turns out to be the worst painting I've ever done in my life, it has to be done no later than tomorrow! Problem is, I've been putting off doing this turkey since the end of JULY! Painting is not even on the muse's radar these days and that tells me the turkey painting is going to suck big time! You all will get to see it regardless of the outcome!
The list of finished projects is now up to 545. That doesn't count what is in this post. We might as well get on to the art because you're probably tired of hearing me ramble on anyway! :)
An orange envelope prettied up with some tape. Nothing special, just a bit less boring than a plain old orange envelope.
The orange elephant altered envelope. Sharpie and white pen on orange envelope. I figured this one would take an international stamp and be done with it. No. It ended up costing over $2 to send and I refused to put a meter strip on it. The post lady didn't seem too upset that I insisted it have real stamps. She did get a bit touchy when I asked her not to cover the elephant's head with said stamps. I think there ended up being like six or seven stamps on this thing. Had I known it was gonna take so many, I'd of made the elephant a tad smaller to accommodate them all! Will got the envie so all's well on this front. And I am pleased with the outcome of the drawing also.
I had to go let the dog in. Like I said, it was 6:30 in the morning and that fool Fred is out there in the backyard barking his head off to be let in. I let him out the front door! I somedays really wish I knew dog language so I could figure out that dog's mind! I checked on the vinegar in the coffeepot on my way through the kitchen to the back door. The bottom of the pot isn't even covered with vinegar after 13 minutes of working at it! I may need another coffeepot!
A few days ago I cut down all the aluminum cans I've collected in the last few months. Sheets of aluminum take up much less space than a cylinder of aluminum. I don't end up with many aluminum cans since I gave up drinking soda (pretty much-I still have one now and again but not everyday like I used to.) Tea and lemonade comes in the aluminum cans I get. Big tall cans= lots of aluminum to make things from! The tops and bottoms of the cans go in the recycle bin for metal in the kitchen.
I made some little plaques out of parts of three of the cans I cut up. I had only 7 cans to begin with.
The bear is part of a lemonade can. It's got a thin strip of copper foil tape around the edge of it. The silver foil tape is adhered to a thick piece of chipboard that has some eyelets put in it before I covered it with the silver foil tape. The aluminum is taped to the silver foil tape with double stick tape. That's some heavy duty double stick tape! Glad I decided to buy four rolls of it!
From a tea can. Same concept as the bear except this bull is the full size of the chipboard and the copper foil tape goes round the whole shebang.
This one is from the tea can shown in the picture below. For this one I taped the aluminum to the silver foil tape with the copper foil tape instead of going around the perimeter of the aluminum and taping it with double stick tape.
Most of the cans aren't quite this detailed. The Lemonade cans all have a picture of a famous golfer on them. Can't think of his name right off the top of my head. There's a mango flavored tea can that is orange, red and green---lots of pretty colors on these cans. There's also the shiny silver inside of the can to work with too!
You can do all kinds of things with aluminum cans. I plan on making some little boxes out of aluminum cans. It is a great craft material.
I went on a road trip the weekend before last...sometime around the 16th. That was my sister's birthday...we went to Nebraska. We, being me, Ma, Susan, Linda, Aunt Sherry and Elaine, the birthday girl. We went shopping and out to lunch. Hit three thrift stores and an antique store along the way. Had lunch at a tavern in Holdredge. I have no clue what the name of the place was. The food was good! I live in Kansas about 50 miles from the Nebraska boarder so we really didn't go all that far from home. It was a fun day. We left home about 9 a.m and were back home by 4 p.m. Susan and I shared the back seat of Linda's van. I made shrimp all the way there and back.
Cute little devils, aren't they?
I tried teaching Susan how to make them but she didn't have her reading glasses with her and it was like trying to teach a blind person to drive! She gave up on the lessons quite early on in the game.
Addictive little devils, too!
I made seven of these shrimp on the roadtrip to Nebraska.
I don't have photographic proof but at this moment there are 23 shrimp in a bowl on the desk here beside me. I think the cats stole some of them. I spent days weaving shrimps after I had counted 23 in the dish. There should have been close to 30 of them in that dish by the time I counted them again. I made at least one and sometimes up to three shrimps over a four day period.
To make your own shrimp you'll need some bendy straws. I got these on clearance at the dollar store for 50 cents.
You'll need this tutorial to know how to weave them.
And you'll need a pair of small sharp scissors. These aren't near as hard to make as they look. I found it a bit tricky to grasp how the weave goes together at first, bit finally came to me. Persistence.
I showed you all this basket in the last post. It was pure white then. I dyed it with food coloring. I like it better this way than pure white.
I still have a lot of this elastic left. There will probably be more baskets in the near future.
I made some progress on FP10 but at the time of this post, progress has come to stalemate.
Mermaid barbie is done and attached to the canvas, finally.
I still need to make three fishes to round this out. Put a few more strands of fibers on it and I'll call it done! This is, by far, my least favorite of all the fish pictures I've made! A mermaid was a fantastic idea and I will use it again. The mermaid will not be green though.
A couple of glitter pictures in progress. They are actually farther along now than when I took the pictures of them a few days ago. Not done yet, but well on the way. They are both 4x4 inches.
I learned how to make woven dragons. His tail is all wonky but the rest of him turned out great! You might see another dragon or two in the future beings I've mastered the art of weaving his body. It's the same weave as the bird you'll see in minute. I made 18 paper birds in addition to this dragon. The birds do not have a complicated tail like the dragon does and they don't need as long a piece of paper as the dragon. I made the birds out of 8x10 glossy black and white photographs of famous people. You'll get to see the birds in the next post. The dragon is made from a sheet of 12x12 scrapbook paper. I'll be experimenting with other paper I have that is at least 12 inches long. Wallpaper might be a good choice?
I made another kusudama flower ball. This one is made out of a graphic novel from the 1990s. It has plastic shiny star beads in the center of each flower unit and braided copper wire for a hanger. It's about 3 inches across.
Here's some more shrimp. I think there's a colony of them under the sofa if my assumptions on thieving cats is correct.
I made this little box to house strips of 16mm film.
It's made from a cake box and some duct tape. Three beads are wired on the lid with copper wire. It's 3 inches across and just deep enough to hold the film. There are 8 one yard lengths of film in the box in the picture.
I told you all about the dozen or so reels of high school football footage I found at a yard sale for $2. I've been wracking my brain to figure out what the heck to do with all that film. I finally figured out something.
A bird woven just like the paper dragon, but made with film instead of paper. The underside of his wings show where the film was taped together to begin the weaving. I tried going for the dragon's tail but weaving with film is a totally different experience than weaving with paper and that film just would not cooperate with the intricacy of the tail weave. So I lopped the tail ends off, tied his head and called him a pterodactyl. I'll put a copper wire hanger on him when I do the same to all the birds in the stone mixing bowl on the kitchen counter.
I started embroidering another wool ball yesterday. I put a cover on the naked white ball some days back after having destroyed a shrunken wool jacket. That ball should be done sometime soon.
For sure you all will see a turkey in the next post! And some woven paper birds. Whatever else shows up will be as big a surprise to me as it will to you!
Be good to one another!
It matters!
Thanks for stopping by!
Peace
831
No comments:
Post a Comment