Crafting for gift giving

When giving gifts I like to give a combination of store bought and hand made. I recently put together a gift bag for a friend who had a birthday the other day.
Two of the gifts I made for her were a raggy keychain

And this framed embroidery piece.

 This was done on my embroidery machine. After letting the machine do it's thing I was trying to decide how I wanted to finish this off. I thought about using it for a candle mat or a jar wrap but decided just to frame it instead.

Tracking progress

Back at the beginning of May I noticed a birds nest in the small evergreen tree we have next to our front door.

I was a bit concerned though because every time we went in or out that door the mother bird would take off out of the tree. I was hoping that she wouldn't give up in frustration and abandon the nest. I was watching it every day to see how things were going.

I was thrilled the day I came home and discovered the eggs had hatched and there were three little newborns in the nest.

They just keep getting fuzzier every day.

They've come a long way since this last picture but that's still on my camera. I'll continue to watch the nest daily and will post more of my little guests.

When the toilet paper is gone

Don't throw out that empty roll from your toilet paper use it to wrap a little gift with.

Marie from Spun by Me had pinned some paper roll pillow boxes and I thought they were a great idea. Since I just happened to have a couple of empty rolls I thought I would make some of my own. You can find the original ones on Art is Medicine

I actually made three of these but don't have a picture of the first one. That one I did make with a toilet tissue roll. The second two were made from a paper towel roll that was cut in half.

Those little yo-yo flowers have been decorating a lot of my projects lately. The postage marks are a stamp set I purchased quite a while ago and finally found a good use for them

This one was a happy accident. I was pulling out different things to glue on and I used the small fabric scrap, tea dyed cheese cloth and a bit of lace. Then I was digging through my stash and found those beads, a bit of blue wire and some hemp cord. I twisted a few strands of the cord to make it look like a rope and then glued all the little bits on. I was quite pleased with the way this one turned out.

These won't hold anything big but are perfect for a small gift like a pair of earrings or a charm.

Page 6

I have another art journal page. Let me warn you that this one and the next one are not all that impressive. Good or bad they are suitable for blog material.

Since I'm not impressed with these I'm only going to show you one today. I'll save bad art part two for another post.

The case of the missing blogger

The desk of the missing blogger sits abandoned.

Oh my, the desk is even clean and tidy. Could foul play be involved? Inspector Whodunit investigated and is here to report the findings.

Last week was a bit busy at work for the blogger and by Thursday she was seen snoozing on the couch after returning home. When Friday rolled around the blogger was much too excited about the three day weekend that laid ahead. Saturday was a day filled with grocery shopping, cleaning and crafting followed by pool cleaning and more crafting on Sunday. Monday the bloggers craft room was looking as though it had been ransacked by hoodlums so more cleaning was required. The television saw the blogger frequently over the three day weekend and entertained her with a Diagnosis Murder marathon as well as some of her other old favorites.
Now that the weekend is over the blogger will be returning to work, but I imagine there will be some kicking and screaming involved. If she finds time to replenish her stock of blog pictures she will be returning to her little corner of the internet and hopefully on a more regular basis.

If it isn't one thing it's another

I wonder if those gold finches are watching all the dollar bills that are flying out of my wallet.  I've been on a bit of a self imposed spending freeze since the new roof went on. I've done very well and avoided most unnecessary spending.
Well yesterday I was driving home from work and noticed that the inspection sticker on my car ran out at the end of last month. I've been driving around for almost a month with an uninspected car. Thankfully the town cop I drove by didn't notice the expired sticker. So I get home and call the garage where I take my car for inspection and as luck would have it he has a cancellation and can do it right then. I dropped the car off, walked back home and waited for his call. I was not expecting to hear that my tires wouldn't pass and I need to buy new tires before he can pass my car. There go some more dollar bills out of my wallet.

Ok I'm doing whining now but seriously this is for the birds

It's in the bag

Honestly there's nothing in this bag at all.

I was just playing around one day and ended up with this little felt bag. When I say little I do mean little. This is about 3 inches wide and 4 inches high.

Scene 1

It's showtime in my back yard with all the birds that have been visiting the feeder. This little one was very entertaining.

He wasn't exactly sure which was his best side so he made sure to show me both. I think he looks cute no matter which side you look at.

Turn the page

I have another page in my art journal for today.

Behold the power of flowers.

For this one I started with a book page. I trimmed it down a bit, drew a large rectangle then broke that down into sections. Then I started doodling flowers in all the different sections. From there it was just adding the color with markers and colored pencils.

Wasn't going to

I was just going to skip posting today but changed my mind. Instead I'm just going to pop in to say enjoy your day. I'll be spending the day pretty much just hanging out and doing nothing.

Froggy went a courtin'

While browsing the internet (I seem to do an awful lot of that) I found a quick and easy way to draw a frog. Not a lifelike frog but a cutesy little frog. I also had seen another tutorial for how to color with colored pencils.

Armed with my new found knowledge and my home made color mist I set out to create a masterpiece. I wish I would have taken a few more pictures as I was going along but I was having too much fun to think of that.

I got it this far and thought I was done

Then I kept going back and tweaking it a bit more. I shaded, I erased I added some more shadows and then I decided it was done

I started this by spraying the blue and green color mist on to a plain piece of paper for the background. The rest was done with colored pencils.

Homemade crafty supplies

I have read about color mist and glimmer mist used in scrapbooking and other paper crafts and have wanted to try it but I'm cheap and it's expensive in my opinion. That's the wonderful thing about the internet. Not only can you find all kinds of interesting things you can find ways to make supplies at home much cheaper than you would buy them for in the store. Needless to say, I found a way to make my own color mist with acrylic paints. I should have figured it out myself that it's really just watered down paint.
I don't recall where I found the directions but they said to purchase these little mini sprayers by Tim Holtz. Well cheapo me couldn't do that because I wasn't going to pay $5 for 3 dinky little spray bottles. I did however find larger, yet still mini size, spray bottles at Wal-mart for .97 cents each.

So far I have 2 bottles of home made color mist. I'll show what I tried it out on tomorrow

Thinking of you

Monday night for some reason I just could not sleep. I tossed and I turned but it did no good. When I was able to fall asleep it wasn't for very long. And then....the alarm went off. It's mornings like those I wish I was able to call off like other people do. I dragged myself to work, I dragged through my day and then I dragged myself home at the end of the day and plopped on the couch. I woke up for dinner then went to bed and never scheduled a post for Wednesday but I was....

I made this card a week or so ago and I loved the way it turned out until I did the thinking of you. It's a rub on transfer and the word thinking stuck to the backing. I can probably fix it with a marker but it annoyed me all the same

Angry Birds

We moved our bird feeder closer to the house so that Wade could get a better view of them while we're having dinner. I've been keeping my camera right by the window so that I can snap some quick shots.
When I first saw this one on the computer my first thought was that he looked rather angry.

And I bet you thought they were just a cartoon.

An experiment

The other day I talked about the modeling paste I made to try in my art journal and I mentioned that I tried it out on something else.
I was curious to see how it would work if I brushed it on to a glass jar and it worked very well. I didn't take pictures along the way but it was a pretty simple project. I simply took an empty pizza sauce jar and brushed the modeling paste on. Once it was dry I painted over that with a glue/instant coffee mixture. I finished it off by wrapping jute twine around the top of it.

I liked the texture that the instant coffee added to the jar.

Once it was all done I went out and picked myself a little bouquet of dandelions.

Happy Mother's Day

To all the mother's out there, whether your babies have 2 legs or 4, I wish you a happy day.

Comments off today.

Page 4

Over the  years I've heard a lot about gesso and how it's used in various ways. Well recently I saw a pin on Pinterest for home made modeling paste which is very similar to gesso (at least as far as I can tell). It's made with three simple ingredients; paint, baby powder and glue. I decided to give it a try and experiment in my art journal.

I mixed up the modeling paste then brushed it on to the page and let it dry. When dry I painted the blue background over the dried paste. Next I painted the tree. The bird was a separate piece that I cut out, colored with markers then glued to the page. The S in spring was cut with my cricut machine and glued down and the rest of the word was done with markers.

After doing this page I had another idea for using the paste but I'll save that for another post.

The original recipe for homemade modeling past can be found HERE

In other news, I'm running a bit behind with blog reading and emails. It's been a couple days since I've cleaned out my email inbox. Hopefully this weekend I'll get to that. I will read all of them and I appreciate all comments but sometimes I have to pass on responding.

Another version

I'm sure that some of you have doubts about my claim that Duke has been hogging my computer and that's why I haven't been blogging.
You probably think I've been doing things like lounging around on the couch, watching tv, or playing games on my kindle like this one.

It's basically another tetris type game with a little bit more to it. It's not a bad game but there are a couple things I don't like about it. One is that it's connected to facebook and the other is that you have to be connected to the internet to play which means that I'm limited on where I can play the game. I take my kindle to work with me so I have it for breaks and lunch but there's no internet connection there. Oh well, at least I can still read which is another thing that has been taking up quite a bit of my time.

One lies, the other swears to it

I know I've been absent from the blog for a few days but Duke was hogging the computer and wouldn't let me have it.

My way part two

As promised, or maybe I should say threatened, here are two more pages in my art journal.

For this one I took a piece of scrapbook paper, cut it down to size and punched a border along the top of it. Then I looked through a magazine for a picture to cut out and paste on the page.

This one I started by cutting out the words endless possibilities from a magazine. I pasted them on the page and then painted the shape in the center. The rest of the page was done with markers. I'm kind of like a kid when it comes to  markers. I can entertain myself for quite a while with them.

I do have one more page finished and another one started but no pictures taken of them just yet. I'll give you a break before I come back to this.

I'm doing it my way

I've been reading a lot about art journals lately. I find them intriguing and they look like fun. Any way I thought that I would give it a try and do it my way.

There are all kinds of resources out there for how to get started and what to do but by the far the best advice that I read was on one site that said not to follow any rules, just let your imagination run wild and do whatever you want.

I started with a cheap composition book. Eventually I'll decorate the cover of this some how but that will have to wait until I decide what I want to do on it.

The first page was done with just markers.

I'm hoping that this will help jump start my creative thinking when I'm in a slump. Plus I plan on using this to try out different techniques that I read about.

Tomorrow I'll show you two more pages that I have done so far.