Back to ATCs

So, I received an e-mail saying that a gallery in Vancouver is holding an ATC exhibition, and they are calling for submissions. Although i will not be able to attend, it still seems pretty neat. I love trading in new ways. I will be sending 9 ATCs to the Richmond art gallery by August 22nd. They are asking for the submissions to be along the themes of things like domestic life and such. You can find more info about it here.

So, i've been creating more atc's lately. There is a swap on saturday in a nearby town that i'll be going to... this should be fun. I have to buckle down and create some cards for trading before saturday. I really like how Secret Glen turned out.

Here's two i've finished. The first is for the exhibition, and the second is for the swap on sunday.




























I have finished the second jewelry project from Stephanie Lee's book Semi-Precious Salvage. I'll be posting it tomorrow, or soon. Time to move on to the third :). However, i think my ATC making may take precedence over it for this week.

Tash's birthday present

Yesterday, I finally finished my other friend's birthday present. My friend tasha, the seamstress discussed in a previous post, is having her birthday get together tonight, although her actual birthday was about a month ago. So, essentially this gift is about a month late... but so is her party so that's ok hahaha.

Tasha really likes unicorns, and i have had a facination for some time with the beautiful tin art shrines that i have been seeing on flickr. I especially like the ones i saw on Teresa's flickr here. I figured it was time for me to try making one myself.

So, i started with this super cute tin that my mom gave me. It had a lid, and i started using the lid, but it just scratched up the paint to put it on later so i tossed the lid. I painted the tin up, and while the effect of the tin showing through was cool on the inside i wanted thicker paint on the outside so i guessoed it (haha new word) and then re-painted the outside a delicious purple.

I went to the dollar store, and bought a cheap unicorn. I cut the head and front hooves off, and glued them inside the tin. My boyfriend is working at a heavy equipment construction company. As i was there for a picnic, i noticed this sparkly, shaved thin metal strips beside the dumpster..... and totally took them lol. (my boyfriend and his co-workers thought i was crazy and that i'd never use it... well who's laughing now? lol). I broke the metal into pieces and glued it around the head and hooves, as the colour was just too perfect. Found a cute pair of earings with skulls (haha) on them, and added them in on the little shelf inside. Voila, a couple final touches with flowers, painted horn and jewels and the inside was done.

I drilled holes in the top and bottom. I threaded wire through the top and bottom, and added a chain with a large soldered charm nameplate for the horse.

I really hope tasha likes her present! The shrine is in the green package :).

Judy's fabulous tutorial

I stumbled across a fabulous felting tutorial for an absolutely stunning project on Judy Scott-Kinross' blog. I absolutely adore the project she made and she has a wonderful tutorial laying it all out. Fabulous! Go check it out!

As for myself, i now have all the supplies i need for the next jewelry project, except nickel. Where on earth do you get nickel?????? Could i use copper instead, or are there certain special properties nickel has for etching and jewelry making?

New Challenge... for myself :)

It's here! It's here! I just got a call a couple days ago from my local bookstore, saying that my copy i'd ordered in of Semi-Precious Salvage, by Stephanie Lee had arrived. As soon as i picked it up and flipped through, i knew it was the next step for me. I already fell in love with Stephanie's sense of style and beautiful art jewelry on her blog... now it was time to start following some of her projects. I immediately flipped to the first project and checked it out... gorgeous as expected. I scanned through the list of things i would need to create this, and saw that all i was missing was 24 gauge wire, a brayer (which i ended up not buying.... just couldn't find one i really liked! I need to find a brayer at some store that i can bond with...haha) and metal files... that is very reasonable for price! Everything else, i already had. I love it when things work out that way... :)








So here are the pictures of the first piece i created from this book. I deviated slightly from the instructions... prefering the hammered copper look over a stamp of white acrylic paint and only able (and prefering?) the gold wire over black. I skimped on the pearls and used these gorgeously smooth green beads i had instead. As well, instead of making this a brooch (in which i'd probably never wear it) i made this into a necklace pendant instead. Other than that i stuck pretty much to the instructions. Jewelry creation is rather new to me, but i am so very pleased on how this turned out.


I am creating a new potential challenge for myself... i want to try working my way through the projects in this book. This is very similar to Jen's challenge of last month, but i am not happy with teh book i picked... it was way too many techniques and lacked specific projects to work on. My other book is still a valuable book to have about photo altering techniques, and i did create two projects (i loved the lilac one, and the keyboard one turned out okay), but it is not quite the 'start from the start and work to the end' type of book. I am giving myself a personal challenge to work on this one.

I am also working on another birthday present. I have a friend who adores unicorns, and i'm making her an art shrine. I had the perfect little matchbox, and found an adorable plastic unicorn at the dollar store. I'll post you some pictures when it's done.

Flickr Mosaic Meme

1. Dale Chihuly in Iceland, 2. Tarako spaghetti lunch, 3. Angkor Thom #1, 4. Autumn walk, 5. Juno, 6. El pez en el espejo / The fish in the mirror, 7. Boat, 8. vintage tea set with cupcake, 9. Young At Heart, 10. Always Marry An April Girl, 11. Last day in Paris, 12. A WINTER'S DALE


I decided to participate in a Flickr meme that looked like a lot of fun. I find myself enjoying flickr more and more lately... it really is a great social photo sharing site. Here's the challenge, as i saw over at Leah's blog. The instructions here were copied from her blog.

Anyways, here's the idea behind the meme:

* Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr search.
* Using only the first page, choose an image.
* Copy and paste each of the URL’s into the mosaic maker over at FD's image maker.

The questions:
What is your first name?
What is your favorite food?
What high school did you attend?
What is your favorite color?
Who is your celebrity crush?
Favorite drink?
Dream vacation?
Favorite dessert?
What do you want to be when you grow up?
What do you love most in life?
One word to describe you.
Your Flickr name

Present for fletcher

You may have notices a glass box i was working on earlier. Well, it was my friend Fletcher's birthday last saturday. I finished the box just in time. Inside the box, i placed an anime keychain of this crazy sword guy. I think he's from a show called Bleach or something? Either way, fletcher seemed very pleased with it.

Recently, i picked up Sommerset Workshop magazine. I am kind of in the middle of nowhere, workshop wise. I have often wistfully looked at a map that shows the distance between here and saskatchewan and portland.... it would be a 19 hour drive. Sigh. No Artfest for me.... yet. Give me time to work a little more and then i'll have the money/airmiles to fly :). For now i appease myself by buying fabulous magazines and such.

In the Sommerset Workshop magazine, they had a section by Hanne Matthiesen. I also checked out her blog, and loved it. In the magazine, she discussed and demonstrated how to create waxed paper. I just loved it! I find beeswax to be a wonderful medium. I had played with it previously on my 8X8 lilac piece, and figured it was time to smell up the basement of beeswax again lol. I used an electric fry pan thing to melt the wax... the same one i use for dying felt. However, i guess that i did not wash it out very well since i last dyed, so the wax all turned purple! It was such a pretty purple though that i didn't mind. I waxed vintage sheet music, brown packing paper, scrapbooking papers, white paper, white satiny fabric and canvas. All came out with a softly purple hue. Wonderful.

So, i used this paper as wrapping for fletcher's birthday present, and a piece of the sheet music for the tag. Here are some pics of how they turned out :).





And last of all, here is fletcher before he opened his present.

My pretty birthday skirt!

A friend of mine, Tasha, is an incredibly talented seamstress. I was so very pleased when she said that she would create me a dress. We scoured flickr and many other online photos for ideas, and finally got an idea of what we were looking for. Here is our first inspiration picture. It is not exactly what we would create, but it was our starting point. Isn't it just fabulous?

We decided create a corset top and a separate layered skirt bottom. As i am quite short (5'2) we decided to make a shorter type of skirt, not the full length pooffy dress as the photo (although hers is sooooo gorgeous). We selected four different black materials and then got started.

After some time working on this, we finished the skirt! We put a final push in at the end, to finish the skirt piece in time for my birthday. I am just so excited to have this done :). We went out to a nice restaurant for my birthday and i loved being able to wear my new skirt. I wish I'd have gotten some pictures on my birthday to show you! Oh well. Here's some pics of me modeling it with a different, more casual shirt.





Now we just need to work on the corset top. Being rather 'top heavy' with a pair of FF's, it will be my first corset as stores don't carry my size. How exciting!