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art bead scene ornament blog hop…

December 4, 2011 in Christmas, projects | 24 comments

Welcome ABS Ornament Blog Hoppers! And welcome to my regular blog-stoppers-by too! Everyone take a minute to go click through all the great ornaments featured in the link list below. There are some seriously fantastic ornaments to behold. As an added treat, Heather is hosting a giveaway on the Art Bead Scene blog in conjunction with this hop so be sure to check that out after 12pm EST today.

My finished ornament ended up taking a different turn from what I had originally envisioned…I had big plans to make a handful of graduated, embellished, felted wool beads and an enameled flower component to accompany one of my Captured Souls suncatchers. Instead my Captured Soul turned into a full blown snowman with one little embellished bead as his own ornament.

Ultimately? I love how he turned out: no where near as jewelry-like as I originally intended to go, but super cute nonetheless. And now I’m in a frenzy making an army of little glass snowmen for the Etsy 817 Handmade Holiday Show this weekend.

Humblebeads
Suburban Girl Studio
Spirited Earth
Garden Path Beads
Life in the Lyon’s Den *you are here!
Blog by Salla
It’s Been a While
Sue Beads
Artist At Work
Modern Nature Studio
WireWorked
Too Aquarius
Artfully Ornamental
Gem Rose Designs
Jewels by Ine
BeeTree by M.E.
Islandgirl’s Insights
Angela Lund-Logan
Gem’s PC Corner
Summers Studio
Sandy Volpe
The Next Bend
Skye Jewels
Janina Grigore
Elysian Studios
Jeannie’s Blog
Art Bead Scene

are you kidding me? posting two days in a row? it’s true…

April 3, 2011 in family, projects | No comments

I suppose with all the picture taking comes the need to share them, yes? Plus, it seems like the Lyons’ Den is in somewhat of a creative frenzy these last couple days too.

I was stitching up some pieces for my DQS10 quilt today when Caleb wandered through, stopped dead in his tracks and said, “wait. Are you drawing with thread?!” to which I replied, “yes. It’s called embroidery.” to which he inquired, “will you teach me how to do that?” Uh, heck yes I will!

I ended up teaching him how to embroider AND how to make a doll pattern today. We had a blast this afternoon! I will put up a post tomorrow about the process and the finished piece. In the meantime, check out flickr for the pics!

april fool’s! i totally meant april 2nd…

April 2, 2011 in big plans!, projects, shows | 3 comments

Friday ended up being a busy day away from the house for the most part and by the time I had a chance to sit down in front of the computer to post my list of goals for the month I had absolutely no desire whatsoever to sit down in front of the computer. I did write it down in one of my trusty notebooks though .

I am still working on my DQS10 quilt. The plan is to finish piecing today, quilt it tomorrow, bind it on Monday and mail it on Tuesday.

I did wrap up the project I was working on for Logan’s teacher.

I don’t know what she is using them for, but she seemed genuinely pleased with the finished product. I am glad to have that task finished. I had forgotten how much I really dislike drawing things on a large scale.

Anyhoo…on to my list for April:

1. I will use my good camera everyday. Starting today! I’m going to have to get back into the habit of bringing my camera with me whenever I leave the house. Today’s pics? The kids playing in the yard and my flowers that keep coming back year after year despite my inept gardening prowess.

2. I will get a banner made to hang across my pop-up tent for market days and outdoor art shows.

3. I will work on new designs daily during the week.

4. I will get out for a walk every evening during the week. Weekend walks will be considered bonus!

5. I will not overload my calendar with other people’s stuff this month. And I won’t feel guilty about it either!! I mean it.

6. I will start on Teacher Appreciation gifts NOW (actually yesterday, if we want to get right down to it…yay me!) and will not wait until I’m having to whip stuff up at midnight the night before.

7. I will be more selective in my procrastination (it’s a start, okay).

I read somewhere recently that if something naggy or unfun needs doing and it’s going to take five minutes or less to do it? JUST DO IT ALREADY. I’ve been implementing this ridiculously simple time management idea throughout my days the last few weeks and I’m slapping myself for being so procrastinatey with stuff in the past. Another something I’ve read several times here and there is to give everything a “place” and then put it there. Guess what usually takes less than five minutes? Putting stuff where it belongs instead of accumulating stuff in piles that become naggy, unfun business that just sits there until I can’t take it anymore! Why do I do this to myself? Seriously.

8. I will continue to cull my “collection” and make places for the stuff with which I cannot bear to part.

9. I will remove the wallpaper from the powder room.

10. The kids and I will go through their closets and clean out all the clothes they cannot or do not wear any more.

Right now this seems like a reasonable list. I’ll keep you posted as we progress through the month. Wish me luck!

kid art…

February 24, 2011 in Uncategorized, paper, projects, tutorial | 5 comments

All three of my kids are creative and all three of them like to get grubby with the art supplies; however, Caleb is, by far, the most prolific art maker of the bunch. He is constantly on the look out for cool scraps of paper and odd bits and bobs to save for use in his next book or letter. Is there a new bottle of glitter in the house? He wants to paint a chunk of wood, add arms, legs and a head full of yarn hair to it all so he can use that new glitter to coat the shield and sword he made to go along with the new assemblage piece he just finished. And he always wants to do it NOW. It doesn’t matter if that now is ten minutes before soccer practice or in the middle of me trying to get something working for supper that evening. The boy is definitely his mother’s son .

Last week Caleb brought home The Crafty Art Book from the school library because it had several projects for making plain paper fancy. The two projects he was most interested in: making marbleized paper and stamping paper with various objects and handmade stamps. I reminded him that we pretty much did the stamping project at Christmastime when we made the cousins’ wrapping paper and with that, he was immediately ready to do the marbleizing project.

This is not a particularly cheap project if you do not already have oil paints laying around your art supply arsenal. I did not have a single tube of oil paint so we made a quick trip to Michael’s with our 40% off coupon and bought an eighteen tube starter pack of oil paints. I did have turpentine and a couple disposable aluminum baking tins. While at Michael’s, we bought some little bottles to mix the paint/turpentine solution thinking they would make laying down the colors easier for little hands…not so much. Just use yogurt containers and throw away spoons instead. Medicine droppers would probably work pretty nicely. Wear disposable gloves as well, unless you would like to have your cuticles not only look disgusting for three or four days, but also have a faint smell of turpentine too.

Once we were setup on the patio outside, I had the kids choose three colors a piece for their papers. Caleb chose orange, green and burnt sienna. Molly went with magenta, violet and black (which really wasn’t so much black as a dark, dark brown). Then I mixed the colors with turpentine to make them watery. We had to play around with it to get the ratio just right…the book said to use a blob of paint and some thinner…very technical. If the mix was too thinned the marbling was very faint. If there was too much pigment the marbling got muddy and puddled. Use scrap printer paper for the test runs. We used text weight white paper for the live run.

I let the kids place the paint in the water bath and swirl it around with a bamboo skewer and then I placed the papers on the paint and pulled them to keep little fingers out of the turpentine. Depending on the concentration of your paint solution you should get three or four pages pulled per application. You can keep adding paint to the water but it tends to get muddy. I pulled a paper towel or two across the water to clear most of the paint residue in between each paint application. Between the two color sets we probably pulled 70-ish pages (this figure includes the test runs too). Altogether this was a relatively quick project (short attention spans were kept entertained through the whole process) and it was definitely a successful project. The kids LOVED it.

Here are a few of my favorites from the project:

busy, but it’s mostly top secret…

January 25, 2011 in projects | 4 comments

So the last few days have been spent toiling away on top secret things, plus baby shower invites for my baby sister, which also turned into making stickers and mailing labels and other top secret business that cannot be divulged until the finished products have been delivered…

Molly wanted in on the design fun insisting that she had to have a silver badge on one of her t-shirts, but only if it had her name on it, AND she had to be the one to write her own name.

Once again, I figured out a way (or seven) to put my Silhouette SD to good use. Those sheriff’s badge stickers? I made them. From scratch. I used Avery 8165 Full Sheet Labels, printed the design using my inkjet printer. I ran it through my Silhouette SD the first time just cutting the sticker portion (paper only, backing left in tact) and then ran it through a second time to cut the backing as well.

It is truly ridiculous how happy these little stickers make me! Even more so because I made them to be used as name tags and the shower we’re throwing is family only…safe bet we all know each other’s name . Molly’s badge was also cut using the Silhouette SD. I’m a little torn using the heat transfer material because, while it is EXTREMELY cool, there is a TON of waste involved. In the future I will definitely need to plan my “print out” so as to use as much of the sheet as possible. My favorite part of the heat transfer material? Peeling away the waste areas. I was one of those kids in elementary school who slathered Elmer’s on my hand and let it dry just so I could peel it off again and peeling the negative spaces away from the iron-ons gives that same satisfaction. With the added bonus of awesome iron-on transfers.

Check this space for more iron-on transfer business in the near future…the stuff comes in tons of colors AND flocked too. This stuff might be my newest craft tar heroin…

kitty scout camp out…

October 26, 2010 in family, projects | 2 comments

Last weekend was our cub scout pack’s first family camp out of the year. Molly donned her Kitty Scout uniform and helped me set up camp.

She put her Kitty Scout neckerchief and belt on ALL BY HERSELF. “Let ME do it!!” is the Kitty Scout motto.

Pretty much as soon as we were finished setting up it started raining. The good camera never even made it out of the bag and the phone went in the car for safe keeping. Friday night Caleb was burned below his lip with a metal marshmallow stick when an older boy was horsing around. I was in the tent with Molly when it happened…not sure where all the other parents were at the time, but I am trying hard to LET IT GO…trying being the operative word. Caleb is fine and the kid who burned him is still alive! High fives all around…

Even more exciting than burnt flesh and rain was the hail and tornado watch on Saturday — complete with weather sirens blaring, non-stop, for ten minutes straight. We hunkered down in the ladies room with thirty or forty random people and pets.

Logan declared it the best camp out EVER. Molly declared it sloppy. Everything was sloppy. Her boots were sloppy, the ground was sloppy, even the mud was sloppy. I have no idea where she picked up that word! Caleb was bummed. He didn’t get to sleep at camp Friday because I took him to the ER for his burn as the camp grounds were closing for the night and then Saturday we packed up most of our stuff and slept at home for fear of being blown away. I guess we’re going to have to have a family camp out pretty quick before it gets too chilly.

crafting for a cause…

June 9, 2010 in projects | 6 comments

I am currently buried up to my eyeballs in all things cub scout day camp. In an effort to balance all that stress and frustration I have been working on a couple other projects that will benefit charitable causes. So far the making and creating plus screaming into a pillow and riding my bicycle like a mad woman are doing the trick .

Anna Maria Horner has spearheaded this project for Tennessee families who’ve lost everything in the recent catastrophic floods. Here is the mission statement:

Not everyone can be on the front lines of an effort like flood cleanup and rebuilding, but we believe that there is always a way to help. So many families lost their homes, cars, and all their belongings during the floods of May 2010 in Middle Tennessee. As they begin their rebuilding process, we hope to combine the efforts of generous quilters nationwide in order to make as many quilts as possible to distribute to families who are in need of new items for their homes. It is a simple mission, but its one that we hope will be far reaching and one that will give homemade comfort to as many people as possible.

I’m sketching my quilt block right now and will get started on it tonight after the kids go to bed tonight. Pictures tomorrow? That’s the plan. If you’re local, City Craft has volunteered to be a drop off point for quilt blocks. And as if the warm fuzzy feeling you get from making something special for someone who could really use the lift wasn’t enough, Callie is offering 10% off your next purchase as a thank you too! Nice. I’m thinking this will be the perfect excuse to pick up some ribbon and trims I should’ve bought the last time I was down there!

Jade Sims, who’s done amazing things for so many people with her website/movement Craft Hope, has expanded the scope of her charitable organization to finding ways to assist in environmental disasters with Craft Hope for the Earth. Their current project is project 8: gulf coast oil spill. The deadline to participate in this project is July 3rd.

My friends Cathy and Suesue (both Louisiana residents) have written a couple really lovely posts sharing their concern and hope for this disaster.

The boys are collecting all their old grubby t-shirts for me and I’m cutting down old cotton bath towels into the recommended sizes and we’ll throw in a bottle of Dawn and a couple of cards from the kids thanking the volunteers for helping the animals and ship it off next week. Both boys have been very concerned about the impact the oil spill will have on the animals and the beaches so this project has given them a little comfort and lets them see they can contribute and help out even though they’re only nine-in-two-days (what!?) and six and a half.

end of year teachers’ gifts…

May 27, 2010 in paper, projects | 4 comments

Today is Molly’s last day of school. Naturally I was up late last night working on teacher gifts…I bought most of the stuff last week thinking I’d work on it over the weekend and when that didn’t happen I sort of forgot about it until Tuesday when I was dropping her off for the day. After that the plan was to take care of things Wednesday and then I spent Wednesday doing a bunch of other stuff all the while trying to remember what that nagging feeling was trying to remind me. I finally remembered about twenty minutes before it was time to pick the boys up from school…

The good news in all my procrastination is that I consider it only partial procrastination because the boys’ gifts are now done a week early!

My original plan was to draw a little beach scene, wind a little poem through it, watercolor it and put it on a stick tucked into the bag of summer colored jelly beans and chocolates and call it a day, but when I sat down at midnight last night to start working on my drawing I just wasn’t feeling a beach scene at all. Instead I just doodled for a bit landing on one of my favorites, the anthropomorphic flower.

I think my most favorite thing about these guys is their little arms and leaf hands.

High fives all around! {Hat tip to Kate for that observation.} The little buckets are stuffed full of summer fun stuff: jelly beans, chocolate, bubbles, sidewalk chalk and gumballs. I hope the kids’ teachers will all enjoy these little gifties.

late night, last minute crafting…

May 21, 2010 in family, projects | 6 comments

Wednesday evening Logan informed me he wanted a t-shirt design for his class for Field Day (similar to what I did for Caleb’s class for the 100th day of kindergarten). Now, had we discussed this a week earlier I totally could’ve done it for him and his class; however, since we basically had a day to get it done, I countered with making him a special shirt using a freezer paper stencil. He accepted and then we discussed design ideas. His list was short and sweet: a lion on the front and his name and classroom number on the back. I thought he might like to draw a lion for me to turn into the stencil, but really I think he just wanted a mom-drawn one, special for him (which positively charms me to no end…I don’t know how much longer this will go on so I’ll gladly oblige while I still can).

In the end it took me less than half an hour from drawing and cutting the stencil to ironing the stencil onto the shirt and painting it. Logan was happy with it and his friends thought it was cool…a success all around by my account.

Tags: "freezer paper stencil"

catching up…

February 4, 2007 in projects | No comments

First I want to thank everyone who commented or emailed me sharing their own experiences with dust allergies and all the tips for dealing with it. Since we’ve done the dusting overhaul and have tucked little dust kits all over the house Caleb seems to have greatly improved. He has only needed a handful of breathing treatments and now that we’ve figured out that stinking nebulizer the treatments have been smooth sailing. His eczema is completely under control for the first time in his life and he is actually sleeping through the night. No waking up to rip all his clothes off to scratch! No waking up because of coughing! Halleluiah.

We’ve been busy around here…dusting…ugh, the dusting; working on various projects; growing a baby; Caleb started speech therapy last week; purging cabinets and closets…a neverending task…where does all this crap come from?

The Projects:

Valentine Treat Bags

logan’s valentine treat bags

We’ve started early on this project so that it stays fun for him and doesn’t become a chore. The bags include a little tub of playdoh, a funsize bag of M&M’s and a Power Ranger valentine signed by Logan. Caleb did some too for his new classmates. His treat bags are almost the same only some stickers instead of valentines.

ATCs

I also finished and mailed some ATCs for Mary Ann’s Oh-So-Charming Valentine ATC Swap. Like a numb skull I did not take any pictures and they were so cute! I’ve decided I’ll have to make one more just because.

I haven’t yet started my own ATCs for my Valentine ATC Swap…they’re next on the list after I get this posted. I will try to remember to take pictures! I’m blaming the absentmindedness and the being WAY behind schedule on pregnancy hormones.

Paperbag Swag Swap

click on the image to see move views.

Theresa is hosting this round robin swap and I am joined in the group by some super talented ladies (Theresa, Mimi, Kristin, Cathy and Ellia). The talent in this group is a amazing to say the least and that in itself is a tiny bit intimidating. Add that to the fact that until yesterday I was completely, I mean COMPLETELY, stumped as to where to begin on my album and hopefully you can understand where my brain has been lately. Anyway, once I felt that initial spark (thanks again Grandma and Grandpa for the tripod! Works like a charm and totally kicked me out of my creative slump.) things really flowed and I finished it this afternoon. I have to say I am very pleased with the way it turned out…I’m not one to take self portraits, let alone think to use one in my work, but this time it was just the thing. It goes out in tomorrow’s mail and then I’m going to start on my swag goodies for the other participants now so when it comes time for me to create my spread in each of their books I won’t be overwhelmed at the thought of having to do the two pages AND swag for the pocket too.

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