June House Mouse Card & Swap Stuff

 Here is the June card. Colored with Copic markers this time. I wanted a bright image for the pattern paper. Of course this is a copy so the markers look different than if it was the original colored piece.

 We made Tinnies at the last Banders meeting. It is a Lisa Kaus http://lisakaus.com/ project. I still need to add a tulle bow on the wire handle. A friend recommended that. I like the idea!!

 I copied some scallop border from a book by Sally Jean Alexander http://sallyjean.typepad.com/  for the top of the can. Donna J was the host and she already had the cans base painted for us. Saved time! I added some pom pom trim and painted the white dots and then went around them with a charcoal pencil. I did seal the can before adding the glittered star.

 Our swap for my other art group was using corrugated cardboard. So I used pan pastels for the background. I really liked how these turned out!

 I used a Dyan Reaveley http://dyan-reaveley.blogspot.com/ stencil (dots) with the pan pastels also on the background.

 Then I used her house stamp set and cut them out. They were stamped on shipping tags that were sprayed with her bright and colorful dye based sprays. Really fun techniques she has. Go watch her on You Tube. The words are stamps of hers too.

 This was the project we did two meetings ago. I finally finished it. It's a wooden house and I covered it with book paper, painted it then stamped on it and finally applied gesso thru a stencil for dimension. Added the charlotte doll and burlap and the words. Fun project!

close-up of the texture with the gesso and stencil

This is Joyce's swap project I received. I thought it was wonderful. She used cardboard that had been perforated and was just perfect for the crown. She just had to cut the peaks. Painted it black and decorated it. Very cool!

Rosalyn wearing her crown! So regal!!

 These are Rosalyn's and Mary's projects using the corrugated cardboard. Love the angel on Mary's!

Rosalyn had her husband cut up rusty bicycle chain for her "bird on a chain" Very creative.

Sorry I have not posted in a while. It has been crazy around work. After having Tim Holtz in town to teach for the store then a few weeks later we had Dyan Reaveley teaching on Mother's Day weekend. Really fun times though!! My husband has broken his ankle this week and I have been cleaning out the garage and next is the shed. I can't get to my tools or creative stuff! So it's a never ending wild ride at home too!

October Swap for Art Group

I made these lighted wooden pumpkins for one of my art groups. Bought the pumpkins at Michael's and they already had the holes drilled for the lights. I just had to paint them and insert the lights in the holes. Really easy. I decided to add the bird, moss and fall berry picks to the top. They just needed a little something else to perk them it.

New Pieces of Art

I had two art group meetings this week. So I have some fun pieces to share. My friend Jeanne has gone crazy for crowns! I just love anything she does! She blows me away with her creativity. These fabric crowns are made from various kinds of fabric. The two in the photo above are thicker upholstery type materials.

 These two here are made from t-shirts. Really cool idea!!

 The dark brown crown in this photo is made from a sheer fabric. I forgot what type the other one is made of.

The two photos above are art pieces made by another friend, Donna J.. She used encaustic wax, acrylic paints, oil based paints and collage pictures to create these. They are stunning in person.

 I had to make samples for one of my classes in Kansas so I had left over resin that needed to be used. So the items above are what I came up with. These are all torch fired bezels.

 This was my swap item for one of the meetings (Rubber Banders Art group). I used wooden pumpkins on dowels and covered them with Halloween papers after painting the dowels and sides of the pumpkins orange. Added seam binding ribbon bows and vintage rhinestone buttons to the bows.

 These pieces are what everyone else did for the meeting as their swaps. Traci S. did this necklace above. Copper bezel with a silhouette photo and cracked faux glass on top. Looks spooky!

 Suzie did this cute little cat picture. He is behind glass. She made a stand from a coat hanger and that is very clever.

 Sammie made this adorable paper doll from stamps. His arms and legs move too.

 This was Olga's. Hot glue around the skeleton and she colored it with a Krylon silver pen. There is glass over the skeleton.

 Mary was my guest and she made these wonderful paper wreaths. She worked really hard on the rosettes. It was more work than she thought. LOL

 This is Jeanne's hostess gift. Crepe paper lollie on a dowel with ribbons hanging down and she had paper items at the ends of the ribbons. Great idea.

 Donna J. sewed bags from Halloween material. They are really nice.

 This funky guy is April's creation. He is a bobble head. This took some engineering to make. Who would have thought to use a cupcake stand as the base? But she did!

 Caroline sewed this little fabric wall hanging piece. She is a wonderful sewer. Very neat.

 Denise came up with these ghosts from clay. Very Ghostbusterish!!

 This was our project for the meeting. Traci H. came up with it. She is a wiz at sewing too. These were fun to make. Last year we did a bat so this little guy has a playmate for Halloween at my house. These were the ones Traci did. I did finish mine but have not taken a photo of him since I had this photo of these.

 For my other art group (Hearts & Ho's, don't ask LOL) this was the swap I came up with. A composition journal and then covered it with papers and made a flower from burlap. The theme for the swap was flowers. I got these journals at Target, all three for 65 cents! What a bargain!!

This wonderful thing is Rosalyn's piece for the swap. I love it! Very creative idea to take Edger Allen Poe's poem The Raven and type it up and print it out then stamp some spooky images on the pages. The cover which is what the photo to the left is, she wrote out on a ledger paper she copied then stamped blood splatters and added the glittered bird to the front.  It is bradded all together at the top. The photo below is a page inside with the poem on it. She also gave us a cute black metal sign shaped like a tombstone with a bird on top of it. You can kind of see it behind the piece in the photo.

 These two items in this picture are Joyce's and Mary's pieces. Joyce cut the flower from metal on a die cut machine. Love that idea! I hope she gets me the die for my birthday this year! Mary was tired and could not get her brain to work. So she bought these little sunflower bags. She did stamp the tags though. She is sooo funny!!

Our project for this meeting was to make a nest from shredded paper, glue and water. It was fun!!! I used old ledger papers and kraft colored braille papers for mine. I added the feathers after it had dried. I think it came out pretty good. I would like to make a few more in my spare time. What is spare time?

These fabulous creations are for one of my classes in Kansas the weekend of November 5th. I will be teaching how to make a soldered crown. More info on the classes later but I wanted to show these. I just finished them today. I also will be teaching this same class at Stamp Asylum in November. No date yet though. We have not got the schedule done out that far yet. Anyway, I added these vintage rhinestone buttons to the peaks on the crowns. Also, I added wire spirals to the sides of the outside peaks. The one crown has a vintage rhinestone pin attached to the front. These babies are very elegant indeed!

Art Group Swaps

The other art group I belong to met last week. The swap theme was buttons. Below is what I ended up making. I took a canvas and spray painted it robin's egg blue. I attached a piece of ledger sheet and then dry brushed gesso on top to tone things down. I added some walnut stain distress ink to the canvas and then I cut a heart from felt and glued on lots of vintage buttons. I attached the heart to the canvas and used a charcoal pencil around the edge and also glued a piece of lace down.

 This was Ros' piece. She made a card and used a vintage button on it. The photo is a relative of hers. Great photo!

 This funny looking thing is Mary's piece. I love it because it looks to me like it's an alien or something! That is a huge button and I love the paper it's mounted on. Bark paper and then a handmade one she made. Great colors on both.

 This cute thing is Joyce's. I love how she used a spool for a vase. Very creative idea. Of course thread in one of my favorite colors is wound on the spool.

 This how I packaged my canvas to give to the girls. A brown sack and I made a special button tag to go with each.

Tags I made.

July Swap For Meeting

This is the project I made as a swap for one of my art meetings this month. I took an old photo album page and inserted a Paper Whimsy http://www.paperwhimsy.com/ image. Colored the fabric flowers with Glimmer Mist http://mytatteredangels.com/ and added rhinestone centers to all the flowers. I also colored the ribbon used for the hanger with Glimmer Mist.