work in progress

The weekend was quite busy - I'm beginning to feel the pressure of leaving on Saturday for a two-week trip to Poland. Cleaning, laundry, organizing... not sure that I'm a big fan of this stage of traveling...

Anyway, I managed to find some time for the craft table. Some time was spent on cleaning, and also for preparing a few birds based on cardboard cutouts. Painted them with gesso first, then red paint, then glitter paint, one-step crackle and finally golden accents. Whew! Plus drying time after each of the steps, so it takes a while.

Then the menagerie continues with some dog characters...

...and, finally, there are Christmas trees cut out of a giant tree in an old greeting card.

So many ideas, so little time!

Got up early, cleaned up (somewhat) the craft table and sewed together a couple of flowers for the upcoming cards.

Then I went to work... and it was such a great surprise to find a craft book on my desk! They were throwing away old samples from various printers and someone thoughtful saved this one for me. So many good things happening to me recently!

Here are a few ideas from the book - I'm wondering if I could try them with some other fabrics, not necessarily wool?

French Gothic arch in progress

A few days ago I started working on a Gothic arch piece, which will feature French proverbs with their English equivalents (which sometimes, of course, is not a word-by-word translation).

I started with cutting out the shapes - a manila folder became the 4-panel base; I painted the edges with gesso and then with pearly champagne acrylic with some gold accents. The backgrounds for each panel are cut out from the Chateau en Lavender stack I acquired during a recent trip to Joann's.

Then I heat-embossed some more golden accents and dyed the proverbs in strong tea to make them look historic. Ah, there is also some plant life stamped faintly in the background. I just love when the details are layered and you can discover some surprises when looking at the piece.

A few more steps to accomplish - adding some more details (I'm thinking flowers, burlap, a little bit of metal, maybe lace) and the Gothic arch will be ready for its French-loving recipient!

musically, colorfully

Last night we cranked up the Christmas atmosphere by attending a wonderful concert downtown. Some well-known numbers, some that I'd never heard before... and an awesome Hallelujah chorus as the grand finale. I was moved! (And the audience participated throughout the program, which made it even more fun.)

 As for the craft table - not much happened last weekend, but I have a few series of cards from last week to present. Here are some WIPS...

... and the final products look like this:

Morning crafts presented in the evening

Early morning crafts are quite enjoyable, but also detrimental to my punctuality arriving at work... The good news is that I have time on the other end, so to say, to stay and make up for lateness, if it happens.

Today I made a briefcase for a little boy, who celebrated his birthday yesterday, so I added a miniature b-day card with a miniature cupcake. It was really hard to stay away from all the girliness for the post-its... cupcakes can be colorful, though, even for a boy!

Also prepared some components for snowy cards. I see another batch of barbasnow coming up in the near future!

And here is another photo to commemorate a date that will not happen again for a looooong, long time.

Barbasnow

My dear and extremely patient husband has gotten used by now to less-than-usual activities going on at home, so he wasn't too surprised when I borrowed a little bit of his Barbasol shaving cream to create snow. The recipe can be easily found online - half cream, half white school glue, I threw in a drop of pearly white acrylic paint, mixed well... and here is snowfall accumulated on the roof of a little paper house!

Then I punched a snowflake out of cardstock and thusly made a stencil for further experiments:

I tried to sprinkle my barbasnow with glitter and sugar (sugar doesn't seem really work), mix glitter into the paste and also add snow on top of a stamped image. I would say the experiment has been successful, and now I have a new technique to incorporate in wintry cards!

A new page in the art journal

After a while I have returned to my art journal - sometimes images or words go through my hands, and it's just nearly impossible to throw them away. So they end up in the journal, which is bursting in seams; looks like it's time to start Volume II!

The theme is my new fascination with cooking and baking, doing it "from the bottom of my heart" and not to just avoid starvation :)

And here is a work-in-progress photo if some post-it-not purses for Saturday:

navigare necesse est, or the joy of discovering new stamps

The theme of the other stamp set brought from Poland is Sea Voyage, and it's been a little voyage in itself to use them! The first couple ideas didn't work out, so then some adjustments were made, and below are a few cards in progress:

Even though you can see exactly what image is on the stamp, there is always a little surprise in seeing how it actually comes out on paper, how it looks in this or that color of ink, on lighter or darker background; will it need more color (painting? chalk?), or maybe it will be nice just on its own. Maybe as the focal image, maybe as the background.

Changing the subject - a few more Christmas cards, with backgrounds that were originally included in a fall paper pack, but I like how they look with the old-fashioned illustrations and burlap.

Also, preparing the necessities for the craft show - the money box and some business cards:

One more night... and that's it! Gotta pack and go!

baubles, berries and big animals

Four more cards are finished: while in Poland, I visited Tuluz - a hobby store in Krakow and acquired a set of stamps with Indian designs. One of them was a mandala-like circle, which fit perfectly on my Christmas bauble template:

There are two new mini-series on my desk currently - one will feature elephants from the above Indian set, and the other - tasty strawberries, to remember the summer on a rainy day.

And just to show that not every idea works out - this was going to be  the background for one of the baubles, but it just didn't look right. Oh well - NEVER throw anything away, as it may turn out to be perfect some other day!