Soul Humming

Rocks, Paper, Crayons

 

My youngest son has been home sick all week. I was really looking forward to getting back into art when the kids went back to school after winter break. But, the little guy only made it back one day before he got strep throat and bronchitis.

In an attempt to combat cabin fever today, we heated rocks (in the oven at 200 for about 15 mins) and drew on them with crayons. All crayons are not created equally. Some melt and run and are great fun to push around. Others (Twistables) do not seem to like being melted. We managed to melt our way through at least half a dozen rocks, which he thought was a lot of fun. Other than reading, watching cartoons, and lying in bed, this was the most exciting thing this little guy has done all week.

Then I kept on going and used a heat gun to paint with melting crayons onto a paper sack. Sometimes you just HAVE to spend ten minutes being creative so you don't come unglued! I hope your week has been full of good health and lots of creativity!

Christmas Creatures - My Handmade Ornaments for 2012

Sheila

So this year we did not have a 12 Days of Christmas Exchange as in the past few years. Instead, I exchanged a few handmade pieces with a smaller group of friends.

 

My Christmas Creatures - 2012

 And these are all the girls I made. I wasn't sure exactly what I would be making until one day my friend, Deryn, posted a picture of her Welsh Terrier puppy.

 

I just wonder what she is thinking as she is giving that money such a look!

 

It seems that Maisey had made a snack of some ten dollar bills.

Lottie and Maisey

And then I decided to make this little imp named Lottie with her gilded golden ears and her pup, Maisey, who has the corners from a $20 flying around around. Lottie is supposed to help Maisey learn to be a good girl but I'm afraid she is a terrible influence. It was all her idea to eat the money.

Lottie before she got all dressed up

She is the biggest of the girls, coming in at about 9 inches long.

Soon other sisters followed, each with their own grand stories to whisper as they came into being. As a group they are called The Promise of Spring as they bring flowers to remind us that winter is not too long. Soon there will be sunny skies. And the little flowers were given to me years ago by my husband's Grandma Hope, who loved making beautiful miniature dolls.

Addie is ready for her first fancy dress party. She even oiled her freckles. She has to bring extra flowers for spring in case she needs a snack.

 

This is Clara and Bluebelle. Sometimes Clara keeps Bluebelle's egg nice and warm on the back her neck. Bluebelle is the True Bluebird of Happiness.

 

Leanora is the most shy. She comes from a very fine old family & once traveled across the land in a big, black car. She has a penchant for sundown and biscuits.

 

Lucy likes roses and the heat of summer best of everything. She is especially superstitious but feels safe when she is in Texas and if she has the proper number and size of Xs to wear.

 

Ella has an easy disposition. She loves to play jokes and is very fond of shiny things. She is prone to pinching gold objects and loud hammers. Compliment her on her horns and she will give them back in the night time.

 

 

Lastly, is Sheila. She comes from off the coast of Sydney. If you say her name very quietly it sounds like the waves of the sea. She is lonely and misses all her friends. I've promised her that I will make a school of mermaids for her before Christmas. Maybe there will be one extra for you.

 

 

Making Unique and Easy Artist Gift Wrap

 

Funky wrapped gift for my friend's birthday

When I finally finish making something by hand for a friend, I dread having to wrap it. Usually, I hate wrapping gifts. All the work went into making the present so I just want to be done. But one day last week I needed to wrap something and found a small painting I had done on a very old page from a German hymnal.

 

Fun and funky, highly original gift wrap.

So I wrapped the handmade item in tissue, taped the painting to another hymnal page, tied it all up with kitchen twine along with a metal tag, and Voila! Here's what I did...

 

My main tool for these pages below were pastels. I used super cheap but boldly pigmented Porfolios (available at Staples) and more expensive and lovely Caran d'ache (available online or in art supply stores).

 

What to draw? My cat walked by so I quickly doodled hert on the page and colored it in with pastels.

Could not be easier!

 

You can draw stripes, hearts, or stars if you want a more simple design. It's up to you. You could also draw something specific to the gift recipient like robots for a little boy, an angel at Christmas, and so on.

 

And if your gift is handmade with love, you could trace your hand and make that the central image. Trace your kid's hand if the gift is for Grandma.

She would love that!

 

I added a metal tag to a couple of these gifts. I used sheet brass, cut it out with my shears, filed the edges and then used this awesome metal punch to make a hole in it to hang on the wrapped gift.

I love this little metal punch. You use it just like a regular hole punch that you use for paper. I've tried the metal punch that is a screw punch where you turn and turn that metal bar. Bleh. This one is so much faster! I got it at Amazon.com!

 

I cannot find my Letter V metal stamp so I was happy to use Letter U, upside down Letter A, and upside down Number 4 as stand-ins. Afterall, love doesn't care what it looks like.

You can get a great set of letter/number metal stamps at Harbor Freight for only $10.

 

"Love You Sweet Friend"

If you don't want to mess with metal, you can make a super cute little tag with an old photo. I have lots of old black and white photos from the flea market. I use them frequently on gifts and cards. First I wrote right on top of the picture with a white paint pen from Sharpie. Once dry I wrote on top of that with a pink Sharpie.

I think she is precious sitting there playing. Perfect for a birthday girl!

And if your photo is particulary special to you, make a photo copy and use that as your tag. If you have a photo of the person you are giving the gift to, make a copy of it and doll it up as the tag.

Aren't these pretty? Turquoise crosses with big, old rhinestone drops made for my friend. They are getting the fun wrap treatment.

I put these in bubble wrap, keeping them fairly flat, then taped the edges of the hymnal papers together.

Next up, I found a fun little necklace my kids got at a birthday party. It's a little plastic heart full of soap bubbles to blow. It will make a great bow!

 

Love, love, love YOU

Think outside the box and use what you have on hand. Turn something ordinary like old photos and book pages into your own one of a kind orginal wrap!

This is the perfect size to put in a bubble mailer and pop in the post. Wouldn't this be a fun package to get in your mail box?

Valentine's Day Exchange

I gathered a few friends together to exchange Valentine hearts so we could each make a banner with a dozen hearts. I just finished mine today (that's them up there) and have put them all out in the mail. That is always so hard for me. I want to hold onto them and hang them up right here. I would be better about it if I made them earlier and could enjoy them a little longer. But, as I was sick for a few days, I was up at the last minute painting like a mad woman. As soon as they were dry they went right into their envelope. Oh I will miss them. I'll highlight them over a couple days and then I'll show you the ones I get back from my friends. Which is wonderful! I love it when the mailbox overflows with envelopes full of painted and sewn treasures! It makes it all better again.

This was one of the first few that I made. It is of a broken heart that is healing.

And it has all manner of secrets and thoughts written all over it.

I think I posted this one another day. Not sure if I posted it here or somewhere else. It is titled Love is Never Lost. The morning I painted this a girl I went to school with when I was younger passed away. I was feeling pretty low and thinking of all the people who loved her and how sad they all must be feeling. And I kept thinking that the love we feel for someone never leaves even though the physical form of the person may pass on. Their love lives on with us long after they have moved on.

This one is titled Love is Home. It is hard to see the details in the photo. I used a chalky blue gel pen to write around the little collaged house.

The roof of the house was made from a check written on February 3rd, 1920 in Montana. The little birds are from a label from some old matches. This heart has lots of layers of paint, ink and pens.

This one is more abstract with a little home closing it up at the bottom.

Little Love

Love is Strong

All right, I have to run off and help a little boy study for his social studies test . 'Hope you enjoyed the hearts!

 

The 12 Days of Christmas - Day Two - My Day

 

Today is my day. As usual I have a long story to tell and little time to write it all down. Youngest son is home with a sore throat today. So I am running to catch up on what was already so overdue. Still, I love how things come together and hope my other artist friends do, too. So I will tell you about my ornies and how I came to make them.

For the last couple years now (whew, that long!) I have been in a funk. I've let my art making dwindle to almost extinction. This is a terrible thing to do when you actually have a task at hand. At least for me, it is so difficult to get back into the rhythm because my hands feel clumsy, I am easily discouraged, and I am critical in ways I never am when I am working in a regular routine.

So as I began way back in early fall to work on ideas for my ornament, I was having a terrible time. I decided I would start early because I so hate feeling overwhelmed against the deadline as I have the past couple years. And I did start early. But none of my ideas worked out. I went through at least three designs. All were deemed unfit for one reason or another. I tend to come up with a labor intensive idea. And, after felting all those little dogs last year I knew I couldn't do it again. My wrist is so easily injured I was afraid to work metal, which is to what I am always pulled. I hate sewing but I love sewn and stitched things. But I knew my frustration would be so high it wasn't worth it. I tried and I tried and eventually even thought about dropping out for this year.

Then, quite randomly, I came across this tiny picture one day.

Look at them. Their wistful faces. Their beautiful hands and detailed dresses. It is easy to see from their faces that they are sisters. I think about my own sister all the time. She is on the other side of the country from me. And as our father died this summer, I think of her even more. I miss her. She is my very first friend. And that was what I thought when I found this picture. I thought Sister Friends. And, in that thought, I knew I wanted to work with this image and build a little house for them to hang on the tree of all my artist friends, my soul sisters, for this year's exchange. So I aged their image and built little houses for these Sister Friends.

In past years I have gone out and bought all new materials to work in a medium previously unknown to me. This year, I knew it was time to use what I have and do what I love. I have plenty of materials here. It is silly to always be adding more, more, more. I wanted to keep the little house in the style I love, colorful and whimsical but with a bit more white and sparkle.I wanted them to be simple like something I would have made when I was girl.

Also, I wanted the ornaments to look old, to feel loved and worn, but, again, simple. I'm not sure I accomplished all that, but it was my purpose.

Anytime I have to make 13 of the same thing, I struggle.

While my intention is for them to be similar I cannot bear to make them identical.

It's too boring. So I pulled out my treasures, like these very, very old white ceramic letters, 60 year old stamps, subway tokens,

acorns I collected from my Mama's tree many years ago, and magic threads from my husband's Grandmother.

I tore into the cardboard on the back layer. I wanted them to look like a worn out house that is still standing through years of a well-lived life.

That's sort of how I am feeling these days. And gilded and loved. And I wrote some of the lyrics to one of my VERY favorite Christmas carols on each one. Also, I added a beautiful stamp from the 1950's given to me by my sweet sister friend, Mija.

For this house, amid the golden mica lives a little bunny.



So those are my ornies this year. I hope the girls do love them and I hope you all enjoyed them, too. I'll try to get a tutorial up this week for you. And, please leave a comment if you have one. I adore hearing from you all!

 

 

Paper Dreams

 

Seth is posting stacks of paper today for all the stackaholics out there. And he is encouraging others to make their piles as well.

When he first made his call I got out my favorite 12" x 12" sheets of thin deli wrap

and started painting six big sheets at once.

It's a fun way to make background papers for mixed media and collage projects.

It was a little windy outside so I taped them all down to the patio and set to work with my brayer to roll on color after color.

They are bright, lively bits of my day, ready to go into something bigger and more.

I thought that was all I would include. But then, this morning as I was gathering the bits to photograph, I remembered another stack of papers, a precious one, that I keep in an old curio cabinet in my hall.

When I got married almost fifteen years ago, I decided I not only wanted to make my own invitations but I wanted to make the paper for them as well. I made so much paper pulp I could have wallpapered the world with it. I have a few bits of that paper left. It is full of seeds, leaves, and flowers from the garden of my house at the time. I love that special paper. It calls me back to the memories of that girl who finally decided being married was magical when the right man was asking. Those papers make me happy because they hold so many dreams in them.

Gossamer hin unryu paper like wispy webs.

As the wedding guests grew in number I finally had to give in and buy some handmade paper from my favorite paper shop. I have a precious few sheets of the most gorgeous Japanese kimono papers and unryu from Hiromi. Her shop in Bergamot Station was always an adventurous treasure hunt. She was the sweetest, funny girl. She had a German Shepherd named...hmmm....I think it was Psycho. He had an unusal name like that. He lived there in the daytime with her among the enormous stacks upon stacks of amazing papers that reached to the ceiling. There were papers with whole pieces of fruit embedded within. Oh how I miss going there!

Also, in the old wooden cabinet I came across an autograph book that belonged to me when I was in elementary school in the 70s. The picture on the front is classic 70-something.

And inside I have folded all the pastel pages into little accordion fans which hide the silly rhymes written by all my friends. It's a great keepsake from a time I do not remember much about.

And my most favorite of all the things I ran across deep in the back of the cupboard were three letters. One was written by my dear, dear grandmother, another was from her brother, my sweet Uncle Arnold, and yet another from my precious Mom.

My mom used to own an antique mall and my grandmother, a couple of my great-uncles, my aunt, and more family had booths there. These letters were written during a big sale on the day that she was closing the doors.

My grandmother and great uncle have since passed away. It was like a hug and a hello again from them to me. It made me smile deep in my heart to find them here this gray morning. These stacks of papers were new and old but all dear to me. I love finding the unexpected which surely was meant to be right here in my hallway. Thanks Seth. You always come up with such inspiring, fun adventures.