Geocaching, Walking Sticks, Altering Techniques
I had a busy weekend and haven’t been able to get back to the computer until now. Whew! This past weekend we went out to reset the coordinates on the two caches that we hid last week. While we were out I decided that we really needed walking sticks to help us over obstacles and to poke around for hidden caches. I am not about to buy any kind of walking stick, so we looked along the trail and found three decent sticks laying about and took them home. I’ve been working on them to turn them into useable walking sticks. I am almost done with my son and daughter’s. I sanded them all down and then got out my woodburning tool and burned some designs into their sticks. My son’s stick had a rotten/bug eaten trench in it, that I decided to line with red beads and little white skull beads. Then his stick got pirate themed sayings and a treasure trail with an x at the end. I’ve been using my heat gun to bend some plastic gold pirate coins into the shape of the stick to glue them on. My daughter’s stick got ivy and flowers with hearts, then I took the drill and drilled a bunch of random holes that would fit a round sparkly bead, which I then glued in there. The top had a hole, so I glued a small shell into the top. Before I started with the beading, I stained them with some light stain and when the beads are completely dried on, I’ll varnish them. I think I’ll finish their sticks before I start on mine. I’ve sanded mine down, so it is ready to burn a design on, but I’m not sure what I want to do with it. Needless to say, between Geocaching, laundry and walking stick making, I’ve been uber busy.
Here are some more techniques that I promised, sorry they are a little late:
1. Glue on crumbled tissue paper and paint over
2. Tear instead of cut
3. Try adding pockets
4. Fold pages into different shaped pockets
5. Use eyelets to attach things to the edge of pages as 3D tabs
I hope I don’t end up repeating techniques as I get into this. LOL. I’m really wanting to pick a book to hightlight text on a page to use as a theme for each layout. I don’t know if everyone reading has seen that technique, I’ve seen it in many books. But, basically, you circle words on the pages that you like, that perhaps form a meaningful statement to you, then paint over all the other words on the pages and connect the remaining words and use that as the theme for your images. I really like that idea. I’ve got so many projects going, that I have a hard time getting any of them finished. Of course, an altered book takes a while because there is a lot to it. But it is fun and rewarding, so we just keep working.
Something I found in a geocache gave me an idea for something else I’d like to make. It was a little copper wire dog, here’s a picture:
Isn’t he the cutest?! Maybe I’ll try bending some wire into the shape of some little animals, people, whatever, looks like it might be fun! Of course, I would need to “alter” it by adding all sorts of buttons, beads, whatever to it. I’ve been trying to collect little items out of the geocaches that we’ve been finding so I can use them in a piece of geocaching themed art. I found a 7 stage cache, where the first 6 have clues to the location of the last one, the last one being a two gallon pretzel container full of stuff! WOW! I think I’ll make a small nature journal, like the one we learned how to make this past weekend to put in there. It is all nature themed items, so that would work really well.
Gonna go finish watching Wipeout now, plus… dessert is calling me. Thanks for reading!
Crazy Busy! + Nature Journal
Boy! I’ve been crazy busy the past few days! I’ve been taking the kids Geocaching every day, Wed – Friday. I let them each make their own cache to hide also. Saturday we had to go back out to their caches and redo the coordinates because it seemed that they were off by about 50 ft. Yikes! While we were out I picked up three sticks that I could turn into walking sticks for the three of us to go Geocaching with. I’ve started sanding them down and I have a woodburner to make some designs on them, then I’ll just need to drill a hole and get some leather straps to loop through. I need to go to Lowe’s today and get some sandpaper refills for our sander. My husband got up early yesterday (Saturday) and took our son fishing at a local lake with one of our friends, where they caught a lot of catfish! They had a great time and barely got home in time to go to the Family Fun event that they have every Saturday at the Museum of Art! You can sign up for a Saturday workshop that they have at the Art Museum and you and the kids can make a craft to keep, and the best thing is, it is all for free! Yesterday’s project was a nature journal. It was quite a bit more complicated than I expected, considering that kids are involved, but we still came out with cool projects. Actually, doing this nature journal gave me some great ideas for making my own journal/art books. Here’s a couple pictures of our journals that we made. It shows the back of my husband’s and the inside of mine.
They had some cool ideas for features of the books. The books were made out of cardboard with wallpaper scraps glued to the outside and inside covers, then fabric scraps were glued to the cover to make the spine. You then sew the sets of pages with buttons on the outside to hold them in. They gave us a pocket protector to fasten into the back cover to hold pencils and a paper cd sleeve with the clear plastic circle to paste into the back pages to hold leaves and other little nature items you might pick up. Sewing the pages into the book was too challenging to let the kids try and do it themselves, so my husband and I had to do our own plus theirs. Got to go get ready for church, will add some altered book technique tips later today.
Massive Scrapbooking Prep
Oh my! I just finished uploading and ordering pictures from my husband’s 4 overseas business trips! Yesterday I bought a bunch of paper and a scrapbook to contain all these pictures. I need to have them ready for next month. I have an all day scrap with my meetup group and the Charlotte convention where I’ll do a Friday night scrap and three classes. I figured these events would be a great time to start on this new album. It includes about 5 different countries including, China, Malaysia, Colombia, Sweden and India. Let’s just say, it took a long, long time to upload all the pictures… about 700 of them all together! Then I had to go through and narrow it down, knowing I’d never use all those pictures. I managed to narrow it down to about 430 pictures! Luckily I had a coupon from MyPoints for 30 free prints and 20% off the entire order at Snapfish! I love Snapfish!
I did manage to finish my step-daughter’s disney autograph album at my last meetup scrap. I think I mentioned that in a previous post. Now that I have the camera back I also need to update my scrapbook.com site with the pictures from her album. Besides my husband’s business trips, I have a lot of pictures from other events that I still need to scrap, so I’ll have plenty to keep me busy for quite a while!
Going to go finish watching Wipeout with the kids, then off to finish ironing clothes in the basement! True excitement!
ATC, Altered Art, India Journal Pictures
Here are some pictures of some of the ATCs, Artist Trading Cards that I’ve made recently:
And… here are some picture updates for the Altered Geocaching Book that I’ve been working on:
And last but not least, here are a couple pictures of the handmade paper journal that my husband brought back for me from India. It is so cool, it will take me a while to figure out what to put into it!
All Day Scrap
Just got back from my all day scrapbooking session. I finished my step-daughter’s disney autograph album and started working on the interior of my geocaching altered book journal. We had the most people to date come for the day, 16. We had to spread out into two rooms, so it wasn’t quite as much fun as when we all get to be in one room, but we still had a really good time. I was so hungry today, I couldn’t stop visiting the snack table! I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked, I felt kind of stumped on what to do with the interior of the geocaching book. The lady who runs the group has a couple boxes of free stuff, that people have brought and left that they don’t want to use. I must have gone through those boxes about 4 times today, just looking for anything that might spark some ideas. It did work! I found a medium size leaf stamp that I used to stamp a couple shades of green leaves over and over again on the inside cover. I was thinking that it was looking a little too scrapbookish, instead of altered book artsy, but I think it is still looking good.
Hopefully, my husband will download the pictures off the memory card tomorrow and I can start taking pictures to update here. I have two jewelry items finished, two milk jug totes, two gatorade purses and the beginning of a couple altered books and their insides. Still trying to decide if I’m gonna sign up to go to the Tuesday night scrap in two days. Decisions, decisions. Right now, I’m exhausted! Gonna go get ready for bed, hope to work some more tomorrow. I’m pretty sure things will go quicker now that I’ve gotten started. That always seems to be the hardest part, breaking the creative ice.
Hope everyone had a great weekend!
Scrapbooking, Altered Books, VBS
Today was the last day of Vacation Bible School and the kids had their last activities followed by a lunch. My husband took our gas grill and helped cook the burgers and hot dogs. We were there about 5.5 hours. We were exhausted when we got home!
Last night I managed to finish two pieces of jewelry and two gatorade bottle purses. As soon as my husband takes the camera to work and clears off the camera’s memory card of the pictures from his trip to India, I’ll be able to update my pictures. He brought me a blank journal from India made with all handmade papers, with a painted, stitched and embellished cover. Should have quite a few to add by then, most likely Monday evening. A few hours ago I ordered a few prints from Snapfish to pick up from Walgreens since I needed them right away.
Tomorrow I have an all day scrapbooking session with my meetup group. Looking forward to visiting and getting some work done. I love working along side other people occasionally, helps me keep energized and motivated. I just finished organizing my stuff for tomorrow. Talk about a daunting task. It always takes forever to sort out what I think I’m going to use and what I’ll work on. I’m planning on working on my Geocaching journal/altered book and finishing my step-daughter’s Disney autograph album.
We went to Disney World this past April on the kid’s spring break. We bought the kids notebooks to get autographs from the characters in and of course took their pictures with the characters as well. I was thinking, they won’t keep those autograph books and look through them… they’ll probably just get lost or ripped up. So, I decided to cut out the autographs and place them with the picture in their own scrapbook. I’ve finished the one for my step-son and am about half way done with my step-daughter’s. I have some pictures from those albums up at http://www.scrapbook.com/places/Sueperez73 , then go to Gallery.
It’s almost midnight so I think I’ll go hit the hay. Hope everybody is having a great weekend!
Craft Supplies & Mowing
So… I was supposed to mow the grass yesterday while the kids were at bible school, but I couldn’t get the mower to start. Found out today after my husband got home that the lever on the handle is the throttle, not for a self propelled mower. I feel like a dope. Although, a guy from across the street came over to help me and he couldn’t start it either. So, I don’t feel too bad. I was going to mow today, but it started to rain, too bad.
I had to make another trip to A.C. Moore to get some sealer to use on my milk jug toy totes. Also, I always print their coupons online and take it to the store to buy one thing at a time to get 40-50% off. It’s slow, but a much cheaper way to build up your crafting tools. Especially for tools, rather than supplies. If they have a coupon for 40% off one item and it’s good for 5 days, I print one out for every day and then go buy one thing with the coupon each day.
When I haven’t been working on my toy totes or the jewelry, I’ve been going to the library and checking out as many books as I can find on journaling and altered art of all kinds. I really like just looking through the work for inspiration and technique ideas. I definitely know that altered art is my niche. I’ve never been able to throw things away, especially cool electronic components or pieces of equipment even when it is completely broken because I always find myself thinking… I could make something out of that. I’m also drawn to people’s garbage. Some people throw away such cool stuff! Whenever I pass a house that has a bunch of stuff stacked out for the trash man, I can’t help but slow down and look if there is anything interesting as I pass. Kind of like how people slow down and stare as they pass accidents.
Doesn’t look like I’m gonna run out of things to do any time soon, with all the things I’m interested in working on. I’m not sure how someone specializes in just one thing and that’s it. If I’m not in the middle of about 5 completely different projects I feel like I’m not getting anything done. Guess I’ll go now and get something done.
Crafts, Shopping & Organizing
I have been taking a slight break on my altered books, so that I can build up some crafts to sell on ebay. I am trying to start earning some extra income and still be able to stay at home with the kids full time. I hate the thought of having to go out to get a job and have to spend half of my paycheck on daycare. I have a degree in graphic design and have always done art my whole life, so trying to make a living off artistic endeavors is not that great a leap. I bought some bamboo tiles quite some time back to make some necklaces but never got inspired enough to start them. I worked on organizing my craft space so that I could work in there without going crazy! I have to have a neat organized place to work, or I keep getting distracted by the mess.
A couple days ago I took the kids to The Scrap Exchange, in Durham, North Carolina to look around. (www.scrapexchange.org) I found a great bag of beads for only $1! I bought a number of other things there as well… things that are really not entirely describable, but very cool looking! So, today, since I had a coupon, I went to A.C. Moore to get some jewelry making tools to start working on my bamboo tile pendants. My husband comes home with the camera tomorrow, so I hope to have a number of items to try listing. I’ve seen some things that I thought were pretty ugly sell on there, why not my stuff? LOL. Isn’t that what everyone thinks probably? I’ve finished a couple milk jug toy totes and I’m almost done with three pendants, just waiting for them to dry so I can finish assembling them.
Unfortunately, after I take the kids to bible school this evening I have to try and mow the grass. Bummer. It is rather like a jungle out there though. I have to take the our bulldog, Gordo, out to the bathroom a number of times a day and I’m getting tired of wading through knee high weeds. Here’s a picture of him.
That’s about all we have in the yard, weeds. Weeds and dirt. There are only a few small patches of actual grass. We hate it, but it is a rental so we aren’t going to pay money to fix up a yard that doesn’t belong to us.
Beginning soon, I’m going to start listing some technique ideas on a daily basis. I was spending my time at the library while the kids were playing on the computers brainstorming for some starter ideas for my ATC’s (Artist Trading Cards). I figured I’d pass these along to others who may be struggling for some inspiration. Especially since the techniques will work for many other things besides ATC’s.
Until next time!
Crafting Detour
I have gotten sidetracked lately with some craft projects that I’ve started to try and make some money on ebay or at the flea market. I’ve been needing to have a garage sale, as our basement is full of stuff that we have sorted out to get rid of. However, I didn’t think it would be all that productive to have to try and lure people off the main roads, past 5 turns to get to our house where I can sit outside all day and get eaten alive by mosquitoes. So, on one of my many trips to the flea market I found out that I can get a space for only $18 for the day, on Saturday. I figure I can get a lot more exposure, plus the spaces are paved so there is no grass and mud or mosquitoes. I’m trying to get some craft items made that I can also sell, not only at the flea market, but perhaps full time. I would really like to be able to earn enough that I can stay home with the kids but still contribute to the family finances.
Right now I’m working on some milk jug kid totes. They are really cool and pretty easy to make. When I was a kid I had a little purse made out of a dish soap container. I’ll probably try to make some of those as well. My plan is to get so successful selling these little ditties that I have to go around the neighborhood on recycling day snerching other people’s recyclables.
If you have no idea what snerching is, you’ll have to watch Farscape, believe me… it’s worth it. Time to go back downstairs to “the factory.” Thanks for reading!
