It’s been toooooo long!
Ok, let’s get back into business here. It has been forever! I really haven’t been into any altered crafts lately, so I haven’t updated the site. I am doing some other crafty things though. I’ve been working on improving my sewing skills with costumes and a doll pattern. I’m being a little untraditional though, as my dolls are zombie dolls. I’m using a traditional doll pattern and zombie-tizing it. That way also, it doesn’t matter if I make little mistakes in the beginning. Where a real doll would just be ugly it adds character to a zombie doll. When I can sew them so that they turn out really nice and the arms legs and head are all the exact right shape and such, I’ll make some into traditional dolls as well.
That’s kind of the way I work. I never stay on the same type of thing for a long time. I’ll eventually get back into more altered crafts, and technically I guess you could consider a zombie doll altered. But, time always runs so short with everything that I’d like to get done, as always in life.
I will be starting a crafting group that will meet at the church that I attend soon. I will probably write more about it when things get more solid in the planning. I always wanted to host a group similar to the scrapbooking group I attend through meetup.com, but don’t have the room to do so at my home. I asked permission to have the group meet in the fellowship hall of the church I attend, North Cary Baptist Church here in Cary, NC. They approved this and so I can’t wait to get everything set up to start. I LOVE the church that I go to. The people there are so open and welcoming and non-judgmental it’s like a second functional family! lol. I hope some people who even don’t attend church will come and meet some of the people who go here and give it a try, if not, we’ll still welcome them to come do crafts with us. I really like the idea because there is enough room for people to bring sewing machines with them. I want ALL crafters to be welcome, not just knitters or scrapbookers. So, hopefully we’ll get people who scrapbook, sew, knit, crochet, jewelry makers, altered artists, whatever! Come and create and have great fellowship and food and fun.
Clearing Creative Blocks, Getting Inspired
I’ve been busy the past couple days cooking for a church function, which was yesterday. I probably won’t have time to blog or craft this weekend either as our church is having a lay renewal weekend and starts on Saturday morning and runs through Sunday night, for our family anyway. I’m still squeezing some scrapbooking time in on Sunday. My meetup group has an all day scrap on Sunday, I’ll only be able to go from 1-5:30 this time. I’ll be spending the time getting my stuff in order for the scrapbooking convention in Charlotte that is next weekend. I’m so looking forward to that. I’ll blog all about it when I get back. I had some time today and went down to my craft area to try and get some work done… but it was a no go. I couldn’t get motivated or inspired. I was pretty frustrated, but then I remembered some of my tricks to break that uninspired down time.
1. Don’t try to force yourself to create when you are stumped, you’ll just get further frustrated.
2. Relax and listen to some of your favorite music in a quiet place.
3. Start writing/journaling! Even if you have to start writing about not knowing what to write about, once you start writing, more ideas will come out. That is one thing I need to do more… journal. I’m making a backpack of journaling supplies that I can start taking everywhere with me, that way, when an idea hits, I’ll be ready for it!
4. Watch a favorite movie that inspires you. Right now, mine is Nim’s Island… I love the island and the artfulness of their house in the jungle. Just thinking about being able to live like that inspires me.
5. Think about something that interests you and look up information and pictures about it online.
6. Go to the library and just browse books.
7. Go for a walk or exercise. Sometimes all you need to do is get the blood flowing and clear your head.
The one thing I try to avoid when I’m totally blocked is looking at other artist’s work. That always frustrates me and makes it hard for original ideas to find their way into my boggled mind, at least at that time. Anyway, I hope some of these tips can help you out of your rut, if you happen to be in one. Thanks for reading!
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.
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!
