August wrap up

August was so busy with back to school at the beginning of the month, cub scouts starting back up, working on the PTA newsletter again, a new Sunday school curriculum to prepare for - I felt I didn't have much time to do a whole lot of artsy stuff. But I did manage to work in a bit! 

 This is a new journal I made that I'll soon be working in. Here is a quick look at the inside pages:

I love that not only are they colorful, but they are all different sizes as well. I learned to put this together from a Letter Love class I'm taking with Joanne Sharpe.

I need to get in and work in it, I want to be caught up for her next class on Markers which starts the end of this month.

I also joined an ATC swap and made these four ATCs based on my favorite color:

I completely forgot to take a picture of my envelope swap exchange that went to South Africa! Oh well. And although I haven't finished this piece of jewelry yet, I did make another anklet:

One of our Color Bonus Lessons had us making tape, and I sort of went crazy! There will be more on this later if you'd like to learn more:

and finally... I made another ATC with a food theme:

Anyone know the movie that quote is from? One of my favorites!!

Charming, as always

Do your remember this post about My Charms? I joined my first altered charm swap and made three general sets of charms and two Halloween ones.... well I got the swap back and am amazed at the talent and the variety I received!

Three sets of general charms:

Two sets of Halloween charms:

Aren't they wonderful? Some of them were even packaged so well I almost hated to remove them from their packages. Here are a few I took pictures of:

Those beautiful tags and charms above are from the swap host. You can check out her blog Ink Stains  to see all the charms from all the artists and even sign up for the Christmas one if you are so inclined!

A few things I learned from my first charm swap:

• Packaging is the first thing you notice, make sure it is worthy of your creations.
• Charms shouldn't be too big, or too small. You don't want others to feel like your charm is the centerpiece just because of it's size, but you also don't want one so small that it gets lost in a group.
• Longer is better than wider. A little length gives interest in a group, width just crowds out the charms of others.
• The back is important. Charms spin and move, the front isn't always what's going to be showing. Make your backs pretty as well.
• Make sure your attacher (yea, not a word, but it should be) works with the swap you are joining. Some charm holders have small holes and while a jump ring or lobster clasp may work great, beads and unusual clasps will make your charm hang funny, if it is able to be attached at all.

All in all, it was a hugely successful swap. I had fun, learned a lot, received some amazing little works of art and am ready for the next one!!

Peridot and Garnet, Beads on a String

If you saw my last post you know I'm back into jewelry making mode! I had so much fun making my Butterfly Kisses Anklet that I started looking for a new project. 

The last time I was in CA visiting my folks I went to this great antique store with my mom. One of the things I found was some beads in a little baggie, the original piece of jewelry had broken. I loved the colors and knew it would be fun to reconstruct something.

I dumped the bag into a hole on my bead board and just started playing. Included was a large round metal bead, and a clasp - I just had to go from there.

I started by placing the large metal bead onto the center mark, then spacing out the larger garnet beads. Then placing the small garnet beads and the peridot beads to break it all up. Last were the small metal balls and finally the metal flower spacers. 

I just keep moving and arranging until I get a pattern I like that uses up the materials available. I have no idea though what my final piece is going to be. So I string what I have with a beading needle and thread, keeping it all together until I decide. (It is no fun to accidentally knock a bead board to the floor, trust me)

It ends up making a single strand necklace that would be about 22 inches. But what do you think I should make with it? 

Help me out folks! A single strand necklace? An anklet, bracelet and earrings to match? A multi-strand bracelet?? Thanks in advance for any ideas you have!! Comment below and then check back later to see what it ends of becoming....

Oh, and these are the birthstones for August (peridot) and January (garnet).

Butterfly Kisses Anklet

I need a new anklet. I wear mostly capri style pants all year long and am almost always sporting an anklet. I know from experience if I want one, I need to make one. If I were to buy one, it would last about a week and then I'd have lost it or would be fixing it. Why? Because I will wear it until it falls off my body. I wear it to bed, with long pants, in the shower... it'll need to stand up to a lot of abuse.

I realized I have been ignoring my jewelry desk for quite some time. Mostly because it was buried under piles of stuff I was busy with other fun stuff, but now I am ready to play. This is my unorganized jewelry making cabinet that I'm only a bit embarrassed for you to see..

and the edge of my jewelry desk with my tools on it:

Time to get to work! (This is not a tutorial, by the way. I'm not opposed to doing one if you'd like to see it (comment and let me know), but this skips a lot of how-to steps and just assumes that if you are here to follow along you already know basic jewelry making skills and where to buy supplies. It's more of a documentation of my process. Going from "I think I want to make this", through the planning and creating stages to the finished project.)

I pulled out my box of chains. I recycle old chains from jewelry I no long like or that has been broken, but I also have new chains in here as well. 

After rifling through it, I find some old chains and links that I think I might want to use:

I end up putting back the chain at the top. Too delicate for what I am needing. The larger chain on the right is not long enough, but if I add in the links on the left, it will work.

Now to come up with an idea. I usually go through my stashes of stuff and look for a focal point. Either a unique bead, a charm, or just a color scheme. I have been into butterflies lately and decided to make that the focal piece on my anklet. I find one large butterfly charm, and two smaller ones. I grab some beads in colors that make me think of butterflies and my bead board and start planning.

I usually make my anklets around 9 inches long before adding the clasp. Bead boards are great because of the markings and the grooves that hold everything. The large butterfly is in the center and then I space out the links and charms, knowing I'll be filling in with pieces of the chain I pulled out.

I use wire to make connections for the charms and to add beads to the design. I like to do wire wraps on both the charms and when connecting it to the anklet, it is so much sturdier than just a jump ring attaching it. These will only come off if the metal is worn through.

Cute right? (please ignore the Cheetos bag in the background :0) It looks great, measured it and it fits - but it's a bit boring. I wanted more color so decided there needs to be more beads and more dangles - a dozen should do it.

I won't tell you how long it took me to attach all the dangles, mostly because I don't know for sure - but the sustenance I'd gotten from the Cheetos was long gone.  

TA -DA! It's done! It looks pretty good on, however I can't get a good angle taking a pic of  my own ankle so you are just going to have to imagine it. Thanks for visiting, I hope you had fun seeing into the process. It was fun getting back to my jewelry... anyone need any earrings or anything??

Color Love Bonus #32

Hello my Color-Lovin' friends! This bonus lesson is taking it's lead from Joanne's Lesson 14 - Art Girls. I'm calling this "Fakin' Faces". This technique is not mine, don't give me any credit for it. If you do know who came up with it first, let me know because I'd love to give them credit. I've seen a couple of my favorite online art journalers do this and knew it would be perfect here.

This is a sneaky technique for those of us who shudder whenever anyone says the words "draw" and "face" together in the same sentence. Thankfully, for our class the face was more of a cartoon or caricature - but what if you want a more realistic looking face or are just too afraid to start off on your own...

Cheat!

In this lesson we are going to go looking for faces we can use to art over and give us a not-so-scary place to start. First grab up a bunch of magazines and start looking through them for faces. I find that ones right around the size of your palm are the easiest to work with. Not too small that you can't really make it your own, and not so big that - well, where you gonna put it?

Once you've pulled out a bunch of pages, cut them up. I left some hair on a few of mine that would have been much easier to work with if I had just cut it all off, but that is something you won't really know until you play around some.

Now, grab some paper and glue. I used bristol for this, although watercolor would have been fine. You are going to be using wet media on it so make sure it is something that will hold up to it. 

For gluing down the face I tried 4 different adhesives. The glue stick worked the best and left my page the smoothest, no wrinkles at all. The quick-dry adhesive was spread as thin as I could manage and only had a few wrinkles. I'd heard that gesso could be used as glue, and it might be true with other brands, but not this one. I thought I'd be saving myself a step but it overworked the magazine page.  There were quite a few more wrinkles, and I had to go back and hit it with the glue stick anyway. The fourth one was my matte gel medium. Lots of wrinkles, but it worked.

Now that your face is glued down, go over it with the lightest coating of gesso you can manage. You want to add that texture for your pens and paints to grab onto and lighten up the page a bit, but you still want to be able to see the person underneath.

Lightest possible application of gesso

Next, take one of your waterproof black pens and start drawing a face - right on top of the one that is already there! You can duplicate it as much as you'd like, or exaggerate and expand a little here and there.

you can see where the upper lip is drawn fuller

Take your drawing off the magazine page and start exagerating it even more. I added in some hair like Joanne had us do for our Art girls.

And the fun part... grab your colors - paints, markers, Inktense, etc.!

started out with tombow markers

Watercolor added to the background

Finally finished off with a cool quote

That's it! There are more samples below, including my massively epic fail! Playing around with this technique will teach you spacing, placement, shading and shapes. How many thousands of looks can be achieved with just two eyes, a nose and a mouth.

For those of you who don't automatically flinch when someone says "draw" - why not use this technique to go outside your comfort zone? Find pictures that are more ethnic than you are used to drawing, a wider bridge of the nose, fuller lips, Asian eyes instead of almond shaped or even ... *gasp* a man! 

More examples...

Should have either stayed with her own hair or cut it off altogether. 

And finally, the epic fail I promised you.... I tried twice and both faces now show up in my nightmares!

She starts out cute enough

and then The Joker gets to her....

trying to cartoon her up didn't help either! EEK!

So, even this technique isn't totally fool-proof! :0) One last picture before I go.. while looking for faces I came across this McDonald's add:

Isn't she awesome!! And notice - one eye is covered, so if you can't get your eyes to match, do hair instead. Just pick which eye you like the best and remove the other one altogether. Notice too that she has NO NOSE! I didn't even miss it at first, so going without is always an option if you are ripping your own hair out over an obnoxious honker. Love these lips. She is simple and I think the colors have a lot to do with why her face can be so minimal but still great. 

I hope you had fun! I have been enjoying everyone's process and all the additional classes and support. You guys are amazing! Now, get off your computer and go PLAY!!

July wrap-up

Can not believe it is the end of July!! School for us begins on August 2nd!! Summer. Is. Over.

Well, everything except for the heat. That will be with us through the end of the year. Yes, even Christmas is Tucson is too hot for me. January, February and March are my months, those are the months I like Tucson.

Anyhow, enough of that. I just wanted to do a quick catch-up post for the end of the month. I finished taking the Color Love class by Joanne Sharpe and went right into her Letter Love class which I am loving as well. I will have a post up in a few days that is a bonus lesson for the Color Love gals. I offered to come up with one of the new challenges, just something to keep us all busy before Joanne's next class.

Here are a few pictures of the things I've been working on this past month:

My Color Girl - more to come on 8/9/12

Lettering Fun

Love these doodled letters

a mix of writing styles

 Using crayons and watercolors together

 One of the bonus lessons using alcohol and watercolors

 Practicing lettering

 beginning of some postcards for a swap

More lettering fun

 My first distress stains, did these for a swap and to enter a contest 

An ATC for a swap - the theme was "one word"

 a colorful envelope for a monthly exchange

Well, thanks for taking a peek at all the fun I've been having. Now that school is starting back up and I can have my friends over to play I am hoping to do a bit more. I have a list, I'll never get to all of it, but it's on a list! :0)