Vintage Earring Hair Flowers

I bought some vintage, turquoise glass, clip on earrings, at an antique show we went to last weekend and they just screamed flower centers to me. Emmie likes to wear flowers in her hair, but they cost a lot at the store so I figured I could make my own custom ones for a lot less (especially since turquoise is Emmies favorite color!)

I got 2 flowers for $1.99 at Michael's because they were on a buy 1 get 1 sale. I decided to go with an off white and a autumnal light golden orange/brown.

In order to make these lie flat on a hair clip I pulled all of the plastic away from the flowers and sewed a few stitches through all the layers in order to hold it all together. (notice the blue on my fingers, I spent the afternoon spray painting an estate sale bargain so I could put it on my front porch and I couldn't get it all off my fingers!)

Next I used metal cutters to snip the clip off of the back of the earrings, and then hot glued them to the flower centers.

On the off white one I finished up by taking an ostrich feather and clipping sections out of it, and then slipping them amongst the petals with a dot of hot glue to secure them.

I still need to add the clips to the back, but I ran out of hot glue so I guess I will have to make another run to the craft store!

My summer craft class' finish line is in sight!

I have finished my final project for my summer craft class! My thumbs are still nearly useless, but I was at least able to do everything I needed through the pain. I spent from 8:45 in the morning until 10:45 at night on Monday getting it all dyed up; I had Paul and the kids come hang out with me for the evening. We ate pizza (thanks Paul!) and I only had one melt down about what a terrible artist I am (even after about 14 hours in the studio which is not to bad.)

This piece is 45" square and mounted on a piece of acrylic that holds it about an inch and a half off the wall so that the silk can move with the air flow. I still haven't named this piece, (any suggestions?) which is all I need to do between now and tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. for the final critique. I went up to the school today to hang it on the wall so I am unofficially done with needing to do anything for this class (which was lots of fun.) I am so glad that I was able to get this done early and no all nighters were pulled; although I do have about 48 hours worth of work into this one.

Now I have almost 2 whole weeks before we go to my mom's for a fun summer trip. I have so many projects I need to get done before I get into the swing of school this fall; I am pretty sure I will not have a ton of time for personal stuff between the 2 craft classes, art history, and history of costume class, not to mention how behind I am going to get since I am going out of town to England for almost 2 weeks in September. I am trying to be good and let my thumbs heal, but this weekend we HAVE to finish the front deck so I don't know if I will actually accomplish resting them or not.

Silk painting and my poor swollen thumbs.....

I finished my silk painting sample and had it graded this week; it was a lot of fun to do, but the final product was not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination. The 2 corners without resist were pretty ugly, and I managed to spill red on the border since I was being bad and not eating for too long (I tend to not want to stop what I am doing to eat when I am busy, my husband tells me off all the time for this.) I started to get shaky and knocked my cup of dye over like a dork. Oh well, I gave it to Isaac (my son) and he has been wearing it around as a pirate bandanna, so it won't go to waste even if it's not a good example of my work!

Here is a picture of most of the class' scarves on the wall for grading.

This is a look at my final project (due on Thursday) it is a 45" silk square that has resist painted all over it. You can sort of see what the final image will be since the tracing image is still under the silk, but I am not telling anymore about it for sure until the project is finished!

My poor thumbs though; in order to paint the resist you have to squeeze a little bottle with a tiny little nozzle on it, the pressure required seems small at first but I end up with my hands shaking after just a couple of hours, and it took 12 hours in total over 2 days in order to resist this whole thing. My thumbs are swollen and I can't grip anything with them (the tips have also felt pins and needle-y for 2 days.) I think I just strained them and inflamed the tendons, but I will go get them checked out if it doesn't stop soon. (Paul is giving me anti-inflammatory medication too) Grrrrrrr not great timing to hurt myself since this weekend is front deck makeover weekend, but I am doing my best to stay helpful.

Paul and I stained the deck Friday night, and tomorrow is probably going to involve sewing the covers for the chair cushions. (Today we went up to a big antique expo in DC and to IKEA to pick up the doors for my studio's shelving units. The heat index was 109 degrees F and there was no way we were going to work outside in that!)

Anyway, hopefully I will have pictures of productive things tomorrow instead of a further whine about sore thumbs!

a flea market find and a summer treat!

Last weekend we went out estate sale and flea marketing; I got a couple of awesome things, but I am holding off on sharing a few of them because they are waiting for makeovers! I decided to share my favorite find of the day though, a vintage milk glass necklace with a silver and amber glass clasp. I love milk-glass like woah! and finding this great piece for only $4 was so exciting! I am going to restring it with replacement spacers since the pearls are fake plastic ones that have seen better days; I probably won't go the pearl route again since I only like real pearls and I worry about how abrasive those would be against the glass. I think I am going to go with crystals in a neutral color so the necklace stays versatile.

The next thing I have to share is a little summer treat the kids and I made. The bottom layer is raspberry jello with a few frozen raspberries thrown in, the next layer is apricot jello with cut up nectarines, then we added vanilla pudding, we topped it all with whipped cream. This was so simple and refreshing with how hot it has been lately, I think I sometimes forget to appreciate how yummy stuff like this can be, and how entertained the kids can be by easy "cooking" projects. (I have to say though, I think the magic of this treat is in the presentation; the mini trifle bowls are $1.50 each at Walmart and make this dessert special!

Becca's baby blanket part 2

I finished Becca's baby blanket this morning - not too shabby for a 2 day project!

This is the whole thing laid out - I love the ric rac inset in the border, I have seen this technique used before, but this was my first try at it!

The back is a simple yellow flannel with no batting as an inner layer, this makes the blanket cuddly but not bulky. I top stitched along all the seams and did some extra stitching to beef up the border.

I wanted the corners to be nice and tidy, and didn't like the look of the ric rac crossing, so I just added little fabric corners which I think gave a clean look.

I like how in this last picture you can see the sun shining through the lacy ric rac edge, this blanket is so sunny, and all I need to do now is give it a good wash and then mail it off to my big sister!

Becca's 4 hour baby blanket top!

My older sister is pregnant with her second little boy, (which we are all very excited about!) I made her a quilt for her first son, so I decided that I should do the same with her second little peanut. I bought the fabric a couple of months ago but didn't have time between school and the kids to get started on anything; yesterday I had my craft class but since I was ahead of schedule by a couple of days, I didn't have anything to do. (The day before I had sat with headphones watching "The Dark Crystal" on my i-phone.) I decided this was the perfect opportunity to get some personal work done since my teacher didn't mind what I got up to. This top is made with 5 fat quarters that I got for .99 cents a piece at Joann's on sale, the lemon fabric was some I got a little before the fat quarters, but directed the colors of everything else. (The white is just a plain cotton print cloth that I purchased from my classroom at school since I didn't have any of this weight at home.)

This top is made up of 12 log cabin squares and 4 plain white ones, each square is about 10" so once the borders were added it's about a 45" square total. The strips are all 2.5" strips and I sewed it all with a 1/4" seam allowance. Instead of quilting this with a top, middle, and bottom layer, I am actually going to just add a flannel backing. I made a ton of quilts for my son, and found that I rarely used them except to throw them on the floor for the baby to roll around on; whereas receiving blankets were the workhorses of my baby kit. I prefer the lighter weight for covering car carriers when outside, swaddling the baby, and flannel is pretty good at wiping up puke in emergency situations (not to mention much less bulky to wash. I started to add the backing last night, but my back was done for the day - I am off of school today so I think that will be the plan for this afternoon.

Oh, did I mention that I did this from start to finish in 4 hours? I am pretty excited about how fast it went - I know it's not exactly a difficult pattern but I didn't even have a plan for it when I got to class! I guess that's a pretty good advertisement for not putting something off if you don't think you have the time!

silk painting

This week in my craft class we are working on silk painting samples; the end sample won't be a pretty scarf or anything, just a technique development piece. I divided my sample into 4 different sections and then drew a picture to put on to the silk (I decided on a sort of gothic style stained glass window) and then I used a pencil to trace the image.

I stayed late in class last night so I could add the resist to two of the panels (my hubby came and helped me too!) so that I would be ready to paint today.

the first panel has resist and 3 colors, the second has resist and is multicolored, the 3rd was sized with thick chemical water, and the 4th with have thick dye painted on plain silk. The process is pretty awesome, and I can't wait to finish so I can see how it looks when all is said and done (all the resist will be white)

My Summer Craft Class has Eaten My LIFE!

I am currently in the middle of an accelerated craft class this summer, we are fitting 16 weeks worth of work into a little less then 5 weeks and the pace is killer!

So far we have worked on embroidery samples, (I don't have a picture of my sample because I forgot to take on before turning it in,) and then we dyed some cloth a BRIGHT! yellow in preparation for painting on it with thickened dye as another sample.

The sample was supposed to have various resists and stamping as well as brush strokes and getting more of a grasp on how the dye would flow on the dry fabric; it wasn't supposed to look like anything so I guess I succeeded! It's pretty ugly but at least most people have been able to spot my olive and tree...........Ummmmm, ya. It's a "little" rough, but that's what samples are for right?

The project that ate most of my last couple of weeks has been the embroidery art piece. The theme was Macro/Micro, which in the art world means "could be anything!" I decided to shrink clothes and make a paper doll collage art piece. The assignment said that the piece needed to have at least 12 sq inches of complete coverage embroidery, but other then that I could do pretty much what I wanted.

I decided to make the collage about my daughter and the hopes I have for her, the piece is called "Paper Daughter"

This first dress is about wanting my daughter to stay a little girl, The bodice is embroidered while the rest is fabric (except the lace at the hem which is a doily) left over from my daughter's bed quilt. The background is heavy cotton watercolor paper that is attached to a stretcher frame. I sewed through the background with a running stitch to sort of imply paper doll cutouts and I really liked the little tabs.

This one is supposed to be about my hopes that my daughter will pursue an education, I hope that my school work will inspire her to feel like an education is super important. The graduation gown is black linen that I had scraps of (yay hording fabric!) while the cap is more embroidery, I made the tassel out of spare embroidery floss too.

The wedding gown is supposed to symbolize my hope that my daughter will find love and happiness in her adult life. The dress is a purchased net with an embroidered bodice, there is a silver thread embellishment on the bodice too.

The doll is a photo of my Daughter that I put on the computer and manipulated to look like a pencil drawing. I printed the drawing onto fabric, and then couched 6 different colors on for her hair, and then I embroidered the yellow onto her tank-top (which took forever, I should have probably used a larger thread.) Emmie was a little offended since I accidentally did her hair too short (IRL it is to her bottom) but I decided that the couching was too time consuming to care that much about it!

The last dress is about letting go, even though I want my Daughter to be little, (but since she must grow into her adulthood) I would have her get an education, and get married; I also want to remember that she needs to follow her bliss, that she needs to grow into her own path no matter what I would choose for her. (I let Emmie choose the theme of this dress) I feel like there are lots more meanings to this, but that they are hard to portray in a meaningful way through blogging so that is sort of the simplified version, (Lots of extra thoughts about the embroidery creating the beauty and homey atmosphere that I try to create in my Daughter's life, realizing she is her own person and not my toy, etc.) The dress is made up of embroidered butterfly wings and then more of her bedroom fabric for the bodice with a silk flower petal skirt.

The whole piece is 12" x 24" and I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

The rest of this week we are working on silk painting a quilt piecing - I am looking forward to the silk painting since I have never done it before! (I like piecing too ;)