a Scarf for my husband

I have been wanting to make a scarf for my husband and finally I learned to do

the rib stitch so I can do it.  I will also be making him fingerless gloves that use the ribbing stitch.

The yarn is an eco yarn made from plastic bottles.

I was surprised that this was made from plastic bottles.

It's soft, what my husband wants, a scarf that is not scratchy.

He can't wait till I do the matching finger less gloves.

I have other items in the works for Halloween.  I have a neat candy jar

I really love how the lid came out!

I will list this on Etsy when I am finished with it.

It's almost done, just need to straighten out the paint on the bottom of the jar

and I think I want to add some more painted embellishments on the jar

little pumpkins or something like that, I haven't decided,

or maybe it's fine the way it is?

You tell me!

And I have my second Day of the Dead Bottle listed on Etsy

Find it here

That is my cat Boo.  As soon as I opened up the blinds for light she jumped up there.

I didn't want to mess with her so she got in the shot!

The Day of the Dead bottle is on Etsy now.

The paint is Gallery Glass and looks great near a light source.

You can put candle around it but not too close.

I don't know if the heat is good for the paints.

It looks pretty festive.

My youngest daughter started back at her special pre school and lately she has

been big on doing board games.

Getting kind of tired of it because it's routine now.

She starts with one then goes through the whole list.

Pretty Pretty Princess

ABC Dora game

Boggle Jr. (I stick with doing only five cards)

Candy Land

Dora Chutes and Ladders

She fights me on Monopoly Jr but she is just not ready for that one

My oldest plays the older Monopoly

Now when my oldest gets back from vacation with my parents we can have game night.

My Husband is eager to start a family devotions time.  Our pastor talked about a new Graphic Novel Bible

Being a comics fan my husband wants that.  Makes sense for such a visually stimulated family!

I also want to make Popsicle puppets of the Bible people so we can act out sections

like Jonah and the whale..it would help keep the attention I think.

Any way that is what is up for me now.

I have to get ready for my two hours of work at the library.

bye for now.

Day of the Dead artwork

The above photo effect was achieved by placing my finger over the flash but I was trying to cover the red out light too, didn't work too well but the photo looked cool for this post anyway.

This is how it really looks although I am not done with it yet.

This is what I am working on.  I noticed a lot of neat Sugar Skull artwork on Etsy.

I looked it up on Google to find out about it's history and really got interested in making my own.

This is my second skull done on a large wine bottle with Gallery Glass paints, it's not done yet, I'll be adding more skulls, working like this takes time.  I have to do one side of the bottle and let it dry overnight.

I took the picture indoors so when it's done I can get a better pic when dried and can take it outdoors.

Now here is the first one I did with glass paints

I'll have to get an upclose shot of this when it's daytime.

But you get the idea.

I have other fall items to work on.

Halloween is like my most favorite holiday but after reading about 

Dia De Los Muertos

and seeing all the neat Sugar Skull artwork on Etsy

I just had to find out more about the holiday

and of course make my own Sugar Skull artwork.

My background is a mix of Scots/Irish English and perhaps a bit of French

(most Americans do anyway) and German and a smidgen of Cherokee

I'm a Christian but one side of my family descended from a large Jewish family that over time married into different branches of Christianity 

So in other words I'm a MUTT!

I love cultures and I envy my cousins who have traveled to different places over the world

One of them married an artist from Africa.

I read a lot on different cultures.

I am autistic (Aspberger's type)

Meeting people is NOT easy for me, and I have allergies to a lot of things

so I travel in my head.

Well, now I"m in Mexico I guess with all the Day of the Dead stuff.

I have been familiar enough with the celebration, read an article on it in a kid's magazine

seen the Crow 2 with its references to that day.

Now I see it all over on Etsy, on earrings, paper mache, paintings, mosaics, 

so I am jumping on the bandwagon, for this Fall anyway and looking

to do my own interpretation of the art form.

Day of the Dead

Check out the link for more information on the Cultural History of Sugar Skulls

It's really cool!

It's still warm but Fall is comming

Children's Tube Scarf in blues, purples and whitish pinks

Some places may be getting cooler than others, I live in Kansas where the freakin weather can't make up it's mind.  But I have this lovely children's tube scarf available.  Nice and soft and done in merino wool. I bought the yarn from Wooly Rhinoceros and each yarn is different, hand dyed you don't get the same yarn twice.

This is so ultra soft superwash yarn and I loved knitting it, it is a thick and thin yarn and knitted it in stockinette 

stitch but in a way that the scarf rolls in itself, making an interesting tube.  It is a fun piece and my kids want one of their own, they have to wait on that, besides I have made them scarfs of their own why do they want more?? 

 Well, kids just love it when they have a mom that can do this sort of thing.  Ok I'm not chiding those mothers who may not have the creative bug (mine's an all out virus!) and I am not miss perfect Martha Stewart so relax on that one.  I love to knit and I was trying to teach my nine year old to knit, but she has little patience on the matter. She loves the kitchen though, I'm pretty good with the cookies and cakes and muffins, but I'm not all that thrilled about the kitchen to be honest.  My HUSBAND can COOK!  His favorite shows are Hell's Kitchen, Kitchen Confidential  and I like Cake Boss, in fact my daughter wants me to make a red velvet cake with chocolate Ganache,  I had to look that one up in my Betty Crocker book and thank GOD it's THERE!!  

Fall is coming and to make it easier for me as I create holiday inventory I am looking for Crock Pot recipes.

Yes, I'm a lazy cooker, but because my husbands health is iffy during the winter months I want some things planned ahead that will be easy to do.

I homeschool, create paintings on every conceivable surface I work two hours at the library five days a week to have some extra money  and I need time to be creative or else my life would suck.  Really it would and my oldest understands, my four year old is starting to get it. 

My husband is learning to understand my frenzy, sometimes he just needs to look away.

Once I did a Thanksgiving dinner just for my family, not BIG family just me, hubby and kids.

I can't even remember what I MADE!

Well, my husband and I are learning to cook meals together.  When we leave the kids with grandparents

we try out a new recipe, one took us a few hours to do, Chicken curry and Aloo Gobi, ever since I saw Bend it Like Beckham I wanted to do Aloo Gobi.

Something warm to eat in the fall and winter months, mmm Indian spices make my tongue sing!!

Oh and neither one of us in Indian by the way, we just LOVE the food of other cultures.

German, West African, Cuban, Italian, whatever, we just find the recipes online.

Sorry for all the babble, I haven't been on here in a bit and I hope to change that, just had some hard times at home and now we are getting things back in line.

MMM can't wait for Halloween, my favorite month.  Here is my Painting for Halloween

POOKA AT NIGHT

A Irish legend of terror, the Pooka, or Puka, in some areas of Ireland it's a slimy horse from a bog, 

in others it's a troll.  Sometimes the Pooka is a horse with long ears like a rabbit.

Mine is slimy green rising out with it's legs in the middle of forming so they looks a little misshapen.

I have fall bottles and candle jars bouncing around in my head, I have to start working on my designs.

Soo much to do, so little time.

Etsian Artists: Wonderful Wednesdays

Etsian Artists: Wonderful Wednesdays: Check out all of the wonderful butterflies from the Etsian Artists Team...... Black Moth- Hand painted necklace Stand out in this uniq...

This link takes you to a wonderful short collection of Etsian Artists finds, and my Wonderland Bottle was featured here! I am happy to have gotten that piece chosen. I love the other items in the set. I need to clean out the other Olive Oil bottle to make another Wonderland, the Cheshire Cat which says We're all Mad here. I'm mad you're mad. Going to draw him all crazy like. I really love Tim Burton's version of the Cat. I really love to pick out great movies to watch for inspiration. My favorite has been The Neverending Story and was so happy to have found the soundtrack last year on Half.com.

Other movies are Mr. Magorioum's Magic Emporium. The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and some movies have such great soundtracks that I just have to have them. Used to listen to this cassette tape as a kid, it was a collection of John Williams music including ET music. The Secret of NIMH had a great soundtrack. I love a lot of the Disney stuff and I have a few of the recent stuff such as Mulan, Tarzan and the Lion King stuff. But still my favorite soundtrack is The neverending Story.

What movies or music do you listen to for inspiration? Please share!

The Fairy Tree

Find it Here

It has been a busy week for me and I wanted to find something to blog about so I picked out my Fairy Tree

You can't see fairies, at the time I did this painting I had trouble actually drawing fairies, I made this painting to show a bit of mystery.  Faint glows in a forest, things like Will o' wisps darting to and fro.

This is a painting of all the fairies hiding within a tree.

Part of the inspiration came from I think Fern Gully when the fairies hide in their one big tree.

This is similar, and the ghostly white?  That's something spooky coming up against the fairies.

I love fantasy and making up stories and designing the paintings that will best illustrate those ideas.

I am getting more inspired now by re-connection with God.

Which somehow got disconnected when I fought so hard to get my husband to come to church.

Well, my husband fought hard to bring me back from what I would call a spiritual crisis.

I have this great idea for a art bottle done in glass mosaics.  I have a friend that might loan me out some of the grouting he uses for his own works.  I just need enough to do the project.

I started back to working at the Library again, only at two hours a day so I can do my other jobs of Homeschooling and artwork and maintaining my Etsy shop.

But for the new art bottle I was thinking of a fire cross.

I have several pieces of fiery orange and yellow and bits of red glass left over from an old project.

The stained glass not hanging in the window is hard to see but that is the one with the reds and oranges I have.

There is also pieces left over from the project above that.

I have been keeping those pieces in case I might do something with them, and now I do have an idea!

I have other ideas like simulating Church windows, doing sea creatures like whales and dolphins,

and doing works with dragons, my favorite imaginary creatures.

Do I do any more stained glass work?

I have desires to do so but right now it's tough.  I need something to clean my soldering iron, I can't spell the name correctly but it's needed to clean the solder gunk from my iron.

I still have some great pieces of stained glass art, just not really great for selling on Etsy.

Being imperfect works done for a class they are pretty enough but not POLISHED enough as far as work goes, you can tell that when you put professional work up against mine.

Still, I am quite proud of my work because I DESIGNED the knotwork myself!

My teacher never had a beginner student do that in their first class for a final project.

I just got the idea after working with the easy pieces.

There were no patterns available to do the Celtic pieces I want soooo

I drew one up myself.  The one in the shadow is my first one.

The second one in the light was my next one with a change, I added a 'frame' of glass to 

give it more structure and while the pieces were cut wobbly

the 'frame' helped fix it all together better than the first one.

Stained glass is expensive as a hobby.  A LOT of work and skill and TIME goes into this!

I'm working on a Gallery Glass bottle art project now.  Just painting in the colors.

I was doing a simple Celtic Knotwork but the way it turned out

it looks like DNA strands LOL!

Got to get back to my work table, got lots of stuff to do.

   

A Little Irish Cream Please ART BOTTLES

I love the surface of these Irish Cream bottles because they have a wide flat surface,

makes it easier to create a scenery there like the Dragon and castle.

On the dragon and castle I experimented with blending in the paints.

Not too bad, I had drawn on the design after I had painted a white surface with enamel paints.

I used a marker that actually was permanent and didn't get blended with the paints

when I was painting.  Still, doesn't look bad. It's like an illustration.

I want to create a painting with a better perspective though.

I always want to improve and make my art better, but I still enjoy it as much as a child.

That's the key to creating, just enjoying it, take yourself too seriously and you can kill that desire.

But you HAVE to be serious enough to want to improve, to become better, work at the craft, that's my desire.  and to push my own boundaries.

I want to do more Celtic Knotworks like this one

It still is a little off balance, I just need more practice, each bottle will be better than the last.

Where do I get these bottles?

Well, my husband and I love a taste of the Irish Creme, being stronger than wine

I usually just make half a wine glass and put a couple of ice cubes in it (bring out the flavor)

and I sip it slowly.  Unfortunately my husband downs the stuff much more quickly.

Not good for someone who is diabetic and was told to limit the drinks.

He gets a bit depressed when he drinks too much, with all his medication

I'm not surprised but he's cooled it on it now.

But now we have ALL these bottles!

What to do?

PAINT THEM!

Another thing I want to do is mosaics!

I have scrap glass I kept from stained glass class work.

I don't like to waste anything if I can help it!

I have been inspired by Etsy artists who do awesome mosaics.

This one HERE is by Waschbear on ETSY!

I love it, done on stone.

I want to do some on my bottles.  I got great design ideas.

I don't have grouting now, have to wait till I can afford it.

It's not expensive just that I got bills to pay and I just have to wait on that now.

But I am practicing on ideas with the gallery glass paints on the bottles.

I would love to do a mosaic on a bottle in Celtic Knotwork.

HERE is another one she did.

I have an idea of my own to do dragons and fire, I have the scraps to do it with.

Plus I still have all those panes of glass from my stained glass class to do it with.

I am too busy right now with young children to do stained glass (lead concerns)

so that will have to wait till they are older.

Besides, my soldering iron needs to be cleaned badly!

And you have to devote longer hours to get going on a project sooo

I will use what I have to make a mosaic when I can get the grouting for it.

Improvement

Well I found out something today about Gallery Glass paints, it needs a varnish to toughen it up.
I woke up this morning deciding to look up Gallery Glass and read more about it since it bothers me that when I am finished the stuff is dry but so soft.  It needs a sealant, a varnish, and Gallery Glass has it's own but I found some to use that's for enamel paints and it seems to make it just fine.  I noticed it has harden the Gallery Glass so it's NOT so fragile which makes me happy.  I just varnished my Wonderland bottle, the Gallery Glass side and that did make a difference.  It doesn't stick to paper either, used to before and I end up peeling off the bit of paint with the paper.

I also used my paint to do some stamp art on my gift pockets

buy item here

I really liked how that turned out.  Fall is coming and I want to do something different.

I am making wrist warmers and I wanted to do some stamp art to decorate it.

I dunked the wrist warmers, which were cut up sock leftovers from VBS Sealy Socks

and I dyed them using Koolaid

Using warm water and koolaid and 1/4 cup of vinegar

I set the socks to soak in  a jar, sun heated for the whole day.

This is a fun project to do with the kids, especially older ones.

I like to set the socks out to dry, it's really HOT here

but when pressed for time after rinsing

heat dry socks in a dryer by themselves OR

use a Hairdryer if you don't have a dryer, it works

and the HEAT sets the color

Nothing stains better than koolaid.

You can decorate this in many ways like using puffy paint or any kind of fabric paint or marker.

I am embroidering the cuffs, first you have to sew the cut edges.

then I embroider around on the top

I'm halfway done with one of mine, it looks like this

This was dyed in purple but I didn't use enough packets

looks kind of like salmon pink!

I am embroidering the edge with purple floss, you can just see the seam

where I sewed the cut edge back into the sock.

This is my first try and the next one was a lot neater

In fact the first pair will be mine to show while the others will be sold

This is my practice piece, so I know what works what won't and take that knowledge 

to the next pair.

I have made sets of blue, orange, and will soon make red.

I will list them on Etsy, 

Wristwarmers made with old socks (mine are new just cut) is a Shappy Chic way of looking cool!

A great way to improve something that is worn out.

I have a lot of worn out HEELS on my socks so now I 

have a project to do with my kids.

NEW ART BOTTLES Support up cycled art

CHOICE Strawberry or Fairy Bottle

This is the collection of bottles, part of it anyway.  I still have yet to list the 'party bottle' that's the bottle with the purple and red squiggles, I want to make a collection pic of those 'party bottles' I made.

Pond and Dragonflies Bottle

Blueberry Bottle

There are probably many uses for an old wine bottle.  I also have some Irish Whiskey bottles that are begging for a make over too,  I only painted two so far.

These bottles are meant to be decorative, they can hold a single flower like a bud vase,

it can grace the table with a little eye candy like a centerpiece

it can sit on the mantel of your fireplace or shelf or bookcase.

I have LOTS of bottles but I can only do so much at a time.  That's a lot of work the listing and promoting of my new item, I only try to do it like one or two items a day.

It helps to bring attention to my store of varied arts.

I am working on a new bottle now, more of a mosaic piece. I'm using Gallery Glass liquid leading and that takes a bit to dry before I put in the color.  While that is drying I do other things like making more gift pockets for the bracelets I have and I still have more bracelets to list on Etsy.

I really need to get back to my painting.  I have a new painting based on a sermon my pastor was talking on, he uses a lot of word pictures, something I get and actually remember.  I feel bad when I can't remember a sermon, but it turns out it's how it's presented that makes me remember it.  I DRAW during the sermons, and that helps me, I end up having to explain why I do that, but at least the pastor and his wife are impressed, his wife admitted she had no talent in that area.

I am going to do a small oil painting that shows a stone jar overflowing with water

This is the watercolor sketch I did during church.  I used watercolor pencils and when service was over I took out my little hairspray bottle that is really filled with water, took of the cap and used the paint brush I always carry with me.

I have a mini artist tool kit that I made with felt.  Kind of a crappy looking job, as I only glued the edges of the felt together and now that's coming apart.

I am in the works of not only fixing that by just sewing but in developing an art kit using beautiful blue fabric

and having white felt inside for cushioning  and sewing the whole thing up.  When that's done I'll post it here and list it on Etsy.

I am also in the middle of making wrist warmers, dying them with koolaid dye which isn't a strong dye and gives it a lighter color, but I'm planning on using paints to stamp fall leaves on since Fall is coming around the corner.  I know it's August but days pass by soo quickly.

Fall Around the Corner

I have this item on Etsy HERE

I got a better photo of it, finally.  The only problem is a little bit of the red flash leaked through when I was holding my fingers over it trying to block the flash.  Other than that little red spot the picture is much better.  On the shop there is a pic of the photo by itself so lookers can really see it with no color problems because it was scanned.  I really love this frame and will make one for my other prints but I want to make some empty frames using my hummingbirds to decorate them.  Can't wait to do that one.

I have been busy today dyeing the cut up socks from VBS.  I am making wrist warmers, the first batch is dyed in a grape Koolaid dye.  Every mom knows how bad that stuff stains right?

I did mine outside, I got the recipe from a favorite book of mine called Kids Knitting.  They tell you how to dye your own wool using koolaid.  It does stain the hands a bit, don't have any gloves but scrubbing with my facial scrub gets it out, as well as all the dead skin cells.

I'm letting the socks dry out now.  Then I will embroider the cut edges so they look nice and don't fray out.

I think these are going to be wacky things for the preteen teen set.

Well, things have changed since I was a teen.  I'd probably would use a pair that's jet black with dragons or vampires or skulls on them.

Hey your reading about a gal that dyed her hair black in order to be Eric Draven from the Crow movie!

I still like things a little on the dark side but I love bright colors and have that innerchild smiling, but once in awhile picks up a meatcleaver.

MMMMMwwwwahahahaha!

Halloween isn't here yet and I'm already getting morbid, which reminds me, I have to bring out my fall items.

This is my Purple Passion Muppet Scarf

I showed a part of in scanned in in an earlier post.

I paired this up with a rust brown coat I have, and it looks great.

The flash made the scarf look lighter than it did.  I have to try again to get the color right.

I did a neat styleboard with this scarf on Kaboodle to show how it goes with Fall fashions.

This scarf is one of a kind not because of it's pattern which is simple but because of the yarn which is from 

Lambsears and each of her hand dyed yarns is unique, you won't see the same yarn again.

She may do another purple but it won't be this purple.

I have other scarfs coming up too.  The yarn is original because it's hand dyed and you won't see the same color again.  If you really like this scarf, get it now.  Check out the link to it and see if the color is you.

If it doesn't work out you can return it for a full refund.

Gift Pocket

This item is available HERE

I have been adding free gift pockets to my bracelets.  I wanted an interesting way to package my items.  The green felt is the leftovers from the pillow turtles from VBS week.

Each pocket will have a different decoration on the front, depending on what I find.

For my lady bug bracelet (those are WHITE lady bugs, not dice, I know it's hard to see that)

I found a bead from the same stash of beads I made the bracelet with.  I do not have any more red acrylic beads like that now.  There is still one more bead left but that's it, they are not being manufactured anymore.

The pockets themselves are easy to make, I didn't use a pattern.  Didn't take me long to sew them up.  The embroidery though took a little bit more time but I wanted to do it for this one to practice for another craft idea I have.

I have leftover cut up socks from VBS.  We made sealy socks, we used the toe to the heel part to make the seal, the rest was cast off.  The VBS manual said you could use the rest for another craft like making bottle covers.  I am going to make tie dyed wrist warmers.

After I dye these things they will need to be hemmed where it was cut, I am going to embroider that part.

Since it's been a long time since I embroidered I wanted to practice which is why I did that pocket the way I did.  It came out quite well.

Another item I'd like to share is this

This is my Alice in Wonderland bottle, on Etsy now HERE  It's an Olive Oil bottle and I really wanted to do something with it.  It reminded me of Alice's bottle she drank from.  On one side is Alice on her mushroom with a butterfly above her.  The butterfly is a acid free scrapbooking sticker.  The other side of the bottle has Drink Me and I used Gallery Glass paints for the label and Gallery Glass liquid leading.  Please note that the paints used are non toxic and there is no lead in the liquid leading, Gallery Glass is used to be an easy way to simulate stained glass.  I have worked in stained glass, a LOT of work!  Worth it if you have the patience for it, but you are working with lead and must take precautions when you are done, mostly that's just washing hands and keeping hands away from your mouth.
    I want to make more art on bottles.  I actually have a bunch here that I have done.  Wine bottles, I have another olive oil bottle for another Wonderland character, the Cheshire Cat.  I also have some St. Brendan's Irish Whiskey, good stuff and I LOVE the bottles.  On one I have a dragon painted on it, on another a Celtic Knotwork design.  I have lots of jars and party decorated Starbucks bottles.  I'm glad I finally got my camera working again so I can take pictures.  Now I just have to learn not to take such fuzzy pictures!