Paste Papers

My latest experiments have been with paste papers. I made them originally to use in my fabric/ paper journal books, but have also cut them out and used them in collages (that I will post when they are done). These are so much fun and very addictive. These pics are from the first few sets--I have some others that I made with rubber stamps and foam stamps, but haven't taken pics yet.

Another Fat Book and Recycling

I am participating in another 120 Fat Book (4 x 4 inch pages) swap on Art Techniques. It is just a technique swap with the theme of using cheap or recycled materials. I chose to make hand made stamps out of sticky backed fun foam. I used white Gesso to stamp the image onto upcycled "chip board" that I saved from cereal boxes, coke 12 packs, used Priority mail envelopes, etc. It absolutely amazed me how quickly the recycleables added up. We have been recycling aluminum cans and plastics for years, but saving all of this extra food packaging was new to me.

After the Gessoed stamp dried, I painted the entire piece with a liquid watercolor wash. The Gesso resists the watercolor, while the background absorbs it. I really like the rich tones that I got from painting on the brown chip board base. I added some accent dots using the eraser end of a pencil and some acrylic paint. I'm ready to send these babies off, and can't wait to see the other 119 techniques!

Collage Mini Books

These are a set of books that started off as paper towel collage. I did a swap with Collage UnLeashed last month, and traded some of my dyed, painted and stamped paper towels. I had to trim the paper towels down to 8 x 10 for the swap, so I had lots of little strips left over, and decided to make a couple of collages. The original piece was maybe 12 x 15 inches. I glued the paper towels down to a fabric base, then layered with a batik backing and cotton batting, just like a quilt. I added zig-zag quilting lines with a shiny variegated thread.

I then cut it down to make 4 little books measuring about 3 x 4 1/2 inches. I used several of my hand painted papers for the signatures inside.



These were just too much fun--they are going to go to a private swap that some friends and I are doing. I think that they would make great little Art Journals.

Happy Dancing Pig Postcard and More

I've been playing around with fabric postcards again. A friend of mine gave me this pink pig fabric, and it was just screaming to be made into a fabric postcard!


I had this cool giant bumblebee fabric too, and so I combined it with several of my hand dyed fabrics to make this postcard--I also hand stitched the little "bee tracks" and sewed on a little copper bee bead:


And on the jewelry track, I made some earrings out of my favorite hand carved bone skull beads--you might remember these from a Halloween charm swap I did last fall.


These earrings were made with little "Chinese Coin" charms. I hand coiled brass wire, and made a loop for the coins to thread through. Kind of fun, and they have a neat movement when you wear them.


What am I going to do with this stuff? I don't know, that's why I put it in my Etsy store.

More Winter Charms

I ended up making a second set of Winter charms since someone dropped out of the swap that I am hosting at the end. I dipped into my bottlecap stash, and made these little snowflake charms. Thanks goes to my DH for letting me come down to his shop and use his clear resin to top off the charms, and also his Dremmel tool for drilling the holes. I made a bunch more bottlecap charms since I needed to have the resin mixed anyway, so I will post some more of those as I get them finished.

Even More Charms

I'm so much of a charm addict, that Blogger wouldn't let me upload all of the pics in one post, so here's a few more.

I'm a Charm Addict

OK, I am offically a charm addict! I signed up to do several sets of charms for a swap on Mixed Media Art Friends. They are only sets of 5 each, so I figured that would be pretty manageable. The categories are: Spring, Fabric (including buttons and such), Beading, Metal, Found Objects, Game Pieces, and Other. Needless to say, I signed up for all categories! I have been working on my charm sets for the past couple of weeks. This is what I have come up with so far.

I decided to take pictures with a quarter for scale. I grabbed one, and it happened to be for New Mexico, my very own Land of Enchantment :)