Painting Without Plaster - Take Two

I enjoyed painting on my little wooden blocks so much that I decided to do some more. 

When I am not sure what to paint, I tend to end up painting leaves.

But, I love chairs (I know - wierd), so I decided to try to paint one.

I had never really drawn or painted one before, so I practiced sketching them, and then painted this one.   A little off - but I like it that way.

This last one.... and I think it is my last one at least for a while was not my favourite, but when I showed them all to my daughter, this was the one she picked as her favourite.

Good thing we all like different things!

Painting Without Plaster

I have been itching to do some more paintings on plaster.... but with the plaster supply store 100 miles away, and being that I ran out I had to think of another way to do some painting.

So I looked around my studio, and found some smallish (3.5 inch) blocks of wood.   They were pretty rough to paint on, so I covered them with a layer of paper and painted on top of that.

I loved painting on them, and letting the painting travel over the sides.

I loved creating the first one so I decided to make another one.

I haven't done a lot of painting before, but love the look of lots of layers..... and these paintings have LOTS of layers, and took me much longer then I expected they would.

I also really like how the paper gives an imperfect square - and a little bit of depth to the surface.

I enjoyed painting each one of them.

I am no longer in such a rush to get some plaster.

Rusty Wear

A few weeks ago, an old cement shell of a building was demolished.

When I walked by the site, I saw thes lovely bits of rusted metal, and I knew I would have to take them home.

I took the flat pieces of the metal strapping, hammered it, removed some the rust, and.....

made some earrings....

and a couple of necklaces.

 I left the metal with the lovely patina, but have added a couple of layers of paste wax that are well rubbed in. 

I love the story behind these pieces of jewelry.   To know that the metal had 35 years (or so) within the walls or floors and then it became some jewelry. 

These rusty pieces are available in my Etsy shop.

Our snow was almost gone and then yesterday it SNOWED ALL DAY.  We received over a foot of snow. 

 Hopefully I will be able to sit out on my deck again soon.

New Magazine Article

The new edition of Pages magazine will be available very soon, and I can't wait to see it as I have an article in the magazine.

Here is one of the images of the books I created that is being used in the magazine.  Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of them before I mailed them to the publisher, so I don't have more to share right now.

Here are a few pictures of books that I made that are in a similar style to the ones in the magazine.

I can't wait to see the  magazine in real life.

Hand Stitched Luminaries

I have once again been busy making luminaries out of my tea bag paper collection.  I have made many of them before, and have even had an article published showing how to make them in GreenCraft magazine.  (See side column for where I have been published)

I have recently had a hankering to make luminaries that had some hand stitching on them rather than machine stitching.

and so I made a tube shaped one 

that I hand stitched around the top and the bottom

and then I made a square one with stitching around the top and the bottom

as well as down each of the corners.

These are very difficult to photograph showing how lovely the light looks coming through - this picture was the best I could get, but in real life they look much nicer. 

Due to the amount of time these took to make, I will not be selling them in my Etsy store, but I do have a couple of other luminaries for sale there. 

P.S.   Thanks for all of your helpful comments on the previous post. 

Favourite Things Collages

My bird drawings, tea bags, rustic stitching, and my handmade paper are all some of my favourite things.

And that is what I used to make these two collages.

This one was made as a folding collage that can be displayed standing up.

I have used these bird drawings in so many creations lately, but for some reason I have not tired of using them, but have just become more attached to them.

The second collage I left flat so that it can be framed.

I really love the natural colours found in the different tea bags. 

When I only make one cup of tea from the bag, the colour in the bag is stronger then when I use a bag to brew a whole pot of tea.  Also chai tea makes the bags very dark, ginger tea makes for a greenish bag, and berry teas have a pinkish or purplish cast to them. 

Collages are available for sale in my Etsy shop.

   If anyone has any suggestions on  how to increase traffic to an etsy shop I sure would appreciate it.