I used my brand new phone to take the picture of today’s project.
Only one more day of August.
I think I’ll also list some larger pads (5.5×8.5″) just because I’m having fun padding :)
I finished the piece I started for day 12, which I was going to post and call day thirteen (because it did take me two days) but my sister thinks that’s cheating. This is Circle Series No. 15, you can see the whole series here.
Here you can see exactly why it took me another day. I dyed cotton string to go with the piece and hand-stitched the last circle. This concludes day 12.
Which brings us up to Day Thirteen. I created Circle Series No. 16.
and a detail shot
For two weeks I’ve planned on participating in Illustration Friday. After two weeks, and two words (star gazing and atmosphere), I came up with and created this piece inspired by both words. I’m not submitting it, but hopefully I will be able to create something and participate next Friday.
I’ve actually been working on this yoyo zipper clutch in bits and pieces, here and there, over the last several weeks. Most of the work went into piecing the yoyos, as you can probably see. The zipper pouch is complete, I just need to anchor the yoyos to the pouch itself.
When working on yoyo’s I love picking fabrics that have super tiny patterns, and I found this excellent retro reproduction fabric at a local quilt shop. I love that I was able to find a zipper in just the exact color I wanted, which replicated the color in the fabric. I wanted more of a pale orange, sherbet color, for the background, in the pouch itself, but I just can’t find a good selection and variety of solid fabrics locally. It’s either patterned or the 10 standard colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, brown, gray and white) and that’s it. Forget about finding anything as fancy as chartreuse or teal, as if they were some extraordinary, hard to come by, colors. I could probably find the colors I want online, but when I buy, I usually only buy half a yard here and half a yard there. It’s not really worth it to buy online if I’ll have to pay for shipping, And there’s always the fear that the color on the screen is not the same color as what arrives in the mail.
I’m thrilled at the way this pouch looks and I’ve already cut out fabric and started working on my second pouch. I’ll post better pictures once it’s completely finished. With any luck, I’ll be posting some of these to my etsy store soon.
Immediately I was inspired and filled with energy to create. The original and unfinished box is pictured above. Actually it probably had been stained, but I painted it white, cut a piece of felt for the inside and created the collage/mixed media piece to go on the lid. I plan on giving it a glossy resin coat over the image when I have enough pieces to make mixing the resin worth it. I bought a bunch of these small boxes so you will probably be seeing more.
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Completely unrelated, check out this tutorial on Design Sponge for making a beautiful chandelier. I think I’ve admired similar ones in stores before, but now I think I must create one for myself.
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Have a good weekend!
I love stripes, that’s a given, so for my first bag I wanted a simple pattern of fat horizontal stripes. I wanted the image area to be pretty loose, look handmade, and PENCIL marks make up the pattern. My hopes are that, like my shoes, people have to look again because they are surprised how much like pencil it looks…only to be informed that it is indeed pencil. I was so pleased with my shoes because the techniques I used resulted in a very permanent mark, and the pencil never smeared or wore away and still look great to this day, just more worn in.
I love how the finished bag looks. It was one of those things where I had the vision, but while I worked on it I kept changing my mind, “I’ll post in my etsy shop.” then a few minutes later “No, I love it too much, and it’s SO ME. I’m gonna keep it for myself.” and lastly “I shouldn’t be selfish, I should give it as a gift to so-and-so.” I prewashed it before doing this, but I think I will wash it one more time before deciding, just in case it doesn’t like going through the washer.”
I apologize for the pictures and colors being kind of wonky, but this bag took me over 3 hours and I began it after work, which left me no daylight once I was complete.
For Day Two I made a small handful of mini books. I’ve been wanting to make books like these for a very-very long time. I always carry around those mini moleskine cahiers, and these are my answer, or should I say version, of the moleskine cahier. Each book is 4.5×5″ roughly.
At work we get our printing plates in big boxes, and each box always has many large sheets of this flat cardboard strictly for packaging and serve no other purpose. I often pick up a stack to use for various things and one of the projects I’ve been wanting to do for a long time was to use it for book covers. Each book is staple bound with an industrial commercial stapler (using metal wire, rather than precut staples).
For the inside pages I gathered a variety of papers from my personal collection, similar to my handbound journals. They might have watercolor paper, graph paper, lined paper, linen paper, marbled paper, even paper doilies. I am in serious love with these books right now. If I could, I would make a living constructing and selling these books and I don’t think I would ever get tired. All the different papers, all the different alterations to the covers, all the whimsical additions. Once again, similar to my grass journals, I think it comes down to my obsession with school supplies and the ultimate design in notebooks, back from when I was a kid.
Each book is entirely unique with different individual special touches. Each book also has its very own rubber-band to keep it shut tight. I think these books would be perfect for the creative type who loves to draw, sketch, doodle, write, journal, scrap, etc. And I will be adding them to my etsy shop later today, so keep your eye out.
For my first creation of the month I made this zipper pouch for my sister. It’s actually part of her very belated birthday present (her birthday’s in May). Earlier this year our Aunt (hi Aunt Susan!) took us to a fabulous quilt shop (Quilter’s Heaven) where they had several amazing fabrics that looked like outer space. I bought a couple and my sister said. “Great, you can make me something with that.” The only thing is, I’m not sure if it was this space fabric or another one that I bought, so I might be making another zipper pouch soon. That will be perfectly fine, because I’ll just add the other one to my etsy shop.
I bought the orange zipper specifically for my sister because that is her favorite color and I thought would be a perfect contrast to the navy blue, as well as bring out the small touches of orange that already exist in the fabric. When I was done I felt like it still needed something so I made three fabric buttons to go on the front. Now I think it looks pretty rad.
Oh, and as usual, I used this tutorial, on skiptomylou, to make the pouch. I really should print that pattern out, because God forbid if it were to ever be taken down, I’d be lost without it. It’s such a simple concept, but every time I make a zippered pouch I have to look it up and make sure I’m doing it correct, step by step.
In the wee hours of this morning, Rosa updated her twitter to invite others to create something every day for the month of August. In an email she reminded me of my challenge from last year where I also invited others to create something everyday. Last year during August I created a new piece of mixed media artwork on a 9×9″ piece of watercolor paper everyday (M-F) and had quite a bit of fun in the process. Talking to my best friend on the phone earlier today, she inquired if I was up to the task, and reminded me that I did some nice work last year. I decided, yes, I would try to create something each day in August (M-F). But, this year I think I will do a variety of things. I have a list going of all sorts of things I want to do.
Last month (July) I barely stepped foot into my studio. If you look above at the before you probably can sympathize as to why I couldn’t cross any of my things off my list last month. So, to start the month fresh, with a nice new work space, I’ve cleaned up my drawing table, so I could actually work at it, imagine that! Hopefully with the challenge and the more organized work space I can get the ball rolling again.
Once again, I encourage everyone else to try to create something new every day for the month and share it on your blogs/flickr/twitter/facebook/etc. It need not be a large daily commitment. I’m sure there will be some days in there when I make a pin-back button and call it a day. You might just jot down a quick sketch everyday, or perhaps you have a larger project going and you can share your progress daily. If you decide to participate, please comment and let me know and I’ll share your link.
Thanks for the challenge, Rosa! Here we go!
