Thursday Crafty Thursday

When the kids and I are having 'craft day' we like to dress up. Actually, I like to dress up, and I drag them into it. I decided that in order to feel more 'artistic' i needed a Creative Headdress...thus bands of feathers galore!

Materials:
Feathers( i bought mine at Hobby Lobby)
Leather Scraps (felt would work just fine)
Sharp scissors or razor

Tutorial-
First I cut bands of leather to fit each of our heads. Then I cut slips to insert the feathers in to. I added an assortment of feathers and then just taped them down on the inside. I now wear this when I'm writing and journaling, and I added acrylic craft paint with a round #10 brush dipped in paint and glitter to our faces for 'war/warrior' paint. We are now ready to conquer any art/craft project ever! We dress up for any and all occasions, art should be a celebration! celebrate every day with a costume, get into character- you'll love it as much as the kiddies!

Saturday Project- Hand Carved Stamps

I've been hand carving stamps for my art journal, and I freaking love it sooo much! Making something with my hands and then being able to replicate it on all types of surfaces is so cool! Lately,  I've been working on one of a kind stationary- greeting cards, postcards, bookmarks, and stamps just work perfectly with them. I love little letters of affirmation, and I get so excited when I receive something in the mail- It's my favorite.

  I'm actually using a woodcarving set and some of my pottery tools to carve into the carving block. I just drew an image on a regular piece of paper, turned it over and scribbled on it- creating a transfer. Then I took an Exacto knife and cut the image down to a more manageable size on the block

 - then just trimmed the bulk of the block away...carefully(!)... with the scoopy tool. When I finished I tapped out all of the crumbs and stamp away! So easy! The block was only 2.97 from Micheal's but you can order it here too.

As you can see from the images, I still lack a little practice at taking my time and getting crisp edges. But that will come the more I carve. And this is the third stamp out of 1 4x4 block! I'll keep at this one and perfect it! I hope this will help you see how easy this is to do, I was so intimidated till I finally tried! Easy Peasy!

Workshop Coming SOON!

My next adventure...an online class! 

Starting in July I'll be offering Journaling Inward- Adventures in Art to help you harness your creative energy and put it on paper! We'll create a journal, practice writing techniques and paint with wild abandon! FIVE weeks of fun for only $60.00...I'll provide PDFs and plenty of photo's as well as a few videos of me in the studio!  I'll have more info for you and a page to sign up next week soon as well as a Flickr and Facebook pages so that we can all chat about our process...

I hope you'll go on this adventure with me!


Edit: I'm crazy busy and battling procrastination like the flu right now! The workshop will most likely start in August...sorry for being so slack human.

stamps!

(ignore the beer...it's my night off...)

I may be slow on the uptake, but I finally figured out how to create stamps without having to carve linoleum for hours! I got these garden 'kneelers' at Big Lots for two bucks and I already had a wood burning tool with different tips (I think I got it at Micheal's or Hobby Lobby a few years back when I was playing with transfers). I put in the smallest cone tip with a point and just free handed into the foam. Then I carved the rest of the foam I didn't want to show up in the stamp with an Exacto. Next, I put some fluid acrylic onto palette paper and rolled a brayer through it to get it even. I then rolled the brayer across the stamp and printed it on paper! Wah-la! (You could also just press the foam into the paint and then onto the paper.) The cheapest doggone stamps evaaahhh!