Black and White Silhouette ATC cards

I decided to make a series of cards in black and white.  My favorite part is making the back round.  I used acrylic paints in gray, white and black and applied them with a brayer.  I wanted to get somewhat of a swirled marble effect.  After the paint was dry, I used a rubber stamp in a fleur design and stamped it all over the page with embossing ink.  I sprinkled it with white embossing powder and heat set it.  I them cut the whole page up into ATC size cards and did the rest of the individual designs.  Most of the shapes are cut from various cartridge on the cricut.

ATC's

I have not posted in a little while because I have not been sewing or working on dolls.  I am totally obsessed with Artist Trading cards.  I have posted a few times about this but, I have been devoting my free time to that lately vs other crafts.  I enjoy working with different mediums and learning more and more about Art.  I find myself gravitating toward Mixed media plus my old love of charcoal.  Here are some of my mixed media works

Vintage advertising of Blush makeup - Mixed Media

The back round is blended Gelato and the foreground is a flower stamp with watercolor pencils

The backround is a mixture of acrylic paints and the foreground is a stamp with paint and some additional hand drawn flowers

Same back round as above with various media for the picture

Watercolor and Ink

Charcoal drawings

I have not been doing any sewing lately but have been having fun working with charcoal.  Today I made this dog picture:

I actually find animals easier to draw than the human face.  So far though, I've only done short hair dogs.  I may tackle a long hair one next!

Old wooden thread spool ornaments

I have picked up and saved old wooden thread spools and finally am able to use some of them up.  I've seen something similar to this on Pinterest so, that inspried me to make my own.  All you need is a wooden spool, paint, decorative paper, ribbon and beads.  They make the cutest ornaments for anyone that loves to sew.

To make, paint the wooden spool with a base coat using a color that matches your decorative paper.  Let that dry and cut your paper to size for the middle section of the spool and glue in place.  Thread together decorative beads.  The top bead (closest to the spool) should be about the size of the opening or a little bigger.  Glue the bead in place by placing the hot glue in the spool hole and putting the bead in place to cover it.  For the top part, put ribbon into the holes of a button and glue the button to the top.  Your done!

You could probably use plastic spools also just make sure your paint will stick to them.

Catnip Toys

Here is what I came up with for some catnip toys.  I'm using small bits of cotton fabric, different ribbons and batting.  I tried an oval shape first which worked fine but, I preferred working with rectangles so, I just cut some out that were about 3 1/2 inches by 4 1/2 inches.  I also played around with some about 1 inch smaller than that.  To help interest the cats, I tried brighter fabrics with lots of ribbons.  In the end, I thought they looked a little like a bug which I think a cat would like.

This summer I grew catnip in a container on the back porch.  It did great!  I would trim it every 2-3 weeks and dry the trimmings.  It would all grow right back and kept growing until it got cold this fall.  Once the catnip was dried, I gave it a medium grinding.  I have a coffee bean grinder that I use only for grinding up herbs.  I like it because it's small and can store easily.  If you don't have catnip on hand, I believe most of the pet stores carry it.

For the cat toy, I put catnip in the middle by sprinkling some out on cotton batting.  I then rolled up the batting and placed it in the toy.  I used regular stuffing to fill it up as needed.  Here are some pictures and the final toys.

Different sized rectangles, you need 2 for each toy

Cotton batting sprinkled with catnip

Catnip rolled up inside

Sewn right sides together catching the tip of the ribbon as I go (3 on each side)

The toy has been sewn, turned and stuffed and now I'm closing up the stuffing opening.  I put 2 ribbons in this area as I sew

Final toys, some have different fabrics on the top and bottom

Christmas Stocking

I finished the Christmas stocking.  I made a couple of changes from the pattern.  I embroidered the name to the top, added the heel and toe appliques and changed up the pattern slightly.  I had exactly 1/2 yard of the Santa material so, in order for that to work, I adjusted the ratio between the top cuff and the stocking itself.  I try to avoid buying more material when I can use what I already have previously purchased.  It's a nice size stocking so, there will be lots of room for Santa to put Christmas goodies.

Next project:  A catnip toy
I grew and dried catnip this summer so, I want to make a toy where you can remove the catnip and replace it with fresh nip every once in awhile.  I'm think of just making something with bits of ribbon on it to add color and interest similar to what you see on those cat fishing toys.  That should be my next posting

I put up the sewing machine for about a week but now I'm ready for my next project.  I'll be starting on a stocking for Christmas.  I'll probably start on that tomorrow and begin with embroidering in the name at the top.  I'll post some pictures of it as I progress.

These last few days, I've gone back to one of my favorite things to do and that is drawing with charcoal pencils.  I made a few ATC cards for trade and plan on doing some more.  When I work with charcoal, I've generally been doing faces so, I thought I would branch out a little.  I'm starting on a dog one now.

Here are my completed ones so far:

Face in the shadows

Hand with red nails

I also worked a little bit on the Santa doll.  When I last blogged about it, I mentioned that I felt I was missing something so, I had my daughter look at it.  She noticed the problem right away.  He needed white trim around the bottom of his shirt.  I also added a traditional black belt in place of the gold cord I had previously.  That did the trick and now he looks like the Santa I was trying to achieve.  It's amazing how small trim pieces can make such a difference in a project.

Happy Crafting - see you soon!