Feel Free to Hate Me

All right, it did turn out to be spring after all.  Today is sunny and hot, so I spent the morning in the little nook I've carved out under some big, twisted old honeysuckle bushes. I took my embroidery - a birthday present for my sister and a laundry bag I'm making for my Etsy shop - and sat in the shade and listened to the birds while I worked. Oh yeah.

The view from inside the nook. It really is lovely, cool and shady, and when the wind blows honeysuckle blossoms shower down on you. I'm still picking them out of my hair. Yes, you may hate me.

Some rings I just made, epoxying things onto ring forms. The bee is made from a brass stamping I've had for ages, and the heart locket was directly stolen inspired by one I saw on Pinterest. (Oh Pinterest, you are my very favorite time-suck.)

The cameo one is made from a button I didn't even know I had. Last week I spent a day rummaging around in our old barn, going through a lot of boxes I had stored for years, and it was well worth my time. I found so much stuff I'd forgotten about, like my high school class ring, which I thought I'd lost ages ago. There were two fruitcake tins full of buttons, with a twin sewing machine needle in one. Very nice, since I'd been planning to buy a new one.

I'd also been planning to buy some batiste to make summer slips with, and I found several pieces just the right length, and in peach, cream, and mint green, just the colors I'd wanted. Then a whole box of linen blends and linen weaves and 2 or 3 yards of what I believe is 100% percent linen in black. Such a score! And that's not even counting all the other things I needed/wanted and found, like pillow forms, that rubber-dotted stuff you use on the bottoms of slippers and feety pajamas, still more fabric.... And I didn't even get spider bit.

Rumors of Spring Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

It's almost 1:00PM on May 4th and it's still only 48 degrees. It's been raining since forever and there are pools of standing water in the yard. All the shrubs around are green but the trees are only grudgingly putting out leaves. Can't say I blame them. To brighten things up, here are some pictures I took last month on a rare sunny day.

Violets and lilacs, my favorite flowers.

California poppies in my grandmother's wildflower garden.

Some lovely pink tulips. Amazing how much better they do when they don't get mowed down.

Tulips at the corner of the yard. I'm very pleased at how well these have done, considering they were potted bulbs from Kroger that I saved and replanted. I'm actually going to have to divide them this fall. (Assuming that's when you divide them. I think it is.)

A closeup of the pink ones. I love the triangular shapes they make when they're opening. I did some drawings of them last night. I want to work them up into a design for embroidery or painting.

Easiest Chalkboard Tutorial Ever

I've wanted a nice big blackboard for years now, ever since I saw some forever ago in the Ballard Designs catalog. I even have a frame somewhere I was going to use for it, but it's literally just a frame, no backing or anything. Plus I'm not sure where it is .

I've been seeing tons of cool blackboards and blackboard-painted objects on Pinterest lately, so I thought I'd make a Goodwill excursion and try to find a good-sized frame for cheap. But the other night as I was drifting off to sleep, it occured to me that there's a big stack of old windows in the tobacco barn that I could use for free. Done and done!

Most of the tutorials on the web tell you to to mix something into your paint if you're going to use it for a chalkboard, but I remembered seeing a fabulous, enormous yellow chalkboard in an old issue of Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion. The article said you could use any color of regular matte or satin (I think) latex paint, just not gloss, which seemed like a wonderful idea.

To experiment, I used a small wooden box I'd been meaning to paint anyway, and some navy blue craft acrylic I'd bought on clearance for 50 cents. It worked perfectly once the paint dried and I tried writing on it with chalk. More importantly, it erased, too. OK then.

I went out to the barn, selected a window, knocked off the spiders, cleaned off the dirt, and brought it inside to paint. I just used regular black acrylic craft paint, mixed with a little brown and navy blue so the black wouldn't be so stark, and thinned it slightly with some water. The water wasn't strictly necessary, since a couple of spots needed two coats, but really the paint covered the glass very well. I didn't prime the glass in any way beforehand, so it may flake off at some point, but that's no big deal since it'll be easy enough to touch up.

I think for this the cheaper the paint the better, since you want it to be flat and chalky. The MEHC article suggested rubbing the painted surface lightly with chalk first, and mine did seem to work better after I'd drawn on it and erased it a few times. So, here are my instructions:

1. Find the space or object you want to turn into a chalkboard. (Window, wall, door, flowerpot, wooden object, piece of masonite or foamcore to fit in a frame, etc.) You could try something smooth like glass or ceramic (a jar or a mug), but I don't know how well it would hold up. You'd want to be careful washing it.


2. Clean and/or sand as necessary, making sure surface is grease- or residue-free.


3. Paint with acrylic craft paint, any color you like. Let dry. Add another coat if needed.

That's it!

The weather is finally pretending to be springlike, complete with thunderstorms and tornado watches, and the flowers seem to agree. The trees, however, are having no part of it. None of them have any leaves yet except the willow, and they don't look in any hurry to produce any. Oh well, at least there's daffodils. I bought these bulbs a few years ago, and the package claimed they had pink centers. The first year or two they were a little peach-tinted, if you used your imagination, but now, obviously, they're just yellow. Still pretty though, and they bloom late, so they make the daffodil season last longer.

And the peach trees are blooming now!

Postcards Are Mailed!

I actually finished my postcards for iHannah's postcard swap a couple of days ago (when it was still March, amazingly), but didn't get them sent out until this morning. Still, I'm nearly a week early for the deadline, and they're off into the world, 2 to the Netherlands, 1 to Sweden, 1 to Norway, 1 to Canada, and the rest to various places in the US. I've posted pictures of the individual cards at the DIY Postcard Swap Pool on Flickr.

I hope the recipients like them, because I'm actually pretty pleased with the way they turned out. It was an unusually painless process for me, since I usually stress and obsess way more than necessary over anything I do that people are going to see.

Plus, I finally got to experiment with the rub-on film I bought lord knows how long ago. It can be run through a printer or stamped or drawn on, then used as a regular rub-on. The little flourish above was drawn with a metallic gold colored pencil, which didn't turn out as metallic once it was applied, but otherwise came out well.

The eggs on the card above were done with a stamp I carved, then stamped onto the film and applied. I carved the wren stamp, too, but just stamped it directly on the card. You can see how the film changed the color of the ink slightly, which is fine.

I could have stamped or drawn the eggs and the flourish directly on the cards, but it's good to see how the rub-on film worked, which was really very well. I think it would be better to use for computer images, or on non-flat surfaces where you couldn't conveniently draw or stamp. I don't know how well it would hold up on hard surfaces like glass or ceramics. Maybe if it were sealed with some sort of topcoat.... Fun stuff to play with, though.

Postcard Progress

I've actually been making progress on my postcards for iHanna's Postcard Swap. I've done a little every day, not rushing things or waiting till the last minute, which is completely unlike me. If I'm not careful I may have these sent out this week, barring disaster. Above are some of my early sketches. Here are the final drawings I decided on. I wanted to do them in different styles, so some are pen and ink, some water-soluble graphite pencil (love that!), some very minimalist line drawings, and of course the colorful birds are in watercolor. Oh, there's also a wren card made with some hand-carved stamps, but I didn't take a picture of that one yet. My creative process in action, i.e. spread everything out and see what ends up next to each other.

Cutting out crows.

Starting to put things together. I know most people begin by painting backgrounds, and sometimes I do that too, but but for these I wasn't sure what the birds would end up looking like, so I wanted to do them first and then see what sorts of backgrounds would suit them. Some are simple watercolor washes, stamped or not, some have little paintings or drawings, and a couple will have decorative papers for backings. Then I'll add previously-painted watercolor scraps or stickers or rub-ons, whatever seems appropriate. I would have finished some of them today, but discovered that there was only about two inches left in my glue runner, and some of the thinner papers really need a dry adhesive. At least I'm still ahead of the game so far.

Postcards and Pink Embroidery

I've signed up for the DIY Postcard Swap over at iHanna's blog, which should be interesting. I'm feeling very behind because apparently some people already have their postcards finished, while I'm still working through what mine are going to look like. "Something to do with birds" is about as far as I've gotten. Well, maybe slightly farther than that, since I've cut out the supports for the cards, and painted a couple of them, and drawn some birds, and I already have some previously-painted little scraps of watercolor paper to use, but how they'll end up is anyone's guess. But I'm still mainly at the pile of stuff above. See, there's not even any adhesive-type stuff in the picture yet. I'm very excited to see the postcards I'll be getting in return. I'm sure I'll be thinking, "Damn, why didn't I think of that?" Judging by what I've seen on other people's blogs so far, I'm sure they'll be fabulous and shame me. I finished my pink embroidered scarf last week. I'm pretty pleased with it, though that linen-blend wrinkles if you look at it funny. I had to iron it about 5 times before I finally got around to taking the pictures, because it got obvious and prominent wrinkles every time I touched it. I'd thought about adding some ribbon above and/or below the embroidery, but decided against it. I didn't have the right shade(s) of pink, and it really didn't add anything. Less is, in fact more, most of the time. Since it's supposed to SNOW! tonight, here's some pictures of the apricot tree when it was blooming last week. It was very lovely, but it always blooms too early and then it gets frostbitten. It's never actually had any apricots on it that I can recall. It was actually swarming with bees when I took the picture, but apparently the bees declined to be photographed.

Jimmy Choo By a Nose

Now that the basketball games are over tonight, there's an Australian horse race on Sirius/XM. I can't understand a damn thing the announcer is saying except that a horse named "Jimmy Choo" is winning. I would totally have bet on him. Though I have to ask, who listens to horse races on the radio, except for the Derby if you're not near a tv? And who for the love of heaven listens to Australian horse races unless they're in Australia?

St. Patrick's Day, etc.

Irish soda bread, natch, because you have to make something Irish on St. Patrick's Day and I don't like corned beef. I think it's a law or something. At least I remembered the soda this time. Once I didn't and the result was very...dense. It was a lot like Terry Pratchett's dwarf bread, though it wasn't too bad if you toasted it.

This batch turned out pretty well, I think. It doesn't look like much, but it's one of those things that's impossible to photograph well. I take comfort in the fact that I've never seen a picture of soda bread that looked much better.

Today's thing I've made, my upcycled suede skirt turned purse. 3 of your earth dollars for a brand-new, tags-still-on skirt in the softest chocolate-brown suede from Goodwill, plus another $3 for a pack of leather needles. Cut off the bottom, sew it up, sew up the lining (which was already there), make straps from the cut-off, and sew some pockets to the lining. It took maybe an hour, and that was mainly because there were a lot of layers to sew through when I attached the straps. I think I got the idea from ReadyMade , but I can't seem to find it on there now.

The inside, with the pockets I made from leftovers from my first quilt. I think I should have made them deeper, or something, because they have a tendency to come open and dump everything into the bottom of the purse. It could just be that it's a big ol' squashy bag without much shaping and it kind of collapses onto itself when I set it down. Anyway, it's about time to retire it and bring out or make something a little springier. I'm thinking linen, but then I usually am. It's occurred to me that a child's skirt would also make a good and less enormous bag. I need to get back to Goodwill and see what I can find there.

I realize none of those other photos are actually very photogenic, if you will, so here's something pretty. An empty glass bulb from the Bath & Bodyworks Wallflowers thingy I got for Christmas, washed out and with a ribbon tied around the neck, plus snowdrops from the yard.

Oh, why not?

Right, going to try to start this thing up again. It's just about what I'm capable of after this bout of the Amazonian Death Flu, which seems to have decided to linger on forever. Plus I have a lot of pictures of crap I've made for myself or others & wanted to post somewhere besides Etsy. And then there's always things to complain about.

• Like bloggers in California bemoaning their bumper crops of Meyer lemons. Oh really? What a pity, because to my knowledge I've never even been in the same building with a Meyer lemon. Make some damn marmalade or preserved lemons already. Or send a big box to lemon-starved little children in Kentucky, i.e. me. I'll send you a bushel of mint or some zucchini in a few months.
  

• 
  And there's this, which is useful, because I can never remember which of these symbols is bleach and which is dry clean. But I just noticed the next-to-last symbol in the "dry" column. "Do not dry"? What? Do I have to keep whatever it is wet at all times? I don't think any of my garments say "Store under water". I'm very confused.
  
  

• The latest thing I've been working on. Inspired by this post at ihanna's blog, I decided to do the embroidered squares as a border on a white linen-blend scarf. I've been feeling the pink lately, as you can see from the new background, since it's been so chilly and dreary and grey. Now I just have to get up the gumption to actually finish the scarf, which should really only take about 15 minutes.

I actually like Hanna's better, her colors seem warmer somehow, though maybe it's the pale pink linen she used for her background. It might also be that most of her squares are done in similar stitching. Doing a lot of different stitches seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm a little lukewarm about the finished product. Still, it'll probably look different once I have the whole thing assembled.

I do like a couple of the squares, though. These were just supposed to be sort of spirals, but they ended up looking like little abstract roses.

This one makes me think of a chrysanthemum or zinnia. Little zinnias in bright pinks and oranges would be very cute on something or other.

Blah.

It certainly is January, isn't it? On the plus side, it's gone by fairly fast and there's only five days of it left, and even better, the water's unfrozen! This is very exciting.

I haven't accomplished much this month, partly because I was resting from Christmas and partly due to an inner ear thing that kept me dizzy and nauseated for two weeks. But I'm feeling better and I've been drawing a fair bit again. Here's some things I don't mind too much:

Pen and ink in Moleskine:

Pencil and Neocolor II crayons over acrylic in watercolor sketchbook:

2B pencil on sketch paper. I don't know why I bother ever using a harder lead. It never works out as well for me.

Noel, Noel

It's amazing, but I've actually finished all my Christmas projects except for cutting out and baking one batch of cookies (but the dough is already made), and packing for a couple of weeks in West Kentucky (but I have everything laid out on my bed). In fact, I had all my presents bought and/or made and wrapped by 10:00 AM yesterday. This is completely unheard of, let me tell you. I don't know what I'm supposed to do at 1:00 AM tonight. Maybe get some sleep.

I've been a busy girl these last few weeks. I made all my Christmas cards, in several different styles (I'm not bragging, I'm just sayin'...), and as usual lots of my presents. I have a sore shoulder from embroidering my niece's monogram on a comforter for her, and I burned my arm in two places making miniature mince pies. Of course the oven rack burn on the wrist is understandable, but I managed to slightly blister my right upper arm with the corner of the cookie sheet (and I'm right-handed). That takes talent, folks. Not just anybody can pull that off.

I also made a batch of ornaments for the Cake and Pie and Freshly Blended ornament swap. I got some really cool stuff back, too. Thanks, everybody in my swap group. Here are the ones I made:

The bodies are painted wooden balls (doll heads, actually), and the heads and wings are polymer clay, molded off a porcelain angel head and a rose petal respectively. The legs are twigs from the yard wrapped with brass wire and held in place with hot glue. I just hope the wings survived shipping.

I decorated my little bedroom Christmas tree with my swap ornaments and these clothespin ornaments I made based on these Martha Stewart instructions. I made them 3 or 4 years ago so the photos aren't the greatest, but you get the idea. I especially like the Regency ones.

Now I can relax and enjoy the day. I'm very excited about seeing all my family and Bowling Green friends, and I can't wait for Bokkon Family Christmas. But those cookies aren't baking themselves, so Merry Hannukwanzmas to everyone and be safe and happy.

Procrastination is a Great Motivator

I've been busy making things, but since they're mainly for Christmas I can't post anything yet, lest it be seen. And because I'm perverse like that, I've also been inspired to do some sketching and painting as well. I always feel like making "fine" art when I should be doing something else.

I won't post any of my paintings, since they may turn out to be presents for someone or other, but here are a few pen and ink sketches I made in my Moleskine (yes, I'm one of those dorks.) I kind of like the one of Sally.

Super-Sexy Sewing Machine

Wow, I want this!

I've been toying with the idea of getting a smaller, portable, made-in-at-least-the-second-half-of-the 20th-century sewing machine (unlike my old one which is "probably one of the first electric ones" and seems to be made out of solid lead). Not so much that I've actually checked models or prices, just considering.

I think my search is over. I don't care what it costs, this just looks cool, which is not something you can usually say about sewing machines. (Ok, never.) The only problem? It's not actually in production yet. : (