Projects in progress.

Book swap backgrounds

If you don't already know this about me, I must tell you, that I rarely only work on one project at a time. Sometimes one gets put away to work on another but often they just start piling up here and there until I'm forced to clean to have space to work again. It's just how I roll. I don't question it any more. But some days I look around and wonder how the studio got to this point of disarray. I'm sure I couldn't have done it all on my own but there doesn't seem to be anyone else around to blame. That's when I know that I share my space with fairies who keep working on things when I'm out of the studio. They're usually pretty helpful at fixing creative blunders or blocks but they are very messy workers.
Well today is one of those days when I walked in the studio and am sure the fairies have been at it again. First of all above you can see the pages in progress for a book swap that's due in April. If I leave them on the table, every once in a while some new things just happens to them. 

Hmm...where to go from here!

 And then their is the painting projects I started. A few weeks ago while visiting Laura Daub's new studio, across the road I discovered another wonderful new shop, Malenka where Katrina transforms or as she likes to put it 'refreshes' old tired furniture. Well the wheels just started turning and I had to try out this inspiring new paint she sells by Annie Sloan called Chalk paint. First I bought a small jar of Duck Egg to try out on my last Ikea drawer set. This is as far as it's gotten. I'm thinking texture paste and lots of antiquing but you can never be too sure how these thing work out so who knows really.

Oh my that's orange!!

And then I had to go back to get some Barcelona Orange for this bedroom bookshelf and possibly a dresser. I have to admit I'm kind of stuck now with this one. I know it's not done but I haven't decided just how antiqued and/or distressed I want it. Also the dark wax isn't working exactly how I expected to so some experimenting is in order. I think it's going to go back into the room to contemplate on it some more. Also I've run out of time and need to clean the studio for Easter weekend. 

If you have some time this weekend, I highly recommend these wonderful shops in the Britannia area of Ottawa. Go Saturday afternoon and do some doodling with Laura. I went last Saturday and had great fun and learned some new doodling designs.

Have a Great Easter weekend.

Get creative!

Wendy

Wire wrapped chain necklace.

I finished this necklace today. I made the wire wrapped chain a while ago and couldn't decide what I wanted to do with it. So it sat on my desk where I could keep an eye on it or it could keep an eye on me, I'm not sure which. Lately I've had my mind on making multi strand bracelets. Now this chain was too long for that so I thought I'd try a multi-strand necklace without a pendant. Most of my necklaces are all about the pendant and then deciding what to put the pendant on. So this was a change of pace for me. After trying a number of different kinds of strands I didn't end up with as many as I thought I would, but these things happen. After wearing it all day I may just have to keep this for myself.

I noticed that I don't get blogging as much as I'd like to and if you'd like to see more of my day to day happenings and finished work you might want to head over and like my facebook page. I seem to keep up there a little better. Not that I'm going to forget my amazing blogging friends, just more options and I'm all about the options.

Happy Creating.

Wendy

Altered metal drawer set.

 After finishing the next set of drawers, I was again left with the decision of what to use for drawer pulls. I had a few ideas, but  decided on these Tim Holtz faucet knobs. I used black alcohol ink to make them darker. I knew there was a reason I bought that black alcohol ink, it just took me a few years to figure it out! 

 This set has 3 drawers, all the same size. I'm going to be keeping my metal embossing tools in it so it seemed appropriate to use metal for the drawer fronts. 

This is the same technique  I do when teaching this mirror. It's kind of like a puzzle once most of the metal is embossed. It takes me a while to figure out where it all fits together. As I was working on this I thought I would want to do some kind of design on the sides but once the drawers were put in, it didn't seem to need anything else. So here it is all finished.

My next metal embossing workshop is Sunday, April 7 at Laura Daub Studio.

What are you creating this weekend?

Wendy

Hand made stamps.

Yesterday in my Art journaling group we focused on hand made stamps. These ones are made with fun foam cut with dies and mounted on scrap chip board. It doesn't get much easier than this.

We also played around with rubber stamp carving and I just kept going last night. I've seen a few square stamps made so they line up when you stamp them beside each other and have been wanting to do this. So this is my first attempt at it. This was a quick stamping to see what needed to be fixed so I think they'll line up better when I take more time. Hmm the possibilities are endless for these.

Here are a few more I did. I've done a few houses before and wanted another variation on it. The tree was inspired by a small tree stencil that was given to me and the mushroom was inspired by one I saw on Pinterest. I will definitely be doing more trees and mushrooms. Now just to find a few more hours in the day for this.

We didn't actually get much done in our journals but we did have fun and I'm ready to try these out in my journal! 

Please share with me if you've made some stamps. I'd love to see them.

Keep Creating!

Wendy

Procrastination stamping.

   The Tin Man has just about finished renovating the backhall/laundry room, so today we started getting things back into place. Of course we needed to do a little purging and decide what needs to go back into that room or somewhere else. And now that everything is all nice and freshly painted with new flooring I want the little things to look nice too. So as I so often do at this stage, I decided a little crafting make over was in order. I thought of replacing these boxes because they're really just glorified cardboard boxes, but they still do the job and fit well on the shelf. They're just for storage of items we don't need year round.

   Unfortunately I don't have a before photo but you can image what they looked like, just plain cardboard on the sides with some, kinda interesting rope handles on the ends. When they're on the shelf you just see the side, so that's where I did the make over. I used a hand carves stamp that I made after taking Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's Stamp Carving 101 last year. I was originally going to put paper all over the boxes but when I mentioned this to the Tin Man he thought I should paint them. As soon as he said it this stamp popped in my head and I knew that's what I wanted to do. I love it when an idea is that easy. At first I tried to use permanent ink but it didn't give me a very good image because of the softness of the box, so I switched to black acrylic paint which I applied to the stamp a little on the thick side with a sponge brush. The image is still a little hit and miss but I'm happy with it. I then used chalk board paint on the lid edge so we can label them and change it if need be. 
   This is one of the fastest and easiest make overs I've done. Now they're ready to put on the shelf. I guess I should get back at cleaning up!

If you're interested in learning to carve your own stamp check out Julie's course.
Or if you live in the Ottawa area, you can go to the Laura Daub Studio where she teaches stamp carving also.

Happy Creating!

Wendy