Favorite Projects of 2013

I spent some time last night going through my blog posts from the past year, giving myself a chance for a little retrospection.  I thought it would be fun to collect some "blog favorites" over the year to share with you.  Today, I am highlighting some of my favorite projects from 2013. 

I didn't keep up with my Christmas in [Insert Month Here] series as faithfully as I had hoped, but it did yield a few project favorites that I will be doing again.  Besides finding ways to reuse all those Christmas cards, which I enjoy doing every year, I also really liked the patchwork/collage effect of the paper stockings I made back in September. 

I gave several of my acrylic and ink painted glass Christmas ornaments as gifts this year.  The results are so varied and unexpected that I can see myself making more just to see how they turn out.

Before I learned proper bookbinding techniques at the CREATE art retreat this past summer, I made these adorable little raisin books using electrical tape and rubber bands.  I've made tea box books, too.  My next books will be from soap and butter boxes with some proper stitching, so stay tuned!

One of my very favorite projects this year has been carving my own rubber stamps.  In fact, I am considering a major rubber stamp carving project for this next year, which I'll tell you more about soon!

Some cute little "object stamps" that are perfect for mail art

The silhouette stamps are some of my favorites!

Though the tag and clipboard stamps are right up there, too!

I'd like to try some more houses on a hill to perfect that design a bit.

And, ah, the Dennison label-style stamp!

More house stamps...I can't resist!

I really enjoyed learning a gesso resist technique from a Claudine Hellmuth video that created the designs on these hearts back in February.  I have whole books full of paint techniques I haven't tried; hmm....I may have to work that into my plan for the new year, too!

Scripture journaling was another new project I tried this past year.  It's hard work to translate Bible passages into visual representations!  It is such an effective way to internalize the message of the Scripture, but it takes real discipline to stick with it.

Learning some of the symbols, fonts, drawings and designs associated with Sketchnotes has been a fun part of the project, and applicable to other drawing and note taking projects besides just scripture journaling.

I absolutely loved the birdhouse charms I made from a kit from Heather Alexander last month.  I ended up giving a couple as Christmas gifts, and have several more on my craft desk, half-made.  My husband noticed that the wooden crates our clementines come in have triangular wood pieces that could be trimmed to size for additional roofs.  Reduce, reuse, recycle!





And, of course, throughout the year, my love for collage and mail art continued.  My glue stick and sewing machine continued to work overtime to create postcards for friends and just for fun over the months. 

from "Finally!" post in November

Paper scraps, fabric, postage stamps, rubber stamps, stickers, decorative tapes, buttons, ribbons, photographs, text pages, postcards, musical scores, vintage documents, book illustrations--all were pressed into service for collaged mail art through the year.

from "Feeling Stitchy" post in October

 

from "Stitchy Vintage Collage" post in October

 

from "More Mail Art & a Giveaway Winner" post

from "More Mail Art & a Giveaway Winner" post

And finally, I continued creating Zentangles this year, even taking a workshop on the subject at a local arboretum.  The tangled borders on the postcards below were a great exercise in various tangle designs.  With six or seven Zentangle books on my shelves, I'll be revisiting this calming drawing practice again in 2014!

Going back through my blog posts gave me a chance to review my projects, my excursions, and the swaps and challenges that filled my creative year.  I'll be back with a couple more retrospective posts, and some creative plans for 2014 very soon.

Wishing you all the best for these final days of 2013!

Christmas in October: Glass Ornaments

Yes, it's true:  I'm here with a blog post for my Christmas in [Insert Month Here] series without waiting for the last day of the month, or missing the month altogether!

A long time ago, I watched a crafting video in which a man dripped alcohol inks into clear glass Christmas balls, and then blew the inks around using a can of compressed air.  While I wanted to try the project, I didn't have any alcohol inks at the time, nor did I have a can of air (!), and I wondered if I could just drip craft paints into a similar glass ball ornament and let the different colors spread and blend inside.

Excited by the possibilities, I rushed out to purchase the clear glass Christmas balls--and promptly stored them away for over a year!

Thus, they were prime candidates for this series, which keeps me prepping for Christmas all year long, as well as completing projects that I've had in the back of my mind for months and months and months.

First, I removed the silver part used for hanging at the top of each glass ball.

Then, I played around with color combinations that I wanted to drip inside.  I used mostly basic craft acrylic paint--nothing fancy.  (Perhaps "fancy" would have yielded pretty results more quickly, though.  I think the thinner and more fluid the paint, the more successful your project will be.)

My initial results were really beautiful and exciting.  (Notice my use of old cloth diapers on my craft table; they were burp cloths for my children in their first life, and now indispensable crafting tools!)

I got experimental with metallic champagne, yellow, and black for this one!

And the ornaments look so different from every vantage point.

After patiently watching the craft paint swirl around and cover every internal surface (very meditative, I must say), and letting them drip out a lot of excess paint onto the cloth, I set them aside to dry for awhile.  When I came back to check on them later, this is what I found:

Not exactly the look I was going for!  The paint had separated and created a cracked appearance.  In retrospect, maybe it has a bit of the patina of vintage Shiny Brite ornaments, but I wasn't pleased.

In the spirit of a grand experiment, I spritzed some inks inside, letting them cover over the "cracks" from the inside, and allowing the extra liquid to drain out.  And in the case of several of the ornaments, I dripped more black craft paint inside to create a dramatic background color.

Here are my final results:

And the individual ornaments:

This is my favorite.  It turned out nicely from the beginning, and never required an extra squirt of black paint.  It also makes me laugh that I reached for the red paint to provide a background, and squirted in orange instead, because I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing.  I was surprised by how nice the orange looked with pink and gold!

This looks like some sort of planet with swirling clouds, seen from the vantage point of space.  It has metallic bronze, gold, AND champagne paint in it; I went all out on the color combination.  So dramatic and pretty!

I guess this kind of looks like a planet to me, as well.  Because I chose black as that background color, the ornaments as a group look a bit darker than I might like.  But what do I expect when I go squirting black into almost every one of them!

More dramatic swirls.

I think they would make very pretty Christmas gifts with bows tied to the loop at the top, presented in their own individual gift boxes.  The project was a major process of experimentation, and I took LOTS of time just messing around, watching the colors swirl.  But I declare it a success, and think it is something kids could have fun playing around with, too!

Happy Christmas in October!

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For a list of all my Christmas in [Insert Month Here] posts, click on the label in the left margin of the blog, or visit my last post, and find the other links right at the end.

Christmas in September: Paper Stockings

After a four-month hiatus from my Christmas in [Insert Month Here] series, I am returning to it with a very fun project creating paper Christmas stockings.  These can be used as decorations, as package toppers, or as gift card holders.

The idea comes from Volume 8 of Handcrafted, a Stampington & Company publication from 2012.  I made several changes to Catherine Matthews-Scanlon's techniques:  First, I chose to keep the edges of my stockings straight rather than using pinking shears, simply because I liked the look of it.  Second, I used paper exclusively, rather than bonding fabric to paper using a product called Heat 'n Bond Lite, because I wanted to use what I already had rather than purchasing any new materials.  And finally, I created ribbon loops for hanging the stockings, rather than using wire, because I thought the wire would surely tear my paper creations.

The first thing I did was create a stocking template from white cardstock.  You can use online inspiration for the shape of your stockings; just do a search for "Christmas stocking templates."  I then used the template to cut paper stocking shapes from various old books, including musical scores, a typography book, and, appropriately, an old Christmas publication.

Then the creative and fun part begins:  determining embellishments for the front of the stockings!  I chose ribbons, lace, and buttons as my embellishments, and used a combination of Fabric Fusion, gel medium, and stitching for adhering items into place.  Here are a couple "work-in-progress" shots of my tabletop:

After I have the embellishments in place, I take the front and back of the stocking over to my sewing machine, and stitch around the edges, leaving an opening at the top, of course.

An evening of playtime has given me six fun Christmas stocking creations to use when the holidays roll around.

Now that it's just about October, we all know that Christmas will be here in the blink of an eye!

This project made a delightful mess in my art space.  I thought I would show you the un-retouched mayhem of my table when I finished these six stocking last night:

It only took about five or ten minutes of tidying to return my table to its normal state:  workspace open in the middle, controlled chaos on the outside perimeter:

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Have you gotten your holiday preparations underway?  What is the first thing you try to take care of?  Share with us in the comments.  And take a moment to visit Patty, over at Patty's Pretty Things, who has managed to keep up with her All-Year Holiday preparations much more diligently than I.  She's been posting some wonderful Christmas crafts every month this year!

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To see previous Christmas in [Insert Month Here] posts, check out these links:

January:  Recycling Christmas Cards

February:  Book Ornaments

March:  Book Page Ornaments

April:  Confetti Tags

Christmas in April [Belated!]: Confetti Tags

I have so many Christmas project ideas bookmarked that I knew I would never get to them all unless I started working on them throughout the year.  To that end, I started my Christmas in [Insert Month Here] series.  I had my April project completed early in the month, but the weeks got away from me, and now I am posting my results belatedly, in May.

Oh well, better late than never!

I did another paper project, this time using a tutorial for confetti tags from The Creative Place.  When Ashley, of The Creative Place, creates books and albums to sell in her Etsy shop, she often includes a confetti page, which has such a fun and festive air about it.  I really like the way she converted this idea into making festive confetti tags, which would work for Christmas or any holiday equally well.

She has a detailed step-by-step guide for making them on her site, but I'll just walk you through the basics of what I did.  Check out Ashley's site for her wonderful step-by-step photo directions.

First, I used a hole punch to create confetti in red, green, and multi-colored paper.  You could adjust your colors to suit the holiday.  It would be great to use leftovers from previous projects, as Ashley does, to make this an eco-friendly project!  I stored all the little circles in a resealable plastic bag, though you could put them in a little cup or bowl, too.

I used a manila shipping tag as a template to create two white shipping tags.  You could change the color of the tag to suit the holiday.  I used a circle cutter to create a window in one of the tags.  I left the second tag intact.

Then I created a little pocket for the confetti out of a plastic page protector.  I sewed up three of the sides before filling it with the confetti, and then adhesive to close up the fourth side.  If you don't sew, I imagine you could use adhesive for all four sides.  (For this project, I used a glue runner.)

I used the same glue runner to cover the window tag on one side with sticky.  Then I adhered the confetti pocket behind the window, and then adhered the non-window tag over that.  You have a sandwich:  window tag, confetti pouch, non-window tag.  I had to really use my fingers to squeeze the tags together so there were no gaps once the glue dried.  In some cases I had to trim some edges so the tags were exactly aligned.

Finally, I used that manila shipping tag as a template to know where to punch a hole in the top of my tag, and I added a ribbon for the completed tag.

I think they look festive and fun, and my daughters have already asked me to be sure to put them on their Christmas packages this year!

Christmas in March: Book Page Ornaments

Whew!  Getting my Christmas in March post in just under the wire!

Last month, for Christmas in February, I made book ornaments, and this month's project is a bit similar.  I love using old book pages from cast-off tomes headed for the scrap heap to create something useful and new.  Text is one of the most graphically-interesting designs in my opinion, so the tutorial on Darling Petunia for book page ornaments caught my eye.

The blogger at Darling Petunia (I think her name is Susan, so that's what I'm going to call her!) does a great job troubleshooting the project, showing exactly how not to do it, before presenting the best procedure for good results.  So, while I will show you how I made the ornaments in my own crafting space, I highly recommend that you visit the original post if you plan to make them for yourself!

In my Christmas crafting stash, I found these little gift tag shapes, which I used as stencils for my ornaments.

The first step is to stack up four pages of text and trace the shapes on the top page with a pencil.  I used a French edition of Don Quijote and an English edition of The Scarlet Letter.

Then I drew a line along the middle to use as a guide for my sewing machine stitching.  It is best to make sure that your center line will run straight along a line of text. 

Susan emphasizes the importance of keeping your stitches inside the pencil lines you have drawn, since you will be cutting out the shapes, and do not want to cut your threads.

After you cut out the shapes you drew with pencil lines, you trim your threads on one end but use the threads on the other end to make a loop for hanging.

The final step is fanning out the paper from the four layers of book pages so that you have a nice, dimensional text page ornament for the Christmas tree!

It doesn't take too long to end up with quite a stack of ornaments.  Unfortunately, I don't have a nice place to display them--like on a Christmas tree--out of season, but they will store very flat and compactly until December comes.

Merry Christmas! 

Er...I mean, Happy Easter!