Monday, January 26, 2009

piece of art for a change

This is a little piece that caused me no end of frustration. I patchworked the papers for the background, but didnt stretch the water colour paper first, so it buckled and bent in funny ways. I tried everything to straighten it but no joy, so i threw my hands in the air and let it go. The jigsaw pieces were punched out and mounted so they are proud of the base to cast a shadow. Its called Life and is inspired by other peoples work (the colour reproduction in the first image is probably the best)

Crafting to beat the january blues

According to some research published in American Mind magazine, complex manual tasks can alleviate depression and with all the credit crunch doom and gloom around we need as much depression alleviating stuff as possible. here is a summary of the article
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=depressingly-easy
I am ridiculously busy at work at the moment and so dont have the head space for anything complex, so mostly I have been playing with gluegun, glitter and braid (definitely a thing to cheer you up!)
So christmas decorations for 2009!



I know its ridiculously early to make christmas decorations, but I defy anyone not to be cheered up by glitter, beads, braid and random crafting. OK apart from the one where I used glittery lipgloss instead of glitter glue, but I reckon it will dry before next cristmas...right??

Baggy PJ's from fabulous skully fabric.

christmas stocking swap

These are some of the items I sent to my stocking swap partner, from the always wonderful http://www.craftster.com/

The idea of the swap was to make a stocking and to fill it with a mixture of crafted and bought items, As usual I over crafted, I made the stocking big and crammed it full. I am not sure I achieved what I wanted wit the stocking,The christmas tree is made of a fabric that is printed with pine trees, I also added appliqued decorations and parcels, and an inital on the back. Its about 20 inches long

There was a sock monkey and a felt tree decoration inside

Plus a vintage feel,glamorous apron, frilly and satiny, You can see the fabric in the background, some patchwork tablemats, a painted pixie t-shirt and a few other bits and pieces.

My partner said she is obssessed with the colour orange, so I tried to incorporate that as much as possible, without making it look like something that a buddhist monk would get!