Anyone would think I liked to draw!

 

Hello (again). So after my last post, I was thrown into more work between two shops and 12 hour days once more. Charity retail is not for the faint hearted, I can tell you! Creative time was limited, my mood worsened (I know, I know, introvert problems, what can I say) and finally…..finally, I have a few days spare.

So I decided, once and for all to get my act together. I collected every pen and pencil I own, and sorted them out, cleared my desk, tore up some scrap paper and cobbled the pages together with cable ties (because the less *perfect* a sketchbook looks, the more inclined I am to play in it. I do have the most lovely embossed leather sketchbook, which I received 3 years ago for Christmas. Needless to say 3 years on, I still haven’t touched it)

My aim is to create/draw/paint/doodle/note take, every day. Just a short time, say 30 mins max. Not creating a work of art (pressure), not for Instagram or Pinterest (because….pressure – although I’ll share some things on here because I like you 🙂 ) I’ll stick random things of the day and just play. Gosh I miss it.

So this is my little set up. Drawing stuff within grabbing distance, paper ready to be scribbled upon, and coffee. Always the coffee. Out of shot is a little portable CD player (old school, yep) so I can immerse myself in music should the mood arise. Also, no interruptions! Happy Days! Hope you are all well. x

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Random bits and bobs

 

I took this photo last night as I nipped out to the shop to get some milk. I thought it was fun, all these balloons just lying around in the street. Heavens knows where they came from!

Anyway, I’m trying to think of some ideas for the charity event that is happening soon in October. More about that later (I have no news, just that all staff need to contribute something to raise money – eek!) Obviously I would like do something creative, but not sure yet what to do. Some ideas I have on my list just now are:

Watercolour doodles:

I did this one way back  using watercolour splatting and drawing around it.

Keyrings:

These keyrings are made from corrugated cardboard, or paper beads that I rolled up and painted.

Bubble Photos:

Bubble photos are great fun, and not too “out there” haha!

I love doing other things, as most of you well know, but some of my stuff is a little bit odd, shall we say……I need to keep it mainstream really. Not that bubble photos are mainstream, but you know what I mean. I also thought about painting stuff and upcycling, so if I find any more items to do that with, I shall give it a go.

Happy Friday! 🙂

 

Upcycled Bread Box!

So I altered another charity shop find…..well it was going in the bin, so I had to rescue it! Had To…..!

This was originally a plain wooden box thing for bread. I stained the wood (with acrylic paint) and glued scrapbook paper onto it. The paper already had a grungy look to it, so I went with it. I liked the aesthetic, so just followed through. On either side I covered two cardboard tubes with paper and glued one end to a point so that anything (paint brushes, etc) I put in, wouldn’t fall out. One the other side I papered over a little box and used that for pencils.

Inside I stained the wood again, and used it to store paints (in the orange pouch), paper, palettes and a jar (for water). I love how the door bit folds open so that I can paint on it like a little table, so cute! So yes, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out – only took a day to do it.

If I find something to upcycle again, I will do a before and after, or even a video, ha!

The Elephant in the Room

I got this elephant from the charity shop where I work as a volunteer (maybe I haven’t said before, but I have been there a month or so now just to keep me busy) and it was a simple white ceramic elephant. I jazzed it up with acrylic paint to make it a little bit funky. (The customers of the shop are so funny – I could write an entire blog about it in itself, but *privacy issues* y’know…..)

I also used the elephant as a way to get my creative “mojo” back on track since I lost it for a while. Its been a busy wee month here, although still no jobs are happening. (I kind of get fed up after a while when nobody even bothers to reply)

Hope all is well out there in blogland. 🙂 Now I have some focus, perhaps posting here will become a bit more frequent!

One more

So I finished the rest of the fluffy wool and made this little guy. 10 inches or thereabouts. Needle felted wool onto cotton. Going to move onto something else tomorrow because I think I have done enough jabbing for now, heh! Times-a-ticking, and there are so many other projects I want to get underway. See, this is why I can never develop a “style” as such, because I am always exploring and experimenting. Which is good, right? Art always changes and reforms into more art……but sometimes I feel like it would be nice to have a recognised *thing* going on. Then the serious moment passes and I’m all about the fun again 😀

 

That look though…..

This is what happens when you decide to try something adventurous in doll making. You get *that* look. I swear, if this little sweetie could talk, ha! Its the hair….I did bad things to the hair.

Lemme explain…..so I was trying to make a doll, and couldn’t decide what to do for the hair. I looked on YouTube, and tried some of the wool/yarn hair tutorials, and nothing looked right on her. Then I discovered quite by accident, that if you actually took a brush to the wool (yarn), it went all fluffy and wispy. Nice. So next thing I know, I’m sitting in a pool of red wispy fluff, looking like some tragic accident has happened, and I couldn’t find a way of attaching the fluff to the head. Infuriating.

Off on a tangent slightly, but related to this post……during my research, I discovered that people use a special needle to jab into these wispy bits of fluff and they make all sorts of pretty things. I haven’t tried needle felting in my life, so I laid the doll aside and went to buy a “special” needle, thinking, well I may as well try to make something with all this red fluff. A nice heart or something.

Yeah…..not quite what I had in mind.

So! I used my special barbed needle (yes it has barbs on it, and yes if you poke yourself it hurts a lot!) and I basically jabbed the red fluff onto the dolls head. And it stays on! I doubt this is what they mean by needle felting, and I daresay I have possibly ruined my needle by jabbing into cloth, but….hey I may have discovered a new thing!

That face though…..honestly, she looks a little bit like Amy Winehouse don’t you think? Poor thing getting jabbed in the head, no wonder she looks a bit fed up!

DIY Fabric printing…..

So! Having got some ideas of what to do with the scrapbook paper from yesterday, I am now working on cards and a book cover. I got to thinking how pretty the paper would look as a fabric, and wondered how to transfer it over.

I headed over to YouTube and Pinterest for ideas, and spend most of the day being lost in in the pretties (!) Many tutorials involved special glue or gels – none of which I have, but there were a few tut’s on using your printer. I balked at that – my printer is old and probably wouldn’t cope with shoving fabric in it, haha!

So I did it anyway…..

What I did was tape some plain white cotton fabric onto some cardboard for stability, and fed that through as “speciality paper” so the printer would just think it was being used effectively! (one has to keep ones techno gadgets happy otherwise they rebel)

Naturally I didn’t take pics of the process because I was too busy hovering nervously over the darn machine, hoping to goodness it would actually pull through ok, and not detect the fact I was using it improperly!

Here are the results of my first go:

 

The scrapbook paper is beneath the fabric that I made it into. I uploaded a picture of the scrapbook paper to the laptop, and printed it off just like normal. The print is larger on the fabric because the photo I took was a close up, not the entire square of paper. (I’m thinking I need to do a show and tell at some point!)

Next I tore up some papers to make a faux patchwork look……this is the paper when it was glued down:

I glued it down then made little stitch marks with a marker pen. And here is the fabric as a result:

Pretty darn cool, huh? (The pic at the top of this post is my icon on fabric too!) One word of caution though – it uses up ink like billy-o, seriously, I’m only doing this experiment and that’s it, haha!) I have no ink left. Plus the ink runs and blurs when wet……I found this out when ironing it and a drop of water spilled out from the iron! Oh well. It was fun. 😀 If you would like a full How To, let me know. I promise it won’t be green (she says realising how green this post is!)

 

Hmmmm….Scrapbook papers

So I was in the poundshop looking at their range of pretty papers when my phone rang. Normally I would never answer it, (nothing interrupts my stationery shopping!) but on this occasion I did answer it – and lo and behold, after the conversation I found myself leaving the checkout, having bought 4 pads of scrapbooking paper! (This is why nothing should be interrupting my stationery shopping!)

Now I am not a scrapbooker. I don’t do cards, or layouts, and don’t have the fancy punches etc required. If I ever need pretty paper for something, I tend to paint my own since its not something I use very often at all. So I’m sitting here wondering what to use them for (btw, is it normally as stiff as cardboard? I tried to make paper beads but its really not that flexible)

I looked at my little characters I was painting and wondered if I could use the paper for that…..so I tried this:

where I drew items of clothing on the paper and cut them out. Kindof like a paper doll idea. The face, hair, legs, and hands (badly drawn hands, heh!) are just paint and coloured pencil. To pull it all together I scribbled round it with black ink pen. Its alright, but….y’know…..its not really my style.

I tried another one

Again, wonky perspective with the PJ’s, but hey…its been a while since I played, haha!

So given that the paper is so stiff, I wondered if anyone out there had any ideas on what to use this stuff for?

P.S. My phone is being left at home on the next stationery mission!

Oh…..

Well it seems that I have been very remiss in my posting here, despite the fact that I got a new laptop! Lemme explain….

I tried to make a video for YouTube, because I thought that chatting on screen would make me oh-so confident (because really I am incredibly shy and introverted), so I made it, and made a thumbnail like this, which I thought was terribly clever!

Then I thought it was really cheesy and horrible and nobody would watch someone playing with scrap paper, and so I deleted it. Even that gleeful look on my face makes me cringe, haha!

So! Having decided that I wasn’t going to be a YouTube star after all, I cleared up all my arty crafty stuff and fixed up my room for making a study of sorts (being a student in August an’ all), then I got all dismayed at not being able to do arty stuff, retrieved all my  materials, and proceeded to organise them into boxes *properly*.

So that’s where I’m at right now. Organising and sorting. I’m thinking I can actually combine the crafting stuff with student life, because I can make stationery, folders, planners, and notebooks! So its a win win all round! Go me and my cheesy grin! 🙂

Egg Head Doll

Hello! I decided to make something different today, rather than paint. I was in the mood for getting messy with fabric but didn’t know what to make – I thought a doll would be safe enough. This doll was made with a styrofoam egg shape, turned upside down and painted. (I think I’m all so very clever for thinking they look like heads!) Pipe cleaners (or chenille sticks, as they are now called) for the body and limbs, wool/thread wrapped all over and some hand dyed fabric for the skirt. I used mohair wool for the hair, and a piece of silky material for the headscarf. As yet she has no face…..I am scared to do a face because I haven’t practised enough on dolls and I don’t want to ruin her! I think she looks fine without one really…..ha!

I love that you can bend the pipe cleaners in any way, so that she can take on different positions. I’m looking at her face now thinking I should have done a second coat of paint. Ah well, the next one – its all about the experimentation. 🙂