Fame (sorta)

After posting Kai's pirate gift to craftster.org it made featured projects. I feel famous.

Craftster Home Page

That's my pirate picture!! Wow. I got texted this by a coworker on the way to work today. I was in such a good mood the whole way I didn't even stress about traffic.

The bestest part of the whole project was Kai telling me my gift was his favorite. It melts the heart.

Kai's Birthday

I started with a paper mache book box and painted it to look like a book. I added a keyhole after. I also used a fan watercolor brush with a teeny bit of metallic gold at a time to create the pages look.


Inside I put put some handmade and some store bought goodies:

I bought this tin online and painted it, then decoupaged the image on top. After it dried I wiped some paint on it and then wiped off the excess (very watery venetian red acrylic).

I put a chain onto the key, it seemed to need it. I got the gold and the eyepatch at a party supply store.



This is an accordion book I made for him. Cardboard was covered in tea-dyed fabric. Then I added the story and pictures:





The map book - I painted a pirate map onto suede. Then I sewed on a backing, the tea fabric, and the labels. Because of the paint I had to fold it in half and clip it overnight so it would stay bent like a book. The ribbon ties perfectly and a button to cover the threadlines over it all.


Also, if you don't know how to make your own fabric printer paper it's pretty easy. Iron your fabric onto parchment paper and cut it to 8 1/2 x 11 inches. I printed off the labels and the compass on my dyed fabric and it came out perfectly.

The pages were also dyed with tea:



This kid is so stinkin' cute!

Rebooking

I bought this book at B&N on clearance for a couple bucks. I replaced the book block with my own, there are about 10 signatures, the first and last pages are scrapbook paper oh so artfully ripped. I've seen some awesome handmade books done in a similar way. I like it. The end.

Pictorial Webster's

Pictorial Webster's: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.

Videos like this make me only want to be a bookmaker.

Mostly Mean Fairies

I had a birthday coming up and wanted to make something cute for the kid. She likes fairies and stuff like that so I bought a craft box and filled it up with stuff for her.

The box: painted and decoupaged, I glued rhinestones with resin and added feet made from polymer clay. I painted the toenails with nail polish.

The bottles contain: starlight (green glitter), Words (page of text shrunk down), flower pollen (yellow beads), Robin Eggs (paper clay eggs painted blue), Earth (dirt), Pocket watch (teeny watch parts), Buttons (paper clay painted purple), Teeth (more paper clay), Yellow Petals (cut up silk flower), Blue Petals (same as yellow), Fairy Dust (white glitter), Gold and Silver (gold and silver painted teeny piece of a paper towel).

All the cord stoppers are superglued in and all bottles are glued to the inside of the box. I don't want her choking on anything just yet. When one of the stoppers kinda broke off at the glue part I cut the rest off the same so they match and it will be even harder for her to get into the bottles.

The book: Mostly Mean Fairies - I started writing cutesy stuff at first but got bored and it's basically a list of douchebag stuff that people do. I posted to complete list on twitter so friends could give me suggestions but no one did. I'm going to make more so if anyone has suggestions: http://twitter.com/mostlymean

There's a lot of pictures so I put them together in Photostory:

I made the book and since I was making one, why not make 3 more, all the same. I gave two to coworkers with kids and am keeping the last one. I'll probably give it away eventually. The pages are made with scrapbook paper and regular paper. I added vintage pictures and more ephemera. Some pages and the cover were rubbed with a couple of ink pads for age and color.

I kept the books with me for about 3 weeks writing in stuff, adding pictures, words and other stuff. I found the silly names by doing a google search for 'silly names' and found actual names that worked http://web.archive.org/web/20070203122818/http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=13791