Zentangle Postcards

Since I send out postcards to friends and family I recently decided to try making them from scratch. I bought some watercolor paper and then painted some planets. I hit both sides with paint though the side with the address has less. After it dried I cut each page into 4 pages and put them in my book press to flatten. Once that was finished I doodled on them.

Jupiter

 Mars

Fairy Homes

A friend at work made a comment about knowing someone who turns birdhouses into fairy houses. I was secretly obsessed and she didn't even realize it. I had a 3yr old birthday party and needed one for her cousin too and this was so much fun to make.

I plan to do an instructable tutorial on the next one so stay tuned.

At the craft store, not the one in the news recently for having card skimmers stealing debit and pins and including mine, I found some unfinished birdhouses. I pried off the roof and 2 of the walls and added a hinge for an easy opening. You can see the hinge covered by the sticks and flowers. Using wire cutters and pliers I snipped off and pulled out the perch beneath the circular opening and glued the twigs to look like a window.

Someone had been cutting branches in my neighborhood and left them on the sidewalk for the garbage men. I grabbed a bag and scissors and cut off some twigs and kept them for this project (over the winter, it's been in my head for a while). After painting the parts with a couple coats of greens and blues I cut up the twigs into a pile about 5"-7" long apiece.

I had some leftover wool roving from another project and metal wire. I also bought some teeny little silk flowers and pulled them a part. Each twig got a couple small flowers and leaves and were wrapped with either the wool roving or the wire. Afterwards I glued them onto a side at a time and let it dry, repeat with all sides.

The tops are completely removable, I thought about making them latch or hinge but it's not really needed. From the silk flowers I pulled apart the petals and glued/stapled them to the top. Since the plastic centers weren't flat enough to glue down I had to put a dot of yellow into the centers and some buttons. Inside the roofs I glued down stickers.

One was painted blue inside the other greenish. I cut up some scrapbook paper and other stuff to put on the walls. Each house got a tiny table and bed. The legs to both are balsa wood leftovers from other projects and were easy to cut with scissors. When glued down I added a tiny book and key onto the table. Next to the table were 2 small corked vials, one has sparkly beads and the other has watch parts. Also glued down.

The beds were fun. Each one is a rectangle with the same size felt on top and then some muslin on that. More from my stash and I made mini blankets with flowery fabric on more felt glued onto the bed. The pillows are muslin and whip-stitched around and stuffed. More gluing down, I don't want a phone call from someone telling me their kid choked on a tiny pillow.

Both got a small wooden fairy with flower petals wings and a plastic dragon. They were opened last night and the girls loved them.

Maker Faire Inspiration

No I didn't go but I will next year I hope. I did stream it and caught some cool stuff, some way over my head but mostly interesting.

I bought 2 pieces of 1/4" mdf and cut it to be ~ 40"x30". Then taking a metal ruler I drew in lines to designate where I would be adding the (not routed) panels and windows. My wood (that's what she said) wasn't quite the right dimensions for it to be exact and since the panels are larger in height than width I had to adjust some of it, which you will see later on in this post.

This is a close up of the soon to be windows. I also got a 1/8" piece of the same mdf and measured out the windows and panels and then cut them all out with a box knife. There was no way I was going to get anywhere with a circular saw, it was pretty flimsy.

This is a partially finished door. Notice the blue on the underside. I got too excited and painted way too early. Mostly done with both sides I then noticed that the paint was oil based and all of my other paints are acrylic. Crap. Ya know the really cool crackle effect you can use to age painted stuff?  Yeah that's what I was headed towards.

  Back to the project. I poured wood glue over it and then spread it out with some scrap mdf which saved me a foam brush. 5 points to Gryffendor.

Then you place the wood over the glue aligning to the pencil lines. I used a staple to keep it in place until the glue drys like the New Yankee Workshop does but they never mention that for newbies such as myself it shows through. I actually tried removing them from one of the doors and the wood is too soft and thin. I either obliterated the area with the staple or destroyed the edge of the piece. So one door has 'em and the other doesn't.

Panel layer #2. Gluey glue, stapley staple. The left door got a piece of trim on the end and instead of a top panel I put in a 1/4" strips framing the square.

It rained that night and I couldn't paint anything and leave it out to dry so I layed down some tarp and painted one of the doors. The painting took longer than everything else.

I don't know why I didn't take a lot of pictures in between but I painted what I wanted to be highlighted white and some light blue and let it dry, also the windows got white too.

Then I did several  layers of watery acrylic and let each one dry, this look a long ass time. After wards when it was dark enough with just a hint of white peeking through I sanded the parts I'd highlighted, where I wanted it to look worn. I hit everywhere else with the sander just to remove any shine or smoothness.

Inside I also sanded but then stenciled on the angel and the warning. The stencil was printed from word and then the letters were cut out with an exacto knife. After the white dried I painted over it with a few layers of glow in the dark paint. I'm still trying to figure out how to take a picture of it... glowing.... in the dark...

The Police sign was stenciled the same way, then painted over with more glow in the dark.

The windows had many layers of the glow in the dark paint, then watery navy blue, then both mixed. Again and again, I had to keep hauling it into the bathroom to check the glow.

A hedgehog and Who

I saw this post on Craftster.org and was obsessed:

So I e-stalked the artist and bought the pattern from etsy. It's soo teeny! I dilligently bought the crochet hooks, since mine don't go that small and went to work. Ok I can't do it, I'd have to be using thread to crochet with so I went to the smallest size I could handle and made a couple. This is the newest one.

The first attempt has some problem with ahem... scoliosis so I did not take a picture.

Just started project #2!

It is Doctor Who related but I won't say what it is just yet. It cost me an ami octopus. I heard my neighbors in the back patio next door and went to tell them I would be using power tools for 20 minutes and make sure it wouldn't cause [future] problems and offered an octopus to their kid. The husband does crochet and showed me some stuff much better than the octopus. I think I may have to one up them with a hedgehog.

Pretend Author

I just created an ebook through lulu.com and am awaiting Amazon's approval process for a Kindle verison. This was based on the fairy book I made for Eden last year. It's only the first one and it doesn't have even half of the names and descriptions in all of the versions.


Mostly Mean Fairies Lulu.com
Mostly Mean Fairies Amazon.com

Another WIP

I started this quilt a few years ago and then got into some other stuff but haven't forgotten. Except the damn cat ran off with my quilting foot and I know he did because a month ago I saw it someplace weird and put it somewhere and can't remember where.

Macgyver's eyes are eating my soul. Well they would a lot less if I could get some free motion shading done. The fabric is dyed with tea, it made the closest color to skin I could find. The rest, including the mullet, is appliqued. I ordered some super awesome fabric from Spoonflour for the back:

Macgyver Fabric



Works in Progress

I got the reader at graduation to say that my middle name was Chewbacca (M. Ed. thankyouverymuch). This was filmed by my sister on her phone. I can only hope I have inspired her.

Since there's a theme here....

 His hand isn't finished but this was a hard one.

I made 2 of these and gave one to my brother. He asked what it was from :( The pattern comes from Craftster.org user GeekySweatheart who has it embroidered and a free pattern:

Star Wars Embroidery

And just because this is amazing, I came across a Han Solo mini shrine on craftster.org and it is unbelievably awesome:

Han in a Box