Mixed Media

Our telephone company gives us points for being a good customer, bundling our bill, etc. These convert to credit at Amazon-yeah! For the last set, I bought a Sizzix Big Shot to play with.  

 Of course, that's only the beginning. Then you need to buy dies to use on it.  The flourishes are from Tim Holtz and were done with a metallic finish scrapbook paper. The rest are Sizzix and from painted papers.

The gears are from Tim Holtz. I love gears. The left set are from painted papers.  The right are dyed fabric with a fusible on the back. I cut them before removing the backing paper. The negatives from all the pieces would be fun to use too.  I do love machines, gadgets, and all those things.

Lettering

We moved from New York City just before I finished 2nd grade and before the students were taught to write. I started 3rd grade in Salt Lake after the students were taught to write. There was no way I was going to be held back, so I made up my own writing by joining my printed letters.

 

I decided it would be a good idea to take a class. I had tried Caligraphy years ago unsuccessfully. This class at www.joggles.com given by Janet Banks fit the bill. She bases it on your own hand writing. I had never been able to copy any of the alphabets that are traditional and was delighted with this class.

I had a lot of fun with her exercises and should be practicing more.

I even used a poem I wrote.

Mixed Media

I recently completed a class with Christen Brown from www.joggles.com  It was to learn what to do with the cocoons, rods, and silk hankies I seem to need to buy! This small piece is the result-about 12" by 12".

There is both hand and machine stitching on it. The supplies were mostly a kit, but I had some white silk hankies and colored them with Dynaflow paint. It worked very well. Some parts were hard to hand stitch, some weren't depending on the thickness of the area.

Mixed Media

This is a sketchbook page I did for a class where we were to do figures. Like I said, I don't really draw, so I used a magazine photo and surrounded it with dried leaves from my yard.   The background is sprayed and then wet to spread the color around.  The leaves are sure fragile and tend to crumble. I think I should have coated them with medium first.

This is the start of a felted landscape using the some of the gift I won last week. The hills are prefelts . The sky is the background felt with some of the gift roving to create clouds. It had the nicest violet through it just like the shadows can be on clouds. The greens are ones I dyed with food coloring. Now the stitch it like crazy.

Mixed Media

I had this calendar that had the coolest cover with bugs all over it. I like bugs. They are so diverse and interesting, so I decided to recycle the book by removing the pages and rebinding it with blank paper and painted paper.

 I used a real leaf as a mask and sprayed the page then added the silk leaves. The bugs are from a print fabric that I painted with the medium called glass beads. Once it was dry, I cut out the bugs and glued them to the page.

These pages were done by using stencils to put foil glue through-be sure to wash your stencils right away. Once dry I rubbed the foil over them. The photo doesn't show the glitter very well, but it is an easy, fun technique. Remember to use the foil color side up.

Update on Rooster

He's still with us and tolerated by the other one at least for now. He's showing interest in the hens and crowing, so that might not last. He is bigger and looks so much better than when he arrived.