Do I Spy A Wren?

I've never tried my hand at bird watching, so I really don't know. What is that bird? Some kind of wren or sparrow? It's too colorful to be a finch, or so I think and I think its head is too big. Like I said, I don't know what kind of bird this is, but I do know that I like this one a lot. Our dear feathered friend is applied to an old wooden nickel, sealed and on a chain. And for added flair, I attached a piece of old jewelry from my bag of tricks. I'm not sure where I picked up that little cloisonne collection, but it has been given a new life here.

Little Stacks Everywhere

All around my apartment are little arrangements. Preparing for this craft show or, more accurately, my booth at a shopping market, has turned my little crafting life upsidedown. And I'm not kidding when I say there are little collections of projects sitting out everywhere. Above you see a collection of Mexican bingo tiles with fresh coats of a kind of plastic lacquer that will make them hard enough to stand alone on necklaces. More details on that to come.

And here are some vintage/random buttons gathered together. Also awaiting their turn at the chopping block, or so to speak, when they'll be turned into projects. All of them have polished, flat backsides so they are ready for use. Sanding a hundred buttons is like a dream come true. (I've never gotten into sanding; if it could be skipped, it would be.)

And, yep, some more future projects. It's amazing to think that I've made any progress at all, since looking at these pictures reminds me that all I've done is set up more work for myself to do later. Yikes. Two weeks and a trip to Chicago thrown in... I better get busy!

And finally, here's a completed project. Woohoo! But like all the others, perhaps a bit difficult to explain. I'm just happy that there's one thing that I'm done with. I guess I do still have to worry about the packaging... I doubt this post has shed much light on my current bevy of projects, but it should let you know ... colorful, found objects...

Lilly Explosion: Watch for Falling Pink & Green

I mentioned in my post from last May (just before I went to Denmark and the Czech Republic) that I had a new look ready to come right out at ya... And here it is. I decided that the red and gold were lovely and warm, but I was ready to express the Lilly side of life. One day early on in the Spring, I was feeling a little down and I decided to go to my favorite place ever to cheer myself up -- the paper store! This time it was Swoozie's in Preston Center and I found out there that Lilly P now does wrapping paper, paper plates, napkins and plastic cups! Pens and letterhead and picture frames and post it notes. I perhaps went overboard and bought it all, but as the Lilly ad posted on my office wall says, "Too much is never enough."

I got home with my Lilly treasures and decided to give this area of my home a makeover, pink and green and girly. I started with the backdrop. That's definitely wrapping paper on foam board and it makes a great place to pin up treasured post cards. The one of the airplane was sent to me by my most frequent pen pal, a well-traveled Naval Officer. Every time I see that plane I think of where it's going today and how much I'd like to hop on board, assuming that its flying me to Paris or Tahiti or Switzerland or Brazil. Plus the blue sky looks so crisp and inviting.

Next I decided that the lamp needed some doing over to look extra spunky. I spent a while getting the dimensions correct, but I finally was able to cut the right sized paper to cover the original design. And since I'm not sure if this Lilly theme will last forever (come January I might be awfully tired of all the pinks and greens), I decided to make sure that all the updating could eventually be removed without leaving a trace. I used a two-sided tape to attach the paper to the lamp, which, in case you didn't notice, has all kinds of corners and crevices. And from my old bag of tricks, I found the dingle balls to hang from the lamp shade. I feel like Lilly would approve. So useless, so cute, so ridiculous, so Lilly.

And just as a useless hint/trick -- The cord couldn't be hidden with this lamp, you can clearly see where the plug is and there's just no room for it to hide. I used the box that the frame came in with two slits cut in the back as makeshift cord storage. I carefully wound the unneeded bit and curled it into the box, which sits at the bottom of the books stack.

I surrounded the rest of the area with various other Lilly accessories and traded out the doodads so that they'd match, too.

Wallpaper, Drawer Liner, Greeting Card

Howdy folks.
When you are reading this, I'm somewhere in Continental Europe, living it up, seeing the great sites, buying the good stuff, eating the delicacies. Yep, all in all, you should be very jealous of me. Or so I say now as I type this. I think most of you can remember the last time I said something about "you should be jealous because I'm going to Italy." Hint, few people are jealous of that life experience. Knock on wood, that won't happen again. Anyhoo, while I'm out of town, I didn't want to leave you without some crafts so I'm showing you crazy kiddos three things I've been up to of late.
I made a greeting card, as shown above, to accompany a wedding present, also shown above. I bought a stack of blue, turquoise, cerulean, and seafoam cardstock and I have found that it comes in handy all the time. How did I live without a standing stack of cardstock to dip into? I don't know. Also, I think I've blogged about this before -- I bought myself a miniature paper cutter, like the kind that teachers used to have in the teacher's workroom, with a big old blade, capable of cutting off a finger or worse. Mine is a mini version but it is great for cutting straight edges on things. This way I can size the cardstock exactly as needed.
What's special about this project is neither the cardstock nor the paper cutting techniques. No, my friends... What is special about this card is that vintage floral paper. I'm really proud of that. I love that paper. It is actually a little hard for me to part with even a few scraps. It is vintage wallpaper from the 1960s. And its been in the family since it was brand new. After a career as wallpaper, it was reused as drawer liner. And during its career as drawer liner, it was snuck out of its drawer and came home with me to be used for crafting purposes. It was smuggled out of the family farmhouse, up in Collin County. I only have a few scraps of this wallpaper and I generally don't pillage the family's property. After all, the family farmhouse is shared by a lot of people; I wouldn't want to be accused of overstepping the boundaries and taking advantage of communal property, now would I? That's so inconsiderate. All the same though, when I spotted this retro paper (so en vogue right now!), I figured it would be ok to take home one or two drawer's worth of paper squares.

Rose tags, And you'll see this verse a lot

Some lovely ladies at my church asked me to do a calligraphy project for them, so I scripted 36 copies of the same verse (1 John 1:7) on white tags using super-thick charcoaly India ink. What's fun about writing the same sentence 36 times is that I played around with the treatment. As the project went on, the "J" of Jesus got more and more exaggerated because I found that no matter how big I made it, it looked good. Some are in print and others are in cursive. I like to think that as these tags are given away to women who participate in the church retreat weekend, that the Spirit guides the right font to the right person.

Geography Bee

You know what? I never posted a picture of my bedroom with its mapped-out wallpaper. My landlord won't let me paint the walls, so a continuing mission of mine is to decorate the walls with various other ways of completely covering the surfaces without opening a can of paint. Thus, the maps.

I went to a cheapskate's paradise, Half-Priced Books, and found out that old maps cost 25 cents each. Eight dollars and I had enough maps to do two walls. I had lots of fun digging through the map bins looking at the various places I could buy a guide to. Most of the ones in prominent places are maps of some of my favorite global spots -- I've got Texas (home sweet home), Maine (my big adventure state), Italy (well, my love/hate/tragedy story with that place is well documented) and some regional ones too. I've got a map of Louisiana and Arkansas that reminds me of my family's roots. I've got the whole South to remind me to behave like a good Southern lady. One of my prettiest maps is a National Geographic guide to Ireland, colored a lovely Emerald Green. And in a favorite spot, I've got a driving map of Boston, which is funny because Boston is a terrible place to drive in. The best part of this map -- I can point out Fenway Park with my toe.
I picked some maps for their arty qualities, like the map of the Indian Ocean Seafloor. I never knew how beautiful the bottom of the ocean could be!
I used a big collection of shiny golden tacks to put up these maps. I love how they look. Come on over sometime and judge for yourself!

Yay! Wine Crates!

Ok, it was typical Hilary hyperbole when I said I started this project a year ago. I checked the archives here at All the Cool Kids Love to Craft to find out that I started this project in April 2008. However, my inspiration from the DIY blog of Design*Sponge was posted in October 2007. And thus, my enthusiasm that this project has finally been completed isn't ridiculous. Fifteen months of living in an apartment with wine crates lurking in empty corners is a long time. A couple of weeks in one of my crazed all night crafting sprees, I finished wall papering the crates and reassembled them. (The original Design*Sponge post doesn't advocate taking the crate apart to paper it, but that's what I'd advise doing so that there aren't rough spots at the corners. The paper is of a thickness, perhaps unlike cheaper wrapping paper, that is lumpy when folded over. I took each crate apart into three portions, the lid, the four sides and the bottom. I gave the bottom piece to my dad for use in the chiminea pot in my parent's backyard , papered the remaining two portions and reassembled them to create the finished product.) I nailed a pair of picture hangers to the back of each crate. And despite my protests last week about using math to hang things in an orderly fashion, I had to use the old measuring tape, calculator and level to get these crates to line up and fit in a pretty small space. It turns out for these to fit without the bottom one being awkwardly crammed into the TV, I had to hang the top one 3" from the ceiling and 4" from the corner. Wow. That hanging experience was pretty painful. And required more than one try. Whoops. Fitting a power drill that close to the juncture of three walls and that high off the ground forced me to stand one leg on the top rung of the ladder, one leg on the top sill of a window -- safety clearly was abandoned at the wayside for this installation. But after hanging that top one, the rest was smooth sailing. And I think it is mathematically correct. Yay!

I realize that I didn't bother to load up the crates in an artful way before snapping this picture. Honestly, I just wanted the satisfaction (15 months after the dream of this project began) of saying... I'm done. Plus now that these are there, I really don't know what I'm going to do to stock these crates. My mom stopped by to drop off an umbrella (best drop by reason ever) while I was lamenting the emptiness of the crates and she uttered a great Martha pun, "You should just be crateful that you finished them."

And folks, on that note, I'm outta here. Don't forget to vote at the bottom of the page. I'll catch you next time I'm feeling crafty!

Two More Loves

Here are two more of the thoroughly freeing and completely enjoyable Valentines that I made from available (household) materials. These two feature some snippets from a recent Anthropolgie catalogue. I guess there's not too much artistic merit to these other than the fact that I really enjoyed just making things, third grade style. In fact, I've always been a huge fan of the collage. I usually try to come up with really elaborate plots and fancy materials, but just sitting down with a box of markers, a pad of paper, a few catalogues and some glitter -- ultimate crafting enjoyment!
The one at the top was pretty abstract. It involved finger painting and buttons! And glitter and hearts that I made by folding a piece of paper in half and cutting out a heart, just like elementary school students do! In keeping with yesterday's theme of using cliche love sentiments, this one's inside said, "Valentine, you're as cute as a button."
And the bottom one, that's for my mom. When I was a little girl, she used to sing me a song with those lyrics. I thought it was fitting for the heart with a little heart missing.
Oh and sorry that the pictures were fuzzy. I'm starting to think that I might need a new camera...

My Funny Valentine

Well, a holiday can't breeze past this crafter. You know I have to do something to mark these occasions. And this year I wanted to make Valentines completely out of things I already owned. No spending! Not one dime, which reminds me I've added a new label to my label arsenal "Recession? Not Bad For Crafters" because these tight times can be a boon for the creative types. Now if only "homemade" had sounded less shoddy during the era of excess. Skinny wallets mean creative stretching must go on and I'm such a fan! Not to jump atop a fav soap box, but I've always said more credit should go to the creative spender than to the overspender...
And since I used my own paper, glitter and googley eyes, I wasn't going to spoil the "no shopping" spree by purchasing some custom-sized envelopes. I had to make my own out of packing tape and pottery barn catalogues. I even owned the stamps I used to mail these puppies. I'm really proud of this one. It's a joke. And here's the punchline, on the inside it says, "Valentine, you're one hot mama."
Where, you must be asking, did I find such a cartoon character? Well, that's easy. You know those annoying weekly inserts that you get in the mail? Well, I'm zoned with some Mexican meat market whose mascot is that dude. Every week his jocular smile beckons me to buy pound after pound of meats with which I am not familiar. The pictures of cow brains and pigs feet are usually the first postal item to get File 13'ed. Well, not last week. Last week Señior Sausage was cold-cut right out of his advertisement and used as the star of my star Valentine.
Also, if any of my readers are in need of their own Mexican meat merchant men, drop me a line. I can collect one a week from the circular. I'll even throw in a pair of googley eyes... Aww, I'm so sweet.

Found Sketch

Hey there. I was rooting around for something or other the other day and I came across an old sketchbook that I used to lug around when I lived in Maine. I was always finding something that needed to be rendered in charcoal. And I thought I was particularly clever because in addition to toting my sketchbook and charcoals, I brought these little colored pencils so I could add just the tiniest bit of color.

And much to my surprise and amid a zillion landscapes (seascapes to be more precise) and some particularly random character sketches, I drew a generic picture of a baseball player. I can very vividly recall the occasion that inspired me to draw this little guy. A bunch of the guys I worked with at the paper in Maine played ball and I went to one of their games, armed with a beach towel, jug of lemonade and my sketching supplies. This is a pitcher, on the mound, at about the time when he's reading the catcher's signs, before he enters the wind (or the stretch, depending on the circumstances). Well, and Spring Training is just around the corner, so I thought I'd post this tribute to Spring and, well, the greatest game on Earth.



And, hey now, I wanted to show off my sketching skills, too. I never considered myself to be that good at drawing.

It's A Wrap

There you have it! Fifteen pretty little packages wrapped in my homemade wrapping paper. Perhaps you can spot one that you received -- I know that a few of my readers (Katie, Dj Jazzy, Lucy) each have a little-green-tree-festooned box in that picture. I can't tell you how delightful the reactions I got to the paper were. I truly didn't expect it to get any reviews at all. I thought I would make it, use it and feel good on the inside that I did my part to conserve resources and be creative. I didn't dream that the gift recipients would get such a kick out it, too. Lots of people saved the paper. No joke! Uncle Jim, Mrs. Sue Woodward, my dad ... and those are the ones I know about. How touching! To think that my wrapping paper was good enough to save! I watched several of my readers who had the chance to open one of the above boxes try to guess what part of the two phrases they had received. If you recall, the options were, "Once upon a time" and "And they all lived happily ever after. The end."
I really enjoyed adding buttons and bows and various other doodads to each present. The pallet of green and off-white was really easy to work with. Red added such a pop and buttons dressed the packages up and made them very snazzy. And yet, a simple (and heavily hot glued) pine cone kept the paper feeling very natural.
Lots of design magazines and blogs really pushed for a homemade Christmas. And while I didn't have time to home make gifts for everyone on my shopping list, I was pretty excited to have homemade paper. I'm definitely going to be doing something like this again next year. I already have some ideas (and I'm 99% sure I will have forgotten them by next year, but just in case I wrote them on stickies and put them at the top of my Christmas decorations box on the top shelf of my closet). I hate to forget a good crafty idea.

No One But Us And The Indians

I did the Charlotte Collins Thanksgiving Classic invites this year. And above you see the results. Oh and my mom is the RSVP contact. Hi Mom! That was actually lots of fun, writing that up for everyone in the you-wouldn't-believe-it extended family. I think I'm the only spawn of my generation to know who everybody on that list is and how they are related. And as much fun as I had with the invite its self, I was really having a blast with the envelopes. And then I had lots of fun making jpegs of all the envelopes, as you can see. This is a bit ridiculous, I realize, but I liked some of them and wanted to show them off.

Not wanting to reveal these peoples' names and addresses, I tried not to show full envelopes. Well, all except Mary, but she already moved out of that place and now lives in Spain. So if you were trying to track her down or if she is secretly not a part of the family but has indeed been a part of the FBI witness protection program since five or six days after her birth (which is about the time when I first met her), well, you are too late in finding her on Nueces in Austin. So about the above, I'm a big fan of the new "A" and below is the old "A" but it is paired with the new "M."

I don't know why I liked this one so much, but I thought it turned out pleasantly so here it is for you to admire.

The new "A" and "M" on my nana's name.

Christmas Doodle

I drew this snowman out of text. I'm digging the idea. I'm not going to claim that I came up with the idea, but I really got a kick out of creating this snow man and plan to mix this concept with some calligraphy skills and do something really spectacular for next year's Christmas card. Too bad I didn't come up with something like this a few months ago or I could have used it for this year. It's not that exciting of a craft, but I wanted to show it to my lovely readers, anyway.

Tree Saving Tree Wrap

I think I told you last week that I was planning to reuse the scrolls from my office Halloween. You remember, the ones that said, "Once upon a time" and "And they all lived happily ever after. The end." Added together, the scrolls measured 16' long, which will wrap plenty-o-Christmas presents. So I took my kitchen sponge, drew a tree on it, cut out the tree, and stamped little trees all over the scrolls in various greens and silver craft paint. What's great is that I was reusing the paper and I bought the paint when I was a sophomore in high school for a project for Mr. Jensen's English class. It was something artsy that had to do with A Tale Of Two Cities. And here I am a decade later using the same jars of paint for a Christmas project. A little ridiculous. But I'm giving myself a "Conservationist Queen" award for reusing and recycling and being environmentally conscious. Oh and you can't beat a project price of nil. And as long as I'm being super smug. Three cheers for me thinking about Christmas wrap before Christmas is hitting me over the head and is less than a week away. This year I've been getting so far behind in craft projects, I'm proud that I'm done with something Christmasy in November. I've even purchased three presents. Join me in praising myself on so many accounts... Haha. I took a picture of the supplies I needed to do the project. I think its pretty obvious that they are household supplies. Nothing fancy. I loved mixing the green colors across the sponge to produce trippy little striped trees. And they mixed in with the plain jane trees to make quite the forest. I can't wait to wrap presents with it! I love doing projects that require a lot of time, thought, planning, smarts, know how, expensive supplies and all that, but let me just tell you, it is truly liberating to do something as simple as sponge painting. This project required the motor skills of a third grader. Every once in a while, I do a project and think, you know, I could do this again and again. Sponge painting fits that bill. If you are ever in a crafty mood but don't want to have to work very hard to do something satisfying, try something like this. I already have plans for another type of wrapping paper for Christmas. I'm thinking that the next needs to be red and gold to counterbalance this green and silver one. Right?

Two Months Back

Here's the highlight doodle for the month on August. Pretty exciting, huh? Well, it seems that Hilary has finally mastered the art of the swirl. Oh wait, I've been doing swirly things for years. This is just an ultimate manifestation of all things swirly.
I still wanted to show it off though in case you wanted to see more from me, which, of course, you always do.

p.s. Sorry I'm so delightfully sassy this morning.

Three Months Late

Here are the doodles from the month of July. I haven't posted my monthly doodle sets in a while, so I'll try to do that, now that I've got three months worth stockpiled as pdf's on my computer. I realize that posting my doodles verges on narcissistic, but I just feel like my little inked up calendar is such an expression of me. Anyone who knows me or has ever sat through a meeting with me has certainly seen me have at a piece of paper with relentless, wrapped attention to detail. I won't stop doodling until the whole page is covered, even at the expense of the necessary information on the piece of paper... like phone numbers or deadlines...

I'm particularly proud of this "doodle." I'm also forever indebted to my coworker who handles the office supplies catalog who ordered me the most awesome marker set ever. And I'm proud to say that I've actually managed to incorporate the markers into my work on at least a half dozen occasions. Judging by the doodle, you can tell that I was really looking forward to the leg surgery. I was, for what its worth. I was most anxious to have the surgery in the rear-view window instead of always looming on the horizon. And it was as pleasant as could be expected, considering the crux of the operation was to remove a 17-inch nail from my thigh. Delightful, folks. I decided to follow up my two days of intense health care with a tribute to America.

You'll note that throughout the doodles, you can see the Red Sox scores noted on each game day. A particular highlight of my stay in the hospital (besides the fact that a billion loving people came to bring my flowers and tasty food ... always a huge plus) was that the hospital carried a station that aired the Red Sox. So I got to watch my beloved baseball boys whilst doped up on Aunt Beth's brownies and morphine! Talk about a sweet summer...

Finally, I just really liked the way this turned out. And, no, I didn't win the dessert bake off. I'm not even going to claim that I was robbed (though my cupcakes kicked major booty). It was a high calorie day of office fun.

I Knew I Was Saving Those Caps For A Reason

Hey folks, as Paige likes to call me, here's a birthday present I wrapped up and gave to my favorite recently turned 30 pal, Paige. I gave her one of my paintings because she liked it a lot at the time she saw it for the first time and she was fairly excited about receiving the painting. She looked pretty funny walking down Greenville Avenue on a Friday night clutching a piece of painted glass. Oh well. I used this hard-to-define-the-correct-genre wrapping paper that was echoing American farmhouse, sunshine hippie flowy dress, tacky kitchen wallpaper to wrap the piece of glass and I tied it with twine. For those who have ever tried to tie a bow with twine, you know... you are doomed to fail if you are looking to be aesthetically pleasing. So of course this sends me digging around the house for a doo-dad that I can glue into the center of the hot mess to make the whole thing look presentable. And my eyes fell upon my glass jar (thanks Emily!) of bottle caps that I've been collecting (with a lot of help from my dad as I don't really "do" beer) and I saw the perfect solution to two problems:

1. How can I make this present look pretty?
2. What am I ever going to do with these bottle caps?

And I think it looks nice. I got some compliments and that's all I'm ever really going for. You should try it!

Day Off Correspondence

To add to the recent collection of calligraphy posts, here's what I did this morning for some letters I needed to send. I tell you what, I've gotten pretty good at the standard, "Dallas, Texas 752.." because I use it so frequently! And I decided to really roll out the personalized pink stationery that I bought from vistaprint.com (which is cheap yet high quality... I can't say enough good stuff about using them though I'd advise going for the "linen" paper option so that the paper feels really high quality).

Thanks to several practice sessions, I've really gotten comfortable using the colored ink. At first I had a really hard time switching from black to blue or red or gold (the three colors I own besides black) because I felt like you could see differences in color as the amount of ink left in the quill started to dwindle. And that's true -- you can see the color difference, but I've gotten better at knowing when to refill the quill, which is, like, constantly. If I were to write a sentence with my quill with colored ink, it would look like this,

"Geez, d(refill)o you thin(refill)k that t(refill)he So(refill)x have (refill) what it(refill) takes t(refill) to make (refill) it to the (refill) Series (refill) this ye(refill)ar?"

Clearly, it's not an efficient way to write a lengthy amount, but it's all right for addresses... if you are in a patient mood. Luckily for my lady friends to whom the envelopes are addressed, I was in a patient mood this morning.

But now I'm not, I only have so many hours to shop on my day off! Goodness gracious folks, I hope this post will sustain you through the weekend and my trip to NYC.

Calligraphy doodling

I had a couple of minutes of free time on Tuesday to do some calligraphy practice. I tell you what, September for a rabid baseball fan can be so busy. Especially when you insist on going a full weekend of games. More on that later if I can get my act together...

I'm trying to get a little better with this new nib I purchased. I need to spend some time working on my form instead of just free styling all the time. I know that Miss Susan likes to see my every calligraphy creation so I hope this keeps my DJ Jazzy happy for a few minutes.

This weekend finds me flying to New York to catch the 7th to last game ever at Yankee Stadium on Monday between the Yanks and the Chicago White Sox (wrong colored Sox for this fan's taste, but you can't get everything you want). It's overwhelming enough to know I'll be attending the wake of the cathedral of baseball, especially in a down year for the Bronx Bombers. But alas, I've wandered away from the strict confines of my craft blog to boast about my good baseball fortune. The reason I bring this up is that it seems that I won't be getting a chance to do too much crafting over the weekend. I'll see if I can get something done...

Toodles!

Nerd Alert: I've started collecting stamps

If you are lucky enough to have received personal correspondence from me in the last few months, then there's nothing new about this post. But alas, I don't think that my regular readers correspond with those folks I've written to recently, so I'm showing off my new style.
I can't even remember when I read about doing this (or where, but I'm thinking it was in Domino a year ago or so), but as soon as I saw this concept for the first time, I decided I had to become one of these kinds of people--the kind of correspondent who artfully arranges a collection of stamps to letters instead of just slapping one Liberty sticker on the envelope.
And you know what? Stamp collecting is actually a little fun. I haven't crossed a total geek line -- all of my stamps are those that can be purchased online from the US Postal Service. I am not out there on eBay scoping for some long lost collector's edition something or other.
I love that two of my stamps show pitchers--a lovely silver one and a porcelain one, too. It's all so delightfully domestic, well, all except for the mountain goat, but he's a cute little character so I don't mind.
I'm a little nervous that my postman is going to freak out on me at some point though I'm quite sure that all these post office tasks are handled by robots nowadays anyway.
Another reason why you should consider doing this besides the obvious--quick addition keeps the brain alive and active--it's pretty cheap. A whole stack of two-cent stamps costs less than a dollar. If you are interested in doing this, address your envelopes AFTER you've put the stamps on. Otherwise, the envelope may look crowded and less like a miniature work of design art. As long as the point of writing a letter to someone is to be exceptionally thoughtful (hey, if you wanted to be a slacker, you could just email or call in your thank yous), the envelope might as well be an outward sign of your courtesy, right?