A little craft for the baby's room

First of all, I wanted to say Thanks for the comments on the last post.  I was wondering if anybody would read my post, since I've been posting so intermittently! I'm still lurking around Blogland when I get time :)

So, I have seen a variety of these around on the web and in person, and I've always loved how they looked!  And so easy too - just right for a busy mom of two (like myself!) I decided to make some for the baby's room and I'm so glad I did.  It is a great project that you can stop and start when you need to run off in a different direction all the times, like I do.

I got on Etsy and bought lots of awesome fabric, to get me inspired to drag out my ancient sewing machine.  It worked.  I headed to Michael's and bought these embroidery rings in various sizes and some white felt.  I already had some pink thread so I knew I was ready to get started.

I steamed out the wrinkles in the fabric, and cut out the letters out of the white felt.  After cutting the fabric down to size, I pinned the letter on to the fabric and got to sewing in a zig zag line.  I wanted to use my free motion foot for the sewing machine, but of course, I can't find it after moving.  I guess it's still in a box somewhere.  So I used the regular foot on my machine and for the most part it worked just fine.  The hardest letter to do was the "e" since the whole letter is basically made up of curves :)

After I stitched on the letters, I inserted it into the ring, making sure to get the little tightener knob at the top of the letter.  I then used a glue gun on the back side of the ring and glued down the excess fabric to the inside of the ring.

All done!  I just put a little nail in the wall and hung the tightener on that.  Simple!

Hope everyone is doing well, and I promise to start blogging again more frequently.  The baby is already 7 weeks old!

Happy October!
Kelly

I'm actually still here :)

I wanted you all to know that I am actually still here!!  I have THE MOST unreliable internet connection - ever.  You'd think that I live in the middle of jungle by the trouble I have with my internet.  Yes, we did move out to the country, but we are not so far out that we can't have the luxuries of civilization!  We are using the Verizon MIFI for our internet and it just craps out on me all the time for one reason or another. Not to mention that it's slow as all-get-out!  What I may start doing is taking my laptop to a wifi coffee shop once a week and try to get in a little internet time that way.  It's just that it's a little more difficult with a 5 week old baby.  (Is she really already 5 weeks old???)  You just never know how the baby is going to behave, but I guess that kind of thing will last the rest of my life :) I should get used to it.

In the meantime, I have slowly been working on a text painting, like I blogged about here.  We have a curved wall in our new house by the front door and I've been thinking about what kind of artwork we could hang there.  Because of the curve, a large flat painting wouldn't work, so I've decided to make a painting out of 4 canvas panels that are each 10" x 30".  I'm turning them vertically and will mount them side by side so that they can turn the curve of the wall without too much space behind the canvases.  I like this idea and sure hope it works!  Here's the four canvases lined up on my table.  I've been collaging them with torn brown paper bags, and that took forever!!  I didn't think I'd ever get through that task... And now I've just started putting gesso on them.  You can see I've got two more to go.


While the gesso is wet, I'm stamping or carving texture and words into the wetness.  I'm using narrative words or phrases that go with the meaning of the painting, as well as stamps that fit the concept.  I'll share that meaning with you later :)

So you can see I'm trying to set up a lot of texture and hopefully the next layers of paint and pastels will accentuate these. :)

In other news, I just got word that I'm accepted into my favorite retail show for next March!  Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do about not having a clay studio set up.... Hmmmm...


Hope all of you are doing great!  Until next time~
Kelly

My baby girl has arrived!

I know I've been absent so much lately, but I have a good reason. Finley Kate arrived on August 18 at 6:56 pm weighing 8 lbs 4 oz and sporting a headful of dark hair! Everyone at the hospital laughed because she and I have the same hairdo :) My water broke at 1:50 am, and after laboring all day long, she was delivered by c-section. I cried when I found out I'd need a c-section, but after I saw that sweet little squishy face, I was only happy that she was healthy.


Little Finley is a great baby; sleeps quite well, is a great eater and burps on command. We are adjusting to having two kids in the house, but in general, things are going very well. Not much artwork happening, but I did start another big "text" painting. Hope everyone is having a creative weekend!! I'll be back soon~ Kelly

New Canvas Experiment with Text

Since I am out of a clay studio at the moment, I am having to find other ways to keep me happy!  I've been doing some art journaling, and that has helped, but then I saw a blog post from Alisa Burke one night, and I was inspired to get out of the journal and play with some canvas instead!  My natural inclination when I create is to be rather tight, and controlled, so this inspired me to be loose and free and just have fun, which is what I did.  And it felt GREAT!!  Feel free to let me know what you think of this canvas :)  I did this one for me, as practice, and if I like the results enough, I'm going to make a larger one (with a different phrase) for our new house!

Collaging brown paper bags

So I ordered some canvases, 10" x 30" and turned it on it's side, for a horizontal orientation.  I didn't feel like I wanted the canvas texture, so I decided to collage it.  All my beautiful papers are packed up somewhere, so I attacked the brown paper bags in my pantry :)  I ripped it into pieces and used gel medium to adhere it.  


After that, I wanted to cover it in gesso to make it sort of white again, and I decided to add in some texture in the gesso, just for giggles.

stamping into wet gesso

I purposely did not make it all perfect and pretty at this point.  I was slapping it on!  Next came adding a bit of color, and my Pan Pastels were sitting next to me, so I decided to use those instead of paint.  I have to say, I really love my Pan Pastels!!  I did add a layer of matte medium to set the pastels, so they wouldn't smudge so much.  The pastels just went with the whole idea of this canvas, just having fun and not getting caught up in perfection.  It felt so good, especially since there isn't much control or perfection happening in my life right now anyway!  Working this way just sort of suited my mood at the moment.

adding color and doodles

After adding color, I wanted to doodle late one night, and so I grabbed my PITT pen (a light gray) and just had fun.  I don't always love my doodles, but I was just trying to have a little fun and keep my brain out of it, for once.  Next I had to decide how I wanted to do the text.  Alisa Burke used shoe polish, and after I scoured the town to find the right shoe polish, I decided it was too big for this size canvas.  So I went to Wal-Mart and got some squeeze bottles and decided that I'd do the text in a more fluid, loose way.  When I was feeling brave the next day, I dumped in paint and matte medium, stirred it all up and added the text!  What fun to not worry about drips, spills and such!  Here's where I forgot to take a picture :) 

detail

another detail

I let the canvas sit for a day or two while I thought about it, and then today I added some oil pastels to the corners and some circles of a turquoise pastel.  I outlined the circles in black and white circles, splattered some white and black and called it done!  Now I need to find my varnish and then I'll really be done.  It was a fun, fun thing to try out, and now I'm ready to do a bigger one, if my hubby is okay with it.  :)  The only problem is that the time I spent working on the canvas was time I should have spent unpacking boxes!  Oh well.  Gotta do things to keep me happy, right???  The final color is more golden, rather than lemony like in the photo, and I am pleased with the outcome.

Final Piece, 10" h x 30"w.  The actual color is more golden and less lemon-y yellow.

So that's it.  I hope you all have a creative weekend.  I guess I'll go unpack a box now :)  Either that or organize baby clothes some more, as my due date is tomorrow!!


xoxo
~Kelly

Journal Page with Flowers and Watercolors

I've got another journal page to share with you guys!  I actually started this one over the July 4th holiday, when all I had was pencil and pens.  I sketched out several pages and I'm just getting around to finishing them (well, some of them anyway!)

I had an odd day recently where I found myself with two short windows of free time, and I zipped into a coffee shop and spent some time working on this page.  I didn't finish it that day, but I did make some good progress.  I did this page with micron pens, watercolors, colored pencils, watercolor pencils for the detail on the flowers, distress ink pad, a white sharpie and then Staz On stamp for the date.  I actually decided to leave the page fairly uncluttered, in case I wanted to use this as a background.

I also have started a new sketchbook, and it's one of those Moleskines (which I totally love!!) but it is a different proportion than what I'm used to.  It is LOOOOOONG! I guess it's meant for landscape paintings..


But that's it for now! 
Happy August to everyone!
~Kelly

Journal Page with Pan Pastels

Hi everybody,
I'd like to apologize for the absence from blogland, but things have been totally crazy here.  Trying to settle in to the new house and prepare for this baby, all with limited energy, has been tough.  It hasn't left me with a whole lot of time to blog, and even less for creativity.  But that's okay, I am still journaling when I can, and I wanted to share a page with you that I finished a couple of weeks ago. 

I tried a new technique here - I had recently bought some black gesso and wanted to play with pan pastels over it.  I liked the results, but unfortunately, the fixative I sprayed over it darkened the pastels so much!!  I think that's my fault though, I think I put too heavy a coat of the fixative on the page.  After I did this page, I made a birthday card and used less fixative, and it seemed to help. :)


I anticipate more blogging breaks when this baby comes (less than 2 weeks to the due date!)  but I'll check in when I can.  I'm still reading all of my favorite blogs, and thank goodness for all of you guys - it makes me feel connected to the art world, even though I'm not doing much right now!


Take care everyone!
~Kelly

I've been Crazy Busy

Hi there!  I've been crazy busy - moving out of one house, flipping it to make it a beach rental, trying to get settled in our new house, had company for a week, and on top of all that, I couldn't get my computer to play nicely with our new wireless set up at the new house!  Not to mention being uber-pregnant and trying not to overdo it and get ready for baby, all at the same time.  Closing in on 36 weeks pregnant and feeling every bit of it :) 


But seriously, as crazy as things have been, I'm feeling pretty good about things.  I have actually done 3 or 4 sketches (but they're not ready to share here), and I certainly haven't been doing any clay.  I knew there would be some downtime as we traveled through this nutty time of transition.  I'll get back to it soon, though, because one of my galleries has been selling the work and will need replacements soon!


In the meantime, now that I am back online, I have been reading blogs again, and Tara Gentile had a great motivational post that fired me up.  I wanted to share that with you. and I hope that it gives you a little boost too! Check her out.

 Hope everyone is well, and I am so happy to be back online, I can't even begin to tell you!  It makes me feel like life is returning to a manageable chaos :)

~Kelly