do-dadding up papier mache easter eggs

finally i am back...what ever crud i had kicked this arty girls butt in a big way and made the beast (meniere's vertigo for those who are new here) cranky.  but i am back. 

i still need to finish the other bunny necklace, but i really wanted to work on something easter-y today.  i really don't have many decorations for easter.  i dunno why.

and yes, the bunny necklace is easter-y....but i just didn't wanna work on it....ok already?

 what vintage decorations  i have i loves......

these bunnies were made with my mom.  16 years ago we were going to get into the craft business, but i had a newborn at the time and it just never....happened.  probably a good thing because when sewing these i wanted to jab the scissors in to my body repeatedly....i just can not do repetition.

and i just hadda put my bunny ears that my daughter recently gave me to good use.

the big bunny is just a few years old...i bought it from at a craft fair a few years back.  to the right is an art doll i made a few years ago....and yes she does have ninnies...... made from polymer clay. 

so i am pretty puny in the decorations department for this holiday.  a few weeks ago when cleaning my studio i came across 4 large and 9 small papier mache eggs.   the other night i came up with an idea for the small ones....and i have to say they turned out just like i imagined them!  squeeeeee!


i decided to work upstairs in the kitchen because (a)  i did not have enough open space on any of the tables in my studio and (b) the weather started out beautiful and i thought it would be great for snapping photos of the creative process.  the weather quickly changed from sunny to cloudy and rainy then back to sunny then back to rainy...and the photos reflect it.

since i did not have enough acrylic paint, i 'borrowed' from our trim stash of creamy off white latex paint. 

and because i am an a1 slob when it comes to painting i made sure the entire kitchen table was covered.  i also wore a junky shirt because the inner kindergartener in me,  still, without thinking, wipes her fingers on her shirt.


i  wore rubber glubs, because i just did my nails the night before and did not want to ruin these beauties.  normally i do not paint my nails very often, and normally my hands are stained with some arty medium.   my daughter found matte polish for me.....loving the matte nail polish, and loving that the sparklies stay sparklyyyyyy.....ok...so where were we......

the 'before' photo....

i wanted the eggs to look antique and well loved.  i played with a couple of different methods of removing just the right amount of paint. 

this one i  painted a light coat of paint and then held the egg for a few minutes.  when i removed my hand it took some of the paint off with it.

the other method was rolling the egg when the paint was slightly tacky on newspaper.  it actually ended up working out best when i crumpled the paper up and then wrapped the egg up in it and removed it. 

a sampling of eggs done both ways....

next step, i stamped them.

to get a bit of exercise in, i took 3 eggs down to my basement studio at a time. 

i love, love, love these.   i remember a bit ago that i have a vintage wire egg basket and i may just transfer them in to that and keep them in the kitchen after easter. 


for the large eggs i decided to try something that has been pinned on pinterest on several occasions.  using elmers glue as a crackle medium.

even before my hubby lost his job 10 months ago i cringed at the cost of the different crackle paints and mediums out there.  well now there is just no way, so needless to say this girl was as happy as i  could possibly be when i saw the tute on pinterst.  

only problem was i did not have enough elmers wood glue, and no white glue...but i had this

this stuff is a bit more pricey than good old elmers, but mixed with a bit of water to give it the consistancy of elmers it worked just fine.    i am a now now now instant gratification kind of girl....ants in my pants kind of girl so there was going to be no waiting until later in the evening to get some elmers. 

the first egg i did not basecoat.  the other 3 i gave basecoat in pink, green, and purple.

i put the glue on with a sponge brush, and gave it a pretty gloppy thick coat....

you need to let the glue dry just enough so that it is tacky, or sticky.  i found that just dry enough was when you could touch it and it would hold your finger print there.  you then want to load your brush with enough paint to make one long stroke if possible.  make sure you paint in one direction, as in from top to bottom of your project.  do not put the paint on too thick, and do not go back and add more paint...unless it is immediate.  the link for the elmers tute is here .

being that instant gratification kinda girl i grabbed the space heater and used it to speed up the process. 

there is one drawback to using this cheater-cheater method

nope, my easter egg did not develope a zit.  but you do need to pop it.....ewww gross.  sorry. 

it is a poofy bubble of air due to the glue and paint becoming a bit too warm.   who knows...maybe if i was to do it even longer it might've burst in to flames....so....if you are antsy like me and choose to use heat to speed up the processing of all of this be careful. 

i still have more schtuff to do to these guys, and should have them done by tomorrow.  i will post pics when i am done, and the pics will be better.


while digging for these eggs in a super huge plastic tub o'stuff i came across about 20 or so of these.  most still unpainted.

cute little buggers aren't they?!  i had forgotten all about them!  so like i said...most still need to be painted.  remember....i am not much of a repetition type of a person.  i figure i will start on them in july or august to put in the nest feathers shop. 

i am self taught at everything i do.  i saw the snowman face on a painting magazine for ghosts and adapted it. 

i am so thankful for donna dewberry.  that woman knows how to teach some painting.  her books are just perfect for someone like me.  learning disabilities and blonde, and i tend to over complicate things...all handicaps!  *snort* 

i am still so proud of what i painted on our 1930's  kitchen table...so proud i'm just gonna show it off again! 

well...that is pretty much all the show-n-tell for now.   if all goes as planned i will be back tomorrow to show off the finished bits of the crackle eggs.

sloppy smooches and squishy hugs to you....

oh clouds, how i love thee

no new art to play show-n-tell with today.

all day i could not get going and figured it was just me dreading being stuffed  down in the basement studio and away from the beautiful weather....and all of the trees in full bloom to fall in love with....wow what a difference a day makes in the bloom-y-ness of it all.

well, i finally forced myself downstairs, sat down in my spinny chair and gorked out till i was nearly drooling in front of my tiny ancient tv for about a half hour.  maybe i was just dreading making bunny necklace number 2.....since all the fun of creating was gone with the first one.....no adventure in it when you know just what you are doing and it is all figured out.

finally it hit me....i feel like total crap-on-a-cracker.  i am icky sick.  i am guessing it is allergies with all of the pretty blooms and all.  once i realized what my problem was i got to work and started on bunny necklace number 2. 

a bit later steph came home and had a crummy day at work and we talked, then i went outside to check on the hubby who was working outside.......and then i saw them!

anyone who has known me for any length of time knows i have a love affair with clouds. 

the sky is nature's canvas.  almost a bit etch-a-sketchy.

i took over 60 photos...they are all so neat, but i am restraining myself and just showing a few.

now look at this one below....do you see it??? do you see the face poking through the clouds....the lips and chin to the left ....see it?

this cloud kept expanding and changing, and eventually turned a bright pink with lightning in the middle.

this is the upper part of that cloud with the lightning in it....neato.

this is probably the culprit causing my ickiness.  but it is so pretty!


nature sometimes is a bit too invasive....

since it did not get cold enough during  the winter, the ants are back in full force.  they love our bathroom.  you know the saying 'ants in your pants' ?  i now know where it comes from...one sits down to.....well you know...and at some point the boogers jump on and five steps out of the bathroom you feel them.

and then the spiders....the other night the hubby and i were snuggling and i spied one on the ceiling.  normally if they are on the floor i scoop them up and put them outside where they belong.  the creepy crawlies get to run in the basement to eat up the other little critters as long as they stay off of me. 
ceiling spiders don't get to experience such luxury....they get death by tissue.

so i screeched, the hubby smooshed...he swears he smooshed.   i trusted him to check the tissue, i  assumed he checked. five minutes later we were snuggling and then i felt 8 tiny legs strolling across my cheek!  eek!  next time i know to ask him to show me the proof!

i am off to crawl in bed and am hoping that i wake up tomorrow feeling unstuffed, unsniffly, unpoofy.

smooches to you all.

bunny necklace.....done

well, as i said in my post earlier today....it was so hard to go down in my studio and stay put.

the weather was gorgeous,  the birds were all singing, and  the trees are blooming even more than last night

last night there were just 2 blooms open on this purple flowering plum...today it was in full bloom. 

it was a perfect day to blow bubbles

these truly are amazing bubbles....i swear you could blow a zillion and a half at a time.  it is so relaxing to blow them and then watch them float.

 after finding every excuse under the sun to stay upstairs and enjoy the beautiful weather, i finally made it downstairs to my studio. 




for the bunny necklace, i  originally started wiring the beads using this expensive and hard to find tool.....the vintage bird cage perch

and decided i did not like the look, so i switched to this tool....a pencil

like the smaller loops better.

both sides done and ready to make the clasp.

and the clasp....

while i was busy with the wire, i waited for a coat of this to dry

on the backsides of these

now to play and figure out how to attach the bunny to the necklace

and ta-daaaaaa....the first one is complete.  one more to assemble.....tomorrow.

i even made 2 more vintage door knob photo holders

and all of that wire work left my already chippy nails looking a bit haggard

i made my nails shiny and new.  not nearly as pretty of a color as what it looked like in the bottle, but that is okay because by this time tomorrow i will need another redo.

hope you had a beautiful day.

smooches to you.

vintage door knob photo holder

sheesh am i having a hard time staying down in my studio.  the weather is beautiful, and this girl is loves hearing the birds chirp and sing.....something i can not do in the basement. 

my dream house has my studio on the third floor with a balcony and french doors and lots of large windows. 

i thought i would play a bit-o-show-n-tell....makes for a good excuse to stay upstairs for awhile anyway!

i first saw this on etsy one day while cruising for inspiration.

finally a use for the couple of vintage door knobs i had picked up years ago on the cheap at an estate sale.

i made it a bit on the tall side,  the other one will be a bit shorter.

ok....i can not put this off any longer....i am heading down to the studio.

i think i found my mojo

i have spent a couple of weeks cleaning and reorganizing my studio, getting rid of things that after years i have not used, but  will in a week or month or so i will find a use for....as always.

my studio still needs some work done, but i have enough room to work and this arty girl is starting to find her oh-so-lost mojo again.

since easter is around the corner i figured what better project to start off with than one that has a bunny.

about a year ago while wandering the bead section of a local artsy fartsy store i came across the beads for this project and knew exactly what i was going to do with them.  one set of beads have flowers printed on them...the other remind me of heads of lettuce or cabbage.


 i needed this guy (and his twin) for the necklaces....... because this is one of those make one to sell and one for meeeee kind of pieces.    these bunnies have been part of our easter decorations for about 20 years. 

even though the bunnies are 20 years old, they did not look old enough so i aged them with a bit of sanding and......

how about that chippy neon pink polish i am sporting....huh?   every time i would look down at my nails it would about blind me!

i using a sponge brush i rubbed a bit of this over the bunnies....

the top bunny has been aged with the distress ink, and the bottom one....not yet. 

later today i will spray a bit of clear coat on it to seal the distress ink. 


the next few steps were very tedious.....i cut 60+ 4" pieces of 18 gauge steel wire.

there are 2 very important tools, besides the clippers, for this job.....

i love my nitrile gloves.  they help keep my hands clean....er, and keep me from getting poked by the wire.  after a messy job like this i give them a good washing with some dish soap and ring them out. 

my safety glasses with built in bi-focals.   this arty girl will be 47 this april, and even though i feel like i could be my 21 year old daughters twin sister, my eyes and their abililty to focus on objects within arms length would beg to differ.  


i use to wear my safety glasses all willy nilly until a few years ago when cutting the tip off of a large sewing needle, about the size of 18 gauge wire,  the chunk hit me dead center in my eyeball.  yipes!  i kept looking at my eyeball all evening expecting to find the chunk imbedded in my eyeball...several hours later i found the quarter inch piece in the lower part of my eye lid.  it took over an hour to get it out of my eye....believe it or not, it is much easier to get an eyelash out of the ole eyeball than a chunk of a needle. 


i now wear my safety glasses 99 % of the time and usually won't even cut a piece of paper without them on.

so after cutting these 60 pieces, which takes some muscle let me tell ya, i then began sanding off the annealing.

i have found that the easiest method for this is to sandwich the wire between 2 sanding blocks.

 i use the super cheapies from harbor freight.

below you can see the difference.  i love the aged look the annealing gives, but it rubs off and it is icky, so if i want to age and darken the steel i rub a bit of novacan black patina on it...which i do not have a picture of.  you can buy it at shops that sell stain glass and soldering schtuff. 

thank goodness i have a tiny t.v. from the dark ages in my studio.  it gave me something to watch while i undertook this boring task.  i am too antsy to sit for too very long doing something like this.  even while engrossed in a movie i had seen a dozen times before.....eagle eye....i still had to get up and fidget in my studio every 15 or 20 pieces. 

by the time i was done with this my shoulders and hands were in cramps, so i decided it was a good time to join the peeps upstairs for the evening....and if i began to feel a bit guilty,  all i had to do was remind myself that my nitrile glubs were-a-drying and i had to wait for them to dry for the next task anyway.


the next task will be to apply a coating of this stuff.....

this will seal the steel and help prevent rusting in case it comes in contact with water.   i have not had much experience with this stuff, just under a year of working with it, but many artists that work with steel use it and swear by it.  

i am hoping by later today i will have completed this step and be well on my way wire wrapping the beads and assembling this piece.

you will have to excuse the blurry-ness of this photo, but it is a bit of a peek of what is to come. 


i am still not sure of  how the bunny will connect to the necklace.



and i am ending this post with a pat on my back, because the beast (meniere's disease vertigo) has been kicking my butt big and bad...i spent two days in bed because i was unable to walk....i was able to do all of this while my world was still spinning and tilting.   i am able to walk at this point, but i kinda look like a drunk trying to walk on a waterbed, and my hands sometimes forget they are attached to my body and i drop things.....alot....which makes the whole entire process of creating slow going  at times.   my fear of becoming an invalid from this disease has given me the strength and determination to push myself beyond what i thought i could do.  i am pretty darn proud of myself.

with that said, and my back patted, i hope to be able to post later this evening with photos of what i have completed.

xo

dipping a toe back in the waters of blogging......

i know, i know i have been gone for quite awhile. 

november and december were a roller coaster ride and this arty girl was playing cheerleader to the hubby and kids while trying to hold on to faith and believe all that i was telling them to get through the holidays with cheer, and when january arrived i was drained and well in need of someone to tell ME everything was going to not just be ok, but wonderful if i could just hang in there, and to hold me tight.

in january our 2 year old computer bit the dust the night i was going to do a blog post.   we were told that it would cost 120.00 to fix it, and i thought how are we going to pay for this....then we were told 170.00....a couple of days later even worse.  the computer was not fixable.  i am thankful for qvc...we now have a new computer and we are making monthly payments....i so luvs my new computer, but hate the next six months of payments.   never, ever, ever, ever again will i own a gateway.  this hp is pretty darn cool.  to log in to sites that require a password i swipe a finger on the scanner.  my right hand index finger is facebook, and my flipper finger is blogger.....squeeeeeee!  and so now if you wanna hack in to my facebook you know which one of my fingers you need.....maybe i should not have given out such classified information.


i have so much to say.  so much to catch up on.   can't wait to share the story of our christmas miracle.   still makes me smile and gives me hope for a beautiful future.....i am in total awe to be truthful.. but  first i am dipping a toe or two back in the waters of blogging.  getting my feet wet and working up to my ankles....and so on.   i still feel a bit blaaaaaaaah and eeeeeeeee with a little waaaaaaa on the side.  not full on crazy, just kinda like what an exposed nerve might feel like after having been sanded on repeatedly.

 the last couple of months..... like a snail that has been poked by stick..... i sought the refuge of my shell,  avoiding even facebook.    thank you from the depths of my heart to all of you who kept on checking on me and poking me and sending me messages and writing on my wall.....you lifted me up and helped make this part of the journey, which like a nasty tasting medicine,  has been hard at times to swallow and keep down.......i am slowly making my way out. 

i just can't seem to hit the publish button with out a bit of show and tell......a post with out photos just is not a post at all....

yesterday:

 my wonderful daughter bought me  some essie sparkkkkkkkkelyyyyy nail polish and a butterfly headband, which i wore all day, even as i cleaned house.....yup cuz i roll that way.  she also brought me a bread co.  cinnamon crunch bagel sliced like biscotti and some honey walnut butter.  there is no photo of that because i ate it all gone!  i am so lucky to have such a wonderful daughter.  i feel so blessed that i have been able to have such a close relationship with my daughter.  my mother and i were never close.  i did not know how to have a mother/daughter relationship...but i am so happy we figured it all out. 

sam and i had a nice talk yesterday....something that has been happening more and more over the past year or so.  he is a quiet, keep to him self kinda guy, so i treasure our talks.  this one was about religion.  as i am growing closer to God, sam is trying to figure out what he believes and how he feels.  i understand him more than he thinks...there are bits of him that remind me of what i was like.  so we talk when he wants to talk and i leave him be most other times...no matter how hard it is, because i know, that like me when i was younger, if i approach him at the wrong time, the wrong way, with information he did not ask for it will only push him away.

and max and i talked and looked through a large bit of his rock collection.  a love we both share.  this morning it was all picked back up and he vacuumed up the dusty mess.  he is such an easy going guy that is going to make an awesome hubby and daddy some day.  he and i are so much alike.  we are goofballs and dorks.  we laugh at the most inappropriate times, especially when i am reprimanding him for his behavior. 

after looking through his collection for a heart rock for his girlfriend, that he is head-over-heals in love with, he stepped outside for a  moment and called me out to see this....

normally we can see jupiter near the moon, but last night there was the moon, and to the left a really really bright shiny planet and to the left of that a smaller bright and shiny planet.  i am not sure what was what but the bright and shiny in the middle was unbelievable.  he and i stared and stared thinking maybe it was a plane...we waited and waited for it to move, but it did not.  

the kids and i have spent a lot of time star gazing over the years, and i am glad we did, and  when most kids mostly don't seem notice or care about the simple little things, these kids of mine have an appreciation for these things. 

oh...one more thing...then i am done for today.....

so this whole etsy thing.   i have been thinking about closing up shop again......the other day i came across this email notification from an etsy peep. 


When curating my collection of weeping plants, I was so happy to find your cherry tree necklace! Curiously, this type of cherry is rarely portrayed in the art that I see. I have always thought these trees so delicate and elegant, and your unique piece truly captures their graceful, wistful beauty. It adds so much to the muted color scheme and the soft, nostalgic mood I was hoping to create with my grouping. So here is the link:
www.etsy.com/treasury/ODA1NDA3MHwyMDIwMDczNDIw/willow-weep-for-me?index=0
I hope you are pleased.
Now that I know you do this unusual and evocative jewelry, I will follow your site. I like to take time with treasuries, often wishing to leave the viewer with a particular feeling. When I am able to include another of your works, I will let you know. Thank you for sharing your gift.
Warm regards,
Diane


thank you God, and thank you Diane for giving me the umph to hang in there and keep going just when i was doubting myself.....again. 

be back soon with some pinterest goodies and a fail......just need to regather photos.

big sloppy smooches and big squishy hugs to you all.