how to make some art

How to make art for the walls of your house that have been blank for four+ years:

Step 1: Create a workspace.

This may include removing straw hats, football gloves, dead flowers, spare sheets, old mail, a dead camera, and twenty-eight cents from your table.

Correction: twenty-nine cents.

Step 2: Is it decent to go to McDonalds for the sixth day in a row for a sweet tea and small sundae? Answer: If you have to ask, the answer is "no."

Step 3: Try and remember where you put the fabric you bought last October specifically for this project. Find it hidden away in a drawer with the baby ducky fabric you bought for a baby quilt. Realize you have poor follow-through skills.  Also realize you failed to wash and/or even iron the fabric you so lovingly spent eight dollars on last fall. Decide it is nothing a little Downy Wrinkle Releaser can't fix post-project.

Step 4: Windex or clean the table in a vain attempt at removing the glitter and glue left over from last Christmas' cards.

Step 5: Assemble your materials.  Search the house for your staple gun.  Look first in the tool box, as if you've ever put a tool back where it belongs in your life. Search the tool shelf.  Search the basement. Search your craft drawers. Even search the garage, since the one and only time you can recall using it was to staple garden twine to hold up your green beans.  Finally have the presence of mind to search the tool drawer (yes, drawer), and lo! Staple gun.

Large canvas, $20 from Michael's with a coupon; Lantern Bloom by Laura Gunn fabric in Textured Stripe Turquoise, $8ish from Etsy; POS Staple gun.

Step 6: Lay the fabric right-side down on the table. Lay the canvas canvas-side down over the fabric. Pull one side of the fabric up over the back of the canvas. I used the selvage edge so I could line it up with the wood to make sure the fabric was straight.  Staple first in the center of the side, then once on either side of that to hold the fabric down.


Step 7: Begin shaking your staple gun when it stops stapling.  Check that it is not jammed and has staples. Wonder if maybe it just needs more staples, just in case.  Repeat step 5, to search for extra staple, which you just know are in the house somewhere.

Step 8: Call your mom, ask her to bring staples and her staple gun.

Step 9: Talk to your mom for half an hour about the dogs, vacation, the garden, everything but the four foot wide art project on your dining room table.

Step 10: Her staple gun works great. Shoot dirty looks at your POS staple gun, which has now been used twice in its short life.  Finish stapling the first side, then begin stapling the opposite side, pulling the fabric taut. Then staple the remaining two sides.  Staple first in the middle, then move outwards, keeping the fabric tight and without wrinkles.

Step 11: Try to figure out how to wrap the corners.  Staple really close to one end, then fold the fabric over the corner just so, then staple the heck out of it.





Stapling the heck out of it

Step 12: Trim the excess fabric from the canvas. Give to your mom, who is super duper excited to make pillows, aka dog toys, for your couch.


Step 13: Repeat step 5 for frame hangers.  Until they are found inside a shelf/drawer/toolbox, enjoy your new, uhh, shelf art!


Total Cost: Canvas- $20, Fabric- $9, Staples- free = $29
Total Time: Began at 6pm, ran out of staples by 6:30, watched an episode of True Blood until Mom came over, finished around 9:15= 3.25 hours
Actual Time Spent Not Goofing Around: 45 minutes, max.

going to class- jewelry making class

My mom is retired now, so she has a bit more time on her hands nowadays. She treated me to a jewerly making class at a local (to me) crafty place.  We used Art Clay's precious metal silver clay to make some jewelry pieces.  You get a block of silver clay about the size of the lego, and the studio provided all of the tools to finish it.



After seeing a short demo, I gathered my tools- brass pattern plate, utility knife, spacers, some stamps and buttons to make a pattern on the clay. I already had in mind what I wanted to do- a small initial pendant, like you'd see on Etsy.



I ended up making three small initial pendants and one larger pendant with all the clay I had. We only had about 10g and it dries quickly, so I had to move move move to make these. The pendant with the lowercase J got kind of wonky b/c it started drying out and I had to start over. To make these, I took a small ornament shaped cookie cutter and lined it up with a small initial stamp- the kind you'd use in scrapbooking. Stamp, stamp, cut and I was done!  I didn't get too elaborate with my designs because we didn't have a ton of time.



Here is the silver clay drying on a regular old kitchen hotplate. Mom tried to make a free-er form piece. I could tell she wasn't really into the class as soon as the instructor said "let's make something organic," but she gave it the old college try anyway. Her piece is the one with the straw through the bail, which is the part that broke.



After drying on the hotplate, the silver clay is in a "greenware" state. It's still very malleable and can still be shaped, fixed, etc.



After being fired in the studio's kiln for about 15 minutes, the pendants come out white. I took a wire brush to polish them, then tumbled them in stainless steel shot for another 15 minutes. Tada! Instant jewelry.

The Art Clay/PMC silver clay products are kind of expensive- about $16-20 for a 10g brick. I made three small and one medium pendants out of that, with a bit of scrap. But to actually make these (admittedly basic) pieces, it was pretty darn easy. I'll definitely give this another shot.

Oh, and I wore the L piece to work yesterday and everyone totally thought I got it online!

birthday gift for a special monkey

Happy belated birthday to a special friend of mine- Monkey! You remember him, he guest blogged a few months ago? His birthday was last month, and I ordered him a very special gift from teh internets. It arrived last week, and I had to wait until he received it to share (and, uhh, remembered to upload the photos to Flickr and blog at home. My job has banned Blogger at work so it's much less convenient for me to post).


I ordered this adorable ABC Letter Print from Stephanie Fizer on Etsy.com (http://stephaniefizer.etsy.com). She also has each individual letter, too.



It sadly did not have an "M is for Monkey," but it did have an "N is for Narwhal."


And L is for Laura! Can you see the pattern detail on every little letter? How cute!

inspiration

I've been working diligently (mostly) on my house the past few weeks, in anticipation of my sister moving in. I've spent several weekends painting her room, and I'm still not happy with it. It will double as my craft room, and I've been dying to paint it orange. It did not turn out well. Twice. I've also been working on the bathroom, and I'm thisclose to finishing, but I just can't get my act together. I've also been scouring the web for sofas, headboards, and inspiration for my walls. I have a ton of photos to put up, but no "art." Just postcards from my travels and photos of the fam.














"Sprout," redbeandesigns

















"occie ocie 1.1," birdsandwings

and my favorite! "Flora in Blue," meArtDesign