Total Chaos

 Before starting this post I didn't even look to see what the date of the last post was. 

It's been a long while!

We're preparing for another big move across country. Lots of packing. Many, many cardboard boxes. Let me tell you... selling a house SUCKS!!! Everything has to be packed up and made neat.

I don't DO neat!

I do messy art. Paint splatters and everything. NOPE! says the realtor.... the house must be NEAT!

Grrr...

So the first thing I packed when I caught the first whiff that we might be pulling up stakes was my craft supplies. All of my craft supplies. I rightly figured that I would be far too busy cleaning, packing and repairing things to do any artwork.  Lately while waiting for calls for showings and finding things to dust (yes, the house is so clean I have to go seek out dust, it doesn't just come and laugh at me anymore, it's hiding) I have found myself going out of my mind for a creative outlet.  

Seriously. Really cranky Mommy here lately.

But everything is packed and there are only so many brownies and Scottish shortbread cookies that one can make and give away.

I have easy access to my paints and brushes and I have no shortage of cardboard to paint on but I like all of the little bits and bobs that I do my mark making with and THOSE are all packed away. As well as all of my really cool stencils that I've made over the years. All safe in a box somewhere.

Then I thought, 'Toolboxes! We have tons of little things that I could make paint marks with in one of the four toolboxes out in the garage!'  I was on the phone with Hubs at the time and he can attest to the gleeful cackling every time I found some little thing in one of his toolboxes that would make an interesting paint mark.

I found rubber and plastic washers from a plumbing kit, wire connectors, an un-sharpened carpenter's pencil, the spiral end of a tealight holder and some plumber's putty. There a couple of other things that I just have no idea what they are called. I know what they are used for but their names....not a clue.

I'm working on a little box to send to my aunt for her birthday, which I missed because I've packed away everything including my birthday planner. Grrr...

I have a neat little artbox that my daughter got me for Christmas awhile back that I hadn't started using. The paints are basic and kind of stinky. The oil pastels don't really even rate high enough to be called 'cheap crayons'. They lay down almost no pigment at all so I grabbed a lighter and melted them so they would drip and splatter on the surface and they are fantastic for this application. Gleeful cackling continues.

The tealight holder made spirals that are truly perfect. This one will be a keeper in my art box when we finally start unpacking.

The plumbers putty was a big surprise. I pulled off a chunk and tried using it right away but it was too sticky. I left it out overnight and it dried enough to work with it. I did have an embossing folder handy so I pressed the dried side of the putty into the embossing folder and made a temporary but very usable stamp of a small tropical leaf.  Another keeper for my art tools collection. More gleeful cackling. At this point I might add that I was on the phone with Hubs for around three hours and he did think I was going a little nuts.... but after this many decades together he knows when it is a good and happy kind of nuts.

The rubber washer is easy to identify but the clip I have no idea what it is called. I think it's for bundling small wires but I don't exactly know. I used the rectangle side to stamp with.

Of course there was bubble wrap involved.

All I have to do now is wait for paint to dry and I can fold the box, put in the goodies, print a mailing label and send it off in the mail. 

It is exactly what I needed to do to retain my sanity. Money is really tight. I have to use up all of the food in the freezer and the pantry because the moving company doesn't transport plants or perishables (food). While I am happy that I don't have to go grocery shopping for quite some time, it is limiting the variety of foods that we can have. The freezer is empty, now working on the dry goods. Lots of beans, rice, biscuits and pasta. Thank you Grandma Opal for teaching us all how to cook beans and how to live happily with no money at all. Thank you Mom for teaching me how to bake and improvise with what is available in the pantry. I miss you both terribly.

Living as sparsely as we are right now really does make one grateful for the important things. I'd give away every one of these boxes full of stuff just to have the family all in one place again.  Hoping that will be soon.

In the meantime, gleeful cackling will happen whenever I can manage to have some time to get my painting hands dirty.

Pencil keeper tutorial

I got some new pencils for myself after Christmas and I wanted something safe and portable to keep them in. The tin that they came in is nice but I am way too accident prone to risk dropping and spilling these nice (expensive) pencils all over the floor.

I looked around for something nice to carry them in and found a few that were really amazing, They were also, unfortunately, amazingly expensive. A couple of them were also more expensive than the pencils.

So I decided to do what I always end up doing when I need something and I haven't got anymore money to spend.

I make my own.

First I found my hubby's old Franklin planner that he doesn't use anymore. It has a zipper that closes all the way around and is a ring binder style. I made it clear to hubs that I am borrowing this planner binder in order to create my prototype pencil keeper. If this works out then I will find a zippered binder of my own for a permanent home for my pencils. He's happy that I'm not going to paint it purple or something. It took him a long time way back in the day to find a plain black planner.

This project is basically a set of pages that are made from canvas, painted wildly, with elastic attached and then sewn together to make a double sided page that holds the pencils.

I kind of made this up as I went along, like most things I do.

It looks fabulous and after the test drive over the next two weeks I will refine the design and see what improvements I can make to the pages.

One change that I already know to make is that I will paint the canvas before cutting the pieces down to size. This time I got lucky since I already had to cut the pages down to make them easier to fit inside the zippered binder. I had cut out the fabric first and then gessoed and painted the pages....and then they shrunk. This time it didn't matter but next time I will do the painting first. ;)

I didn't want to pre-wash the canvas because I didn't want the fabric soft. I wanted the pages to remain stiff.

Here are the steps:

The first thing I did was find a page that fit inside the binder the way I wanted my pages to fit. I traced the shape onto my canvas fabric. I didn't have enough in the remnant that I bought ages ago so I grabbed some cotton duck that I had to trace the remaining pages that I needed.

They shrunk at different rates so I do recommend using all of the same fabric. As I said, this is a prototype and considering that my usual style of artwork is kind of messy  the weird shrinkage didn't really bother me much at all.

Once all of the painting was done and dried I got some black 1 inch wide non roll elastic.  I attached a strip at one side and then stitched it down at 3/4" intervals all the way across to the other side.

 You can adjust the stitching intervals based on what size you need for your pencils, pens, markers, knitting needles, whatever.

I did a test strip with some scrap elastic and a scrap of the canvas that was left over from the pieces that I cut out for my pages.  I just sewed the elastic down at random intervals and then measured the space that worked best for the pencils that I use.

Stitch, stitch, stitch. This part was a little tedious. My old workhorse machine has to go in for repairs so I'm using my new machine. It has a button for reverse stitching that goes at a really s...l...o...w....speed.  So this took a long time to do. I stitched forward through the elastic, then went in reverse then lifted up the foot, slid the page over to the next stitching mark and repeated the process. I haven't counted how many times I did this. My neck and shoulders are sore so I guess it was a lot.

Then I pulled all of the loose ends of the thread back to the wrong side of the page and put a dot of white glue at each spot and let it dry.

Then I sewed two pages together.

Trimmed around the edges. I might need a new pair of pinking shears after this job. We'll see how they do on regular fabric after this.

Marked where the holes for the rings in the binder go.

Then I punched the holes one at a time. Again....I'm not going to count how many times I did this. I'm just going to go for an ice pack.  

 I just love my crop-o-dile. It really does punch cleanly through just about anything.

 And here are the pages all finished.  I'm headed on a trip and this little keeper is going to get quite a workout for about 10 days.  I may need to trim the pages down a little bit more but this looks to be a good solution. I may make a few different sizes.  I have a much smaller planner that I've been wanting to use for carrying my artwork around for when I'm waiting somewhere for Tigger Jr to get done with class.

Not to mention that there are a lot of other artists in the family who could use something like this.  I might be really busy for the next few months making these but it was a lot more fun than I was expecting it to be.


I hope this is a reasonably useful tutorial for you. I looked all over the internet for a few days trying to find a tutorial for something like this and found absolutely nothing.  I decided to design my own and write it up. I figured that I couldn't be the only person who would find something like this useful. And you can make more as you need them and add them into your binder.

If you have any questions at all just ask me in comments and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. I may not have internet access for a few days but I will help out as much as I can.  It's currently past my bedtime and I have re-read this whole post several times to make sure it is clear enough. But I am starting to get really tired so if there is a step that needs to be clarified don't be afraid to ask. 

Gel medium and embossing folders

I do not have an embossing machine but I have quite a lot of folders because the designs on the folders look cool and I can get them on sale for about a dollar. Good enough reason, I guess. LOL

I have done some embossing just by rubbing the paper with a popsicle stick over the embossing folder design. Kinda nice but over all it isn't really my thing. I find that the pattern doesn't hold for very long considering the abuse that paper takes when I'm working on my books and journals.

The other day I had a thought about using gel medium on the folders to make textured skins that I can paste on any page and that will hold no matter what I do to the paper.

I am happy to say that my experiment has worked beautifully.

And it was easy.

Beautiful and easy.... I love it when that happens.

Get out your matte gel medium and a popsicle stick (or any old spreading tool that you like to use).

Spread the gel medium on whichever part of the folder design you like. You'll have to pay attention to which part will leave a raised design or sunken design when the medium is removed after it is dry. That part is up to your preferences. I use both sides and then do a lot of random playing around.

Make sure that your gel is smooth on the folder because if it's lumpy on the back of your gel skin it will not lay down right when you adhere it to your project. Sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't. You'll get the hang of it pretty quickly.

At this point you can leave the back open or you can press a spare book page into the gel and then leave it to dry.

This is the part where you leave it for a day or two. There is no rushing the drying time of this much gel medium but I promise you'll have something fun to play with when it's fully set up.

When the medium is completely dry it should just peel right away from your embossing folder.

If you just run your thumbnail under the edge of the dried gel it should peel right up.

This one will look backwards but I still like it.

You can cut it into pieces if you like or use it all in one spot. My first couple of skins were lumpy on the back so I had to use more gel medium to fill in the edges where it met the page. I kind of like the effect. I might do this with the brick wall folder I have and make it look like a damaged plaster and brick wall on the cover of my book.

The edges won't lay down so I just gelled around until it smoothed down to the paper.

The edges are not exactly smoothed down but I kind of like the rough plaster look. I'll keep it.

Once you have your skin glued to your page (and you let it dry again...that pesky TIME thing) then paint and decorate to your heart's content.

I'm still painting on this set of pages in my book but you can see some of the  raised design in the photos.