ICAD Cards and Painted Fabric Swatch

Okay. So I have decided that, today, I really want to share with you guys my ICAD project. I have a total of four cards to present to you today; today's card is going to have to wait until another day. I can't believe that I am honestly almost at the end of this challenge. It's been crazy. But I've enjoyed it immensely. So let's get started, shall we?

The first card that I would like to show you is composed of many layers of paint, stamping and collage. This feels very much my style, and I love the way that it turned out. I thought that it looked okay before I added the flowers for the stamping, but after that, I loved it. And the collage just added the perfect touch, in my personal opinion.

The next card that I would like to share with you is kind of different than the work that I normally do when you think about the colors. But I do like it. I can't even remember how I made this card exactly, but I do know that there were a lot of layers involved. I didn't like how some of them were turning out, and so I added more to it. And, eventually, I got myself to a place where I was comfortable stopping.

This card was extremely simple. All I did was rub a couple of ink pads onto the background, then wet it down with water to give it an effect that was almost reminiscent of watercolor. I added the stamping with a foam stamp and acrylic paint (seems to be my signature) and then added the words. And that was that.

The final ICAD card that I want to share with you guys today is sort  of interesting in comparison to the rest of the cards. It looks okay in the picture, but I don't know if I'm all that fond of it. All of the colors got extremely mucky and they all mixed together to create one shade. But the stamping on top sort of saved it for me. 

And that's it for the ICADS.

However, I do have something else to share with you guys today. This is a swatch of painted fabric that I was working on. I saw something on pinterest today (actually it was many months ago, but I decided to do something about it today) that was actually a dress that was created from hand painted fabric. I got to thinking, and realized that it would make a really cool homecoming or prom dress. Even though I'm not big into dresses or getting all dressed up for that sort of thing, if I made the dress myself, it might be a little better, since I can make it in such a way that I would be comfortable, and not have to worry about the top being too low, or the skirt being too high, or both at the same time.

Here's a bit of a close up of the texture. I really like the way that this piece turned out. Honestly, the whole thing was a bit of a test. I was just experimenting with painting on fabric. And I think that there will probably be a lot more experimentation before I take on a dress. But a nice homecoming dress might be in the works. Might being the key word, of course. But it would be cool to kind of show the process here on the blog. Maybe I'll do some sketches tonight, before I go to bed. I've been designing some dresses lately anyways. 

Anyways. Thanks for following me and my bunny trails, and I'll catch you tomorrow! Bye!

Paper/Fabric Collage Fodder

Hey guys!!

What's going on with you guys today?

I haven't done much crafty stuff today, but I did take a few pictures for the blog.

I pulled a bunch of stuff out of my pile of supplies, and made a few piles. 

I've now officially decided to start a sort of series on collecting supplies for working in an art journal.

In other words, an series on collecting art journal fodder. 

For now, I think I'll just share with you guys what I've found so far.

Then I'll do other occasional posts about how to find and collect these things.

Are you guys ready for this?

Okay then.

Let's do it then.

Let's look up at the picture above at the first little collection I found.

I just pulled a few of the first things that came to my hand. 

I have a piece of magazine picture.

Some apple stickers.

Some printed black and white borders.

Some color scraped fabric.

Some watercolored book paper.

And a strip of colors.

There isn't as much in this picture, but I still like this selection.

I have a dyed paper towel.

A butterfly die cut.

Some pink polka dotted tissue paper.

A pulled photo paper.

And a homemade stamp that I made using craft foam and a toilet paper tube.

This was so much fun finding all of this stuff out of my stash;

So far I've just stacked it all up in a giant stack,

But I'm planning to start organizing soon.

I'm gonna try sorting by color in some type of horizontal paper storage.

But that's all I've got for you guys today.

And I'll see you guys tomorrow. :)

My Goals For June

So. It's June now. That's insane! I can't believe that time has sped by so fast. It seems impossible that we're already halfway through the year. It's also hard to think that in exactly one month, we're going to be moving from the place that I've been living all fourteen years of my life. And we're going pretty much across the country. What?? How did this happen? I don't know for sure. It's crazy the way time flies. But since it's here, I might as well make the most of it. Anyways, getting back to the original purpose for this post. I figured that since today is June 1st, I realized this would be the perfect day to post a list of my goals for the next 30 days. I have a lot of things that I'd like to have completed, and I think that if I put it on here I'd feel held responsible.

Something that I've been thinking a lot about lately is inspiration. Inspiration is something that is very important to us artists, since without ideas we can't do much in the way of art. Dede, who is a good friend of mine, often does live streams in the mornings. Recently she has been doing a color inspiration journal, and I started one a bit similar to hers. I love the way she set it up, and it feels like my style as well. She's been using the colors and stuff to make other projects using that inspiration. It's cool.

Anyways, here's a list of stuff that I'd like to do this month... bear with me as I type it all out. :)

• Finish editing my book and then send it in for a free copy (I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo)
• Work a little bit on my art journal every day.
• Complete 3-5 art journal pages for submissions.
• Make some youtube videos
• Blog every day about my art and life

I would also like to continue work on the several projects I have going on here: Linky Monday, Collage Unleashed Project, Project Runway project, and the Creative Experiments Projects. I actually started work on my Project Runway project the other day, and made some gorgeous fabric out of trash bags. I know it sounds really strange, and maybe even a bit weird, but I promise it actually worked. I ironed a trash bag together, ending up with about a yard of 18" wide fabric. That was from one trash bag. I'll probably zigzag a bunch together. I've also been working on a newspaper dress.

NOTE:: The art journal page above is part of another post as well. Be looking forward to the PROGESS of that page sometime soon.

I'd like to make progress on all of these projects this month. Sound good? I hope so. You'll be reading about it all month. :)

TOTALLY PIC HEAVY POST!!

Hey all you people!! I managed to make it back here today with yet another post. Sorry that there wasn't one yesterday, but this one's really long and pic heavy to make up for that. I don't know about you guys, but when I'm on a forum, or even a blog, I LOVE to see tons of pictures. There are a lot of people who apologize for that, but I just love to see all different angles and pictures. :P It could just be me though.

The first thing I wanted to share with you guys a bunch of envelopes I've been saving - rescuing from the mail in fact. I know that probably sounds kind of weird to you, and maybe even a bit hoarder type thing to do. But trust me, it's not. I have a specific project that I'm saving these for... I'll be able to share it with you soon hopefully. It's going to be a journal type album THING. Yeah. That's about the best description that I've got. But I'm gonna need a LOT more envelopes. These are used ones that I got in the mail. I was just lucky enough to get some colored ones. If any of you guys have any you'd like to donate to the cause... that'd be cool. :P

Another thing that I've been thinking about doing lately is a Dear Jane quilt. I started one a while back, but the different things didn't quite fit, and the size was waaaay off. So I'm just going to start over. :D I know it's sort of a bad idea, and kind of wasteful, but I think it's just worth starting over, in order to make it look nicer. Sometimes there's no other choice. Do you agree?

This is a little piece of folded, knit fabric that I managed to salvage from a tee shirt that was too small for me. You know, the ones that you don't want to throw away since the fabric is soooo cool, but you don't know what you'd want to do about it? I take them apart using a seam ripper, and most of the time manage to get really large chunks of knit fabric. You can actually also use cotton shirts for cheap quilting fabric.

Here are the scraps that I have leftover from taking apart the shirt. It was a care bears shirt, that was rimmed around the sleeves and neckline with the pink fabric shown above. Yeah. And I got all of that fabric from just one shirt. It makes you think though, doesn't it?

It's been a little while since I posted a picture of my cross stitch progress. So here's one for you. I've got quite a bit further, and I've got about three full cars done, one half done, and one not even started yet. :) I just love working on cross stitch though, since the more hours that you put into it, the more the shading develops and the better it starts to look. But this definitely isn't a one day project. Six months perhaps. But definitely not a day. Or a week. Or probably not even a month. I just like working on it cause it's so calming to play with the colored threads. But it's not too difficult.

Here's another calming endeavor that I love to do, even though I just dug this out of my many boxes this morning. It's a quilt that I'm making. I'm actually working on the quilting part currently, stitching the three layers (top, batting, and backing) together with tiny little stitches. BY HAND!! Of course, I guess I could use my machine, but I decided that I'd rather practice my stitching by hand, since I kind of stink at it. I'm getting better with practice though, I think.

Here's a closer up view so you can sort of see how the pattern goes. It's taking a LOT more work than I originally anticipated, but it's relaxing to try it every now and again...

And... I FINISHED MY GLOVES!! I don't know if you can see the cable pattern too well in these, but they really turned out well. On one of the gloves (the right one I think) the seam I did made the thumb hole a little too high, so I'm going to need to rip it out and do it over. It doesn't look bad, it's just a little bit uncomfortable to wear. So I think I'll do it over. But it doesn't look bad at all. At least I don't think so. But of course, I'm totally biased. XD

One last picture before I go; another quilt that I just laid out - the diamonds are blocks, but there are only twelve of them. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to make it bigger. Right about now it's pretty darn small, but I sort of like the size of it. I think I'll just have to wait and see.

Another thing that I'd like to share with you guys is that you probably won't be seeing me for somewhere around a week, starting Monday. My mom is cutting us off from screens for a week, and that includes blogs and stuff. But luckily, she's still going to let me find my patterns and stuff online. Thank heavens. Without that stuff, I'd probably be lost. :D

One last thing that I'd like to leave you mulling on - I'm starting another project sometime soon. I know, I know. I just started another project the other day. But I can't help it. I found an amazing tutorial HERE, and I about DIED looking at it. It's crazy. And it's totally me. Anyways, I'll probably see you guys tomorrow, but if not, then next week!!