Amazing Class Taught By Sharon Payne Bolton

This past week I attended a two day class at Art Is You in Petaluma, CA. The class was taught by the talented Sharon Payne Bolton. It was probably the best class I've ever attended! Below is a picture of the two books I made...

The book on the right has a thick glass lens embedded in the cover. 

We made these chunky books with lots of three dimensional and embedded/inlaid objects. The pages of the book are 1/8" thick chipboard. I'll show you pictures of each of the pages below. This first book is 3" x 4"

Each page was painted over in beeswax - I did that part after I got home.

The page on the left is actually a piece of inlaid glass and
the page on the right has an inlaid brass locker tag.

The page on the right has an inlaid slide.

Another inlaid brass locker tag on the left.

Glass slide inlaid on the left and a coin holder on the right.

I love the doll leg on the right.

Sharon taught us the coptic binding method.

 Here are pictures from my smaller book, 2" x 3".

I highly recommend taking a class from Sharon if you have the opportunity. She's generous with her supplies, gives excellent instructions and as nice as could be! I love my books and had such a great time in class. I wish I could have shared pictures from the event, but it turns out I brought a fully charged camera, but no memory card. I did bring a phone with memory, but it was out of battery...ha.

Have a great week everyone!

Air Mail Envelope Collage

Just a short post today! This weekend I made some collage pieces from mini envelopes.

I was shopping at Michael's and saw these adorable mini envelopes on sale. They are made by DCWV and I think they're so cute!

I took bits and pieces that were on my craft table along with some vintage photos and created these quick collages. I might combine them into a mini book or just use them as tags on a present - not sure yet, but they were fun and quick to make.

This weekend, I was surprised to receive this magazine in the mail - the fall issue of Stamper's Sampler.

I had sent in some cards and tags awhile ago, and they picked some to publish in this issue.

Cards I made using Character Construction's Cirque stamps

Tags I made using Tim Holtz and Character Construction stamps.

Thank you Stampington!

I can't believe we're at the end of September already. I'll be at "Art Is You" in Petaluma this week...I'm so excited!. I'll be sure to show you pictures from the event.

Enjoy the rest of the week!

More Stuffed Dolls...

I'm still working on my primitive dolls and making new stuffed ones. Here's my collection now!

The last time I tried painting directly on canvas and muslin fabric and that worked fine. However, last week I thought of a quicker technique. I took my original drawings from my sketch book and copied them onto fabric, using a color ink jet printer. The image below are two of my originals sketches copied onto cream colored fabric.

That was quick and easy! Then I just sewed and stuffed them.

I took a couple more originals sketches and copied them onto white canvas fabric.

I think the white canvas fabric makes a better copy, the colors turn out to be more vibrant, but I love them all.

I added a few embellishments to all the dolls and now they're complete!

Have a great week!

Stuffed Primitive Dolls

So, I decided to go a step further with my primitive dolls and went from sketching them in a journal to creating soft stuffed dolls. Below are pictures of two of the dolls I made today...

I created one with muslin fabric (pink top) and the other on cotton duck canvas (bold black striped skirt). Here's a few photos of how I created them. I started by cutting out small squares of fabric.

Left: Cotton Duck Canvas  Right: Muslin

Then I painted some white gesso over the top of the fabric. Next, I sketched the girls with a pencil.

I used my Peerless watercolors and some acrylic paint and colored in the girls.

Afterwards, I added some metro tissue paper, vintage text and striped paper onto the fabric using Mod Podge to adhere it. 

Then I machine stitched around the doll with black thread.

I stuffed them with a little polyfill and machine stitched them again around the entire doll. The last step was to trim the fabric around the stitches. The dolls are about 6" tall and 4" wide. 

I also drew a couple more dolls in my sketch book, I wanted to share with you...

The one with the bun reminds me of my daughter when she goes out for her ballet practice. :-)

On Friday, I also received my complimentary issue of Somerset Holidays & Celebrations...there's some great projects in this issue!

I have three articles in this issue. The first are some mini dresses I made from RedLead's chipboard dresses.

I made both Valentine and Christmas themed mini dresses.

The 2nd article features one of my favorite dolls I made after taking Danita's doll making class.

And the last article showed some birthday tags I made, also using RedLead's chipboard dresses.

And finally, I just want to share my daughter's kitchen studio we just completed. As you may know, she has her own YouTube channel, KawaiiSweetWorld, where she creates videos on how to bake cute desserts. She wanted to have her own dedicated space to film her videos, so we cleared out our basement and let her build her own set. 

I'm so proud of her, she works so hard and we're so impressed at all the success she has earned! Check out the video of her kitchen studio tour.

Have a great week everyone!