Wading in W.I.P.s

Five weeks into summer and I am just hitting my creative stride.  And I am up to my ears in W.I.P.s.  

Urban Utility II has been sitting around for the moment.

I plan on giving this lifeless sweater dress a face lift.

The as-of-yet unnamed art quilt is in a holding pattern because I need to basically take everything off from this point and start adhering the bigger pieces to the fabric so I can start sewing them down.

My top secret handmade gift exchange project is in the works.

And this is a sneak peak at a project for my son that I will hopefully be able to post later this week.

And this... *GASP* ... is what my sewing room looks like at the moment and that's a problem (BTW, don't start cleaning and reorganizing unless you can do it all in one shot because walking back in on this is daunting). 

It's a problem because I start class again tomorrow.  And I should have a minimum of 200 pages of reading and a paper to write every week.  And my internship is about to ramp up in hours.  And not yet on my WIP list is the 400 baby quilts I need to make for all the pregnant women in my life.  And the only thing I want to do right now is anything on that WIP list and NOT the readings I am supposed to be doing for the first day of class tomorrow. 

Ugh.

A Little Progress

Okay, so maybe I went to a quilt store and picked up a bunch of new batiks and thread for my as-of-yet-untitled art quilt and maybe I started cutting out pieces of those fabrics and arranging them on my quilt wall.

Nothing is sewn down yet, the pieces are just clinging to the fabric.  The non-existent branches for some of those leaves will eventually be sewn in with thread.  And I think that darker blue sky swish in the upper left corner will probably get edited out because I think it is a little too blue. 

I think my next step will be to cut out the pieces for my little stone wall and then I might start spray basting some of those pieces down.  I think I'll stitch some of the bigger pieces down straight onto the fabric and then put on a border, put the layers together, and then do a bunch of quilting over the top, including stitching down the leaves and eventual birds and stuff.  But don't hold me to any of that because I am totally winging it. 

Projects, Peeks and Plans

A big week for Craftopotamus.  My bird seed bag was featured on Tater Tots and Jello, Under the Table and Dreaming, So Very Creative and Craft Gossip.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Wow.  The bird seed bag also helped to bump up my number of followers faster than expected (and I want to be clear, that is NOT a complaint) so I've had to resort my project urgency list so that I could focus on my 100 follower giveaway... we're not there yet, but it's definitely within reach.  Here's a sneak peek.

I also FINALLY started an art quilt.  No more talking about it, I just jumped in.

Not much to look at yet, but you've got to start somewhere, right?  And I had fun learning how to use my printer to print onto fabric - way easier than I thought.

I also had a lovely follower ask me for a copy of one of my quilt patterns, Wright's Windows.  Which is awesome and flattering, but somehow I have to turn this...

... into a legible quilt pattern that someone other than my math-loving self can understand.  It'll be a good exercise for me.

Also made some progress on my Quilts of Valor project...

And then there's this...

"What's THAT?" you ask?  THAT is a pile of textbooks, my friends.  I start my masters in Urban Planning this coming week and am scared to death about it.  Silly, I know, but just look at those books, invading my craft room, looming over my fabric, pushing aside my iron... 

So, again, big week for Craftopotamus.  And if you're a regular reader that hasn't actually clicked the "follow" button yet... come on in, the water's fine...  :)

Canvas with Wings and Collage Art

This was originally a guest post that I wrote for Michele at The Scrap Shoppe last week...

A couple of months ago I redesigned my craft room and made this piece of art for my wall.

I wanted to put art on the walls that would inspire me so I looked up tons of inspirational quotes. When I found this quote from Emerson it really hit home. And as I read all those quotes I felt uplifted and wanted to try and show that feeling of soaring on inspiration. I started with a canvas and knew from the beginning that I wanted it to hang from a corner rather than the usual direction. I painted it with some acrylic paints, then decoupaged the quote on top. I used craft wire to shape the wings and then hot glued them to the back. I sewed on a layer of tulle and another layer of a sheer lining and then glued a whole bunch of feathers around the outside of the canvas.

My sister loved the quote and asked me to make her one for her office, but a canvas with wings wasn't quite right for her or her office. She also wanted something that she could frame. So after some thought, I came up with this...

It's mixed media: water color, oil pastels, paper collage, paint markers and gel markers. It wasn't as complicated as you might think... you just need to "build" it in layers.

I started with a 12"x16" piece of water color paper and marked off the edges so she could mat it to 11"x14" easily. I played with some water color paints just to start some colors for the background. If you don't have paint, you can start with any great scrapbook paper. Then I copied out the quote in a word processing program and played with the size and font until I was happy with it. I printed it and cut out the words ransom note style and the found some awesome images from The Graphics Fairy. Here you can see the quote and images at this point:

Once I was happy with the layout, I used a glue stick to glue it all down with a few more random pieces cut from magazines and catalogs.

I added some depth to the background with some oil pastels, but you can use markers or crayons too - whatever you like. Just play.

To finish it off, I had fun with some paint markers and gel pens and VOILA!

Inspirational Art Tutorial & A Milestone

I've been working on a bigger project for the last few days. I'll share more when it's finished, but here's a sneak peak.

In the meantime, I figured I'd finally post a quick tutorial for my word wall art from my craft room redesign.

I made this "word" art for my craft room. It was super easy and I used stuff I already had on hand. I knew I wanted an inspirational word on the wall, but I did not want one separate frame for each letter because then I would always be starring at them and try to realign all the frames so they wouldn't be crooked... kind of obsessive like that. This is my way of avoiding that problem:

5 cheap 5x7 frames (or one for each letter of your word)

2 36" craft dowels (1" square - you can find them in almost any craft store)

hot glue gun

1 self-leveling hanger

spray paint

a printer

card stock or paper suitable for framing

I know there is a package of nails in the pick... I thought originally that was how I was going to put this together, but it was not going to work. Besides, a hot glue gun can solve just about any problem... I also originally wanted the word "create," but I only had 5 frames and this was all about not spending more money. "Dream" was just as appropriate. :)

First, remove the glass and the backings from all of your frames, then line up your frames evenly between your two dowels. Then mark out the spacing of the frames onto your dowels with a pencil.

Now start hot gluing your frames to the wood dowels along the bottom edge first. Once you've glued all the frames to the bottom dowel, go back and glue the top dowel down along the top edge of your frames.

Now flip your frames over to the back side and hammer a self-leveling hanger to the center back of your top dowel. (Sorry for the fuzzy pic.)

Spray paint the whole frame and your dowels. Be sure to get around all the edges of the frames.

On your computer, pick out your favorite font and play around with the sizing until it will take up most of the space of your 5"x7" frame. I also added a heavy, black border to the outside of each letter so that from a distance it looks a little like each letter is matted. You can print the letters in color or black and white... whatever works for your space. I originally thought that black and white would be perfect, but it just didn't pop so I played around until I was happy with it.

Then just trim each letter to fit the frame, replace the glass, frame your letters and VOILA!

And a big shout out to all of my faithful followers... Craftopotamus hit 50 followers this morning! Hooray for us! To celebrate, I made a couple buttons (you know, so you can match one to your blog if you like) ... feel free to take one... or ten! :) Thank you followers! I (heart) you!

<br /> <a border="0" href="http://craftopotamus.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/af163/craftopotamus/OwlButton.jpg" /></a><br /> <br />

<br /> <a border="0" href="http://craftopotamus.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/af163/craftopotamus/cricketbutton.jpg" /></a><br /> <br />

And I have big plans for when we reach 100...

Dining Room Update

My dining room is coming together. After the walls got a couple coats of "spiced butternut" paint, some fresh artwork, a new chandelier and a new table centerpiece, I have to say that my dining room is coming together splendidly.

Here is the only before picture I could find, just to give you an idea of what I was starting with. The day we painted, I took some "before" shots of both my dining room and kitchen so I could use them in posts, but they managed to get deleted from my camera prior to getting them onto my computer. :( So much for big plans, eh?

Here is the same shot taken this morning...

You can see that I also changed the direction the table was sitting... it really helped to open up the room. Here are a few more pics...

The pitcher and goblets are the same ones that I picked up at the thrift store the day I found the vintage chandelier. A great day at the thrift store, if you ask me.

I really don't think I can express in words how happy my new chandelier makes me. :)

I decided to crochet the flowers in the vase. That way I could both have total control over the colors I was adding to the room and also I think the crochet look ties in with the 60's glassware and chandelier. If anyone out there wants the pattern for the flowers, just holler and I will write it up you.

Here are a couple shots of the room at night.

I still have some more plans for the room though. I have an idea in mind for making placemats and a tablerunner. My mother-in-law also has a set of dishes that should go perfectly on my new table... can't wait to get the rest of it together.

Flock, Divided

A couple weeks ago I ran across a very inspirational post about painting at Make The Best of Things. I love to paint, but don't get to do it as often as I like. I was already picking out paint colors for my kitchen/dining room and thinking I'd probably need some new art for my new walls anyway so...

It started out with 2 blank 24"x30" canvases and a sketch. (Ignore the doodle flower at the top of the page... you can only imagine what my notebooks looked like in high school...)


The great thing is that I got to choose all the colors so it would fit into the room perfectly. I'm not done redesigning the room so I'll just give you this cropped version of it hanging on my freshly painted walls.

I took it outside for a photo shoot because the lighting is not so great in my dining room.Overall it turned out really close to how I envisioned it. A little darker than I planned, maybe, and I had trouble giving the birds as much depth as I wanted because they were so dark... I guess in my imaginings they were black birds or the silhouettes of birds...

I struggled to come up with a title... it's a flock of birds, in a tree... but one is separated by the divide in canvas... Is the divide created or imagined? Or is it there at all? Does the lone bird see the divide or does it assume it is one with the flock? How come I painted this and I can't answer these questions? I guess this was paint therapy. Much cheaper than prozac.

Linking up to these parties...