This Week's Project: Fabric Envies

I have a couple of envelopes to show off this week! I was really pleased with them, and they were easy to do, so there will be a tutorial, but it will show up on ThinkCrafts first; I'll post it here later.

Here they are:

 

 

I showed them to my DH, and told my Mom about them over the phone. Both of them said exactly the same thing: "Well, can you mail something like that?!"

"I'm pretty sure they'll be okay," I said. "Heck, you can wrap up a crowbar and put an address on it, and the post office will send it!"

Sure enough, when I laid them on the counter at the post office and asked if I could mail them, the guy didn't bat an eyelash, just said, "Sure. We get all kinds of stuff through here." He did say they were so pretty, didn't I want to put them in something so there wouldn't be any risk of their being damaged? but I told him no, as the object of them was to have something really pretty arrive in the mailbox of the recipient.

Have you heard about the 52 Weeks challenge over at Fabric Fascination? The idea is to finish a project a week for 2011, and post it. I'm a bit late arriving to the party, but it sounds like fun to me, so now I'm going to post this, and drop the link over there!

Oh. Forgot to mention: These are my creations for the Mail Art #2 Swap on Swap-bot.com!

SWAP-BOT SATURDAY: Mail Art

Yesterday, I got a piece of mail that was so wonderful on the outside, I forgot to actually open it! Seriously, I showed it off to my DH, took photos of it, laid it where I would admire and study it from time to time, and it was evening when I realized it was still unopened!

Isn't it wonderful?

Click on the pictures to see them full-size.

You know what I'm a tad concerned about? I think I'm supposed to send my own mail art to this artist. eeek. Well, my salvation is that I can't draw like that, and I know it, so mine will be completely different as to medium. Rescued by apples and oranges, maybe?

SWAP-BOT SATURDAY: ATC's, Altered Puzzle Piece

I am loving Swap-bot, both for the creative outlet it gives me, and the inspiration of other artists! This week I worked on several ATC's and my first puzzle piece. The ATC above was sent to me by one of my Foreign Language ATC swap partners. Isn't it glamorous?

The piece below is my very first altered puzzle piece. I'm happy with the results, and was surprised to discover that the hardest part of it was finding a puzzle piece to use! When it was finished, I used a leather punch to punch holes in the top, and attached jump rings for the slender silver necklace. The dangle at the bottom is an old earring I found somewhere, and saved, quite literally, for years, because I just Knew there'd be something it would come in handy for. The recipient has already written to say she loves the necklace--YAY!!


These next to ATC's are my creations for the Foreign Language ATC swap. The first is simple and straightforward, but


don't ask me what this one "means", because I have no clue. It just seemed to happen.

The last two ATC's, I created for a swap that required you to use at least one piece of punched paper. I couldn't decide whether to glue that word, "Deal", down or not, so left it loose in the ATC envelope, putting the decision of whether or not to use it in other hands.



This last one I've already shown, but since it was my other piece for the Punch Art ATC, I'll put it in again.


What about you? Do you make ATC's? Have you posted any lately? I'd love to see them! Just drop a link in a comment, and I'll come look!

TODAY'S ATC: PUNCH ART

I'm really enjoying ATCs, both making and receiving them. I'm planning on getting the ones people have sent me photographed and here on my blog, but for now here are two I finished this morning.

As you can see, they're nearly identical. I did them for another Swap-bot trade. For this swap we were to make an ATC for each of two partners, using any media or method, but including at least one punched element.


Because it's hard to see the layering of paper on paper, I'll tell you I used nine punched pieces. (The black you see around the two scalloped flowers is paper, not shadow, and accounts for two of them.)

I did the paper part, and was satisfied with the composition and colors, but the ATCs didn't 'pop' the way I wanted, so I added the buttons. That seemed to do it. Those buttons were a find--I got a quart jar of them at Goodwill yesterday for $4.99, and there were all kinds of wonderful lovelies in it. I'll have to show them off tomorrow!

By the way, check out Swap-bot. It's free to register, and there are tons of swaps going all the time, for crafters, knitters, seamsters, people who like to send postcards, you name it. I'm finding that joining the ones that interest me is really sparking my creativity, and it sure does make for a happy mailbox!

SWAP-BOT SATURDAY: Chain Stitch ATC

My most recent swap on Swap-Bot is for an ATC (Artist Trading Card) that features chain stitch embroidery.

As frequently happens with me, it took me almost until the deadline to figure out what I wanted to do, and then that idea didn't pan out. So late last night, I started over. At midnight, I felt I had a good start on it, and I knew I was meeting my daughter and four granddaughters for a day of crafting today, so no worries--I'd finish the ATC first, and mail it before I came home.

HAH! I worked on the thing All Day. Couldn't believe it took so long, but I'm really happy with it. In fact, I kind of don't want to part with it! But that wouldn't be right, lol, so I'm showing them off here.




If you click on the pictures they'll come up full-size, and you can see that not only is the envelope chain-stitched, the lettered disks are chain-stitched together. It was a fun project!

(Mom, if you're reading this, I used a piece of that paper I won at the Parker Ladies' Night Out to make the envelope!)

TODAY'S ATC: ANTLER PEOPLE

I'm baaaack! With another swap from Swap-bot.com.

This time I want to just share the ATC I finished this afternoon. The theme was "antler people", and the concept, if somewhat odd, was simple: Take a person or persons, and put antlers on his/her/their heads.

Being somewhat (I admit it) odd myself, I took great pleasure in this project, with the following result:


In another vein, I'd been wondering what I would do when I ran out of flowers to photograph on my walks, and mildly concerned. The answer was right in front of my lens. Winter, too, hath its charms.





I suppose it's appropriate, with Halloween so close, that we should be finding beauty in what remains. Aren't these "dead" blossoms lovely? (And even more so if you click on the photos to see them full-size.)

I'm enjoying an unexpected day at home today, having been every day this week at our dear friend Bruce's for a number of hours. I've been helping him get organized as he faces the loss of his home. He is 58, lost an eye in a fall several years ago, and has been unemployed ever since. His unemployment has run out, Social Security says he could still work (I seriously doubt it), and he has no money left to stay afloat. Please pray for him, if you're moved to do so.

OCTOBER TAGS

I am so enjoying Swap-Bot! Have I said that before? The thing is, it sets me up with a creative outlet whenever I need one. And there's a new challenge, a new art medium to try, whenever I feel the urge, too.

My latest love is making decorated tags, so when a swap appeared to send three "October" themed tags out, I signed right up. I mailed them today, and I'd like to show them off.

Three October-themed tags:



I knew there was a reason to save all my page-a-day calendars from Mary Engelbreit. I do love her art, and have a very difficult time parting with it.

And now I'm going to skew into an entirely different area. I sometimes get emails from well-meaning people that they've read, gasped with alarm at, and then forwarded to me. Warning! Antiperspirants cause breast cancer! Alarm! Rats pee on soda pop can lids! Take care! People are being bashed on the head and deprived of vital organs!

Those are bad enough. You have to wonder if people don't have anything better to do than to make up stuff to scare people.

But for the past several years, I've received emails claiming that one person or another has done heinous things, anti-American things, anti-Christian things. They're hate emails, with no purpose that I can see other than to stir up outrage, anger, fear, and hate.

And almost none of them, None!, have any grain of truth to them. It's So easy to check this stuff. Go to Snopes.com, and do a search on keywords from the email. These viral things are almost always there. If that doesn't work, go to Politifact.com.

I'm going to put in a scripture here that keeps coming to mind: "Thou shalt not bear false witness." To put it simply, that's a command not to lie about people.

If you read an email, allow yourself the gasp! and the outrage, if you absolutely must. Heck, it feels good to be "righteously angry", I know that. But then check to see if it's actually true, because if it isn't, and you "forward this to everyone on your email list!" you are "bearing false witness". You are lying, whether you started the email or not. If the commandments mean anything to you, you owe it to yourself to be sure you're spreading truth.

You can't unspread a rumor, but you can make sure you aren't helping to smear a falsehood around.

ATC THURSDAY

ATCs: My newest delightful hobby. Thanks to Swap-bot.com, I'm exploring them more or less regularly, meaning I've signed up for several ATC swaps and have completed two, for a total of four ATCs. That's a start, right?

I did two of them today, and they're nearly identical:



The theme, as you might guess was "Apple". I first found a clipart image of two apples, saved it to my computer, simplified and resized it, and then printed four of them out on a clear acetate sheet. I suspected I'd mess up at least one of them; I was right.

While (I vainly hoped) the ink was drying on the acetate, I took two pages from an old dictionary, one with the word "apple" on it, the other with the word "fruit". I painted an area on each of them a little bigger than the ATCs would be with red, brown, magenta, and green paints on a fairly dry brush, and then stamped APPLE and POMME on both of them. (I have a stamp that you can load with whatever letters you need, and I LOVE it.)

The hardest part was gluing the acetate sheets down. The ink never did dry, and it smeared with the slightest touch. I put a dab of glue on the two places that had no inking, and glued them, image side down, and when the glue was dry I painted on two coats of gel medium.

When that was dry, I took a fine-tip black Sharpie and drew over some of the lines. That was the last step.

They turned out okay, I think, and I learned something valuable: don't try to inkjet print on acetate!