Thinking Of You Card

A blogging friend, who used to live in Oregon, had a super bad fall last November. I wanted to send her a Get Well Soon card but because it was November, I was knee-deep in Christmas overtime at work. I settled for a regular card as a place-marker until I could get this card out of my head.

This is her horse, Nick. The image is one I 'borrowed' from her blog when I was looking for inspiration.

These type art cards are fun to execute. The drawing is worked from the background up. Finding fabrics, identifying shapes, sewing it down only took an hour on Saturday. I cut the cardstock 'frame' and trimmed it on Sunday. Mailed it Monday.

Grabbing fabrics takes the longest with the next step of cutting and placing shapes.The drawing/photo image gets simplified by necessity. In the original photo, there is actually another horse in the corral with Nick. He didn't make the cut. You want your focal image to stand out.

There's even room to do more with mixed media. Yarns, laces, paint. I reached my finish point  - a card to send to my friend. She can either enjoy it as is or play some more with it.

Next job was to hinge the art inside the black cardstock 'frame'. (I used a scrap piece of paper to figure out the opening by cutting the middle out until I had enough of the art showing.)
I just used regular scotch tape as this isn't a large piece. This type of hinging is not museum quality but is what's called "Conservation" in the picture framing industry. This type of hinge is removable with little distress to the artwork.

You start with 2 -3 pieces of tape about 3- 4 inches long and place them sticky side up. Place the art on top with half  the tape lengthwise showing. The other half is sticking to the backside of the art.

The next step is to place the top cardstock frame over the art, positioning it 'just right' and pressing down over the tape when you subjectively decide.

Third step is to flip the frame and attached art over carefully. Take a longer piece of tape 4-5" long and place over the the sticky side. This piece of tape will extend past on three sides making a hinge that is no longer sticky.

 You can see in the above photo that the artwork is attached to the top frame. This method makes it easy for the top cardstock frame to go where it best shows the artwork. The hinges allow the art fabrics to hang free. The fabrics and the paper expand and contract at different rates over time. This method allows non-restricted movement. And it's reversible with very little detriment to the valuable artwork. (lol).

 This was my inspiration photo. Of course my blue sky (from my scrap basket!!) had an airplane flying over - checking over things. My way of saying my thoughts are with you.

I started with a large piece of backing fabric - muslin/scrap - something thin but sturdy.
Found some blue sky.
Some white for clouds,
Some green for trees.
The corral color is the wrong side of a old gold calico.
The rails are a thin flat ribbon.
The horse is from my t-shirt hack camo knit. Worked perfectly for horse texture.
Some fuzzy bits for a mane - ran out ---hmmmm.

basically - small bits and bobs from my scrap basket and an inspirational photo.
When I originally thought up this card, I was thinking a 5 x 7" card - haha - This turned out as a 8 x 11" card. Bigger - but easier to execute small cutting areas.

A very good piece of Happy Mail winging it's way south to my blogging friend.

Happy Easter Eggs

 Happy Easter everyone.
We're having Baby Back ribs and Teresa's Carrot cake tomorrow.

 Ukrainian egg decorating. My library repeated a class they held two years ago. You start with a blown-out egg. Apparently, there is a tool to do this instead of blowing them out the hard way!
Funny girl bought a kit, so I blew out three green eggs for her - I almost get a headache doing it the hard way.

This time, we worked with white eggs. Two years ago, brown eggs.

Basically, this is a wax resist method aka batik. Using wax to trace designs, then coloring them, then more wax to enhance the design, then more dye and maybe another run through with wax and dye.

The tool in the right hand is called a kistka. A little tube to hold beeswax that is then melted over the candle flame.

Funny friend's sunny egg

Creative Girl's egg masterpiece.

 Late last week, an old friend emailed me to ask a question. As I still had a few plastic eggs left, I whipped up these drawstring pouches and mailed a wee present to the cutest little girl and her brother. This little girl used to bring me flowers at work - the kind with no stems. I had a little plastic dish to float her bouquets in.
*smile*

These were fun to make too.
These are yarn wrapped around a water balloon which you squeeze a chocolate egg or two into first. Soak the yarn in watered glue adn wrap, then let dry. Pop the balloon and you have candy trapped inside the stiff 'egg'.



My first attempt at Ukrainian eggs.

This year's eggs

Flock And Fiber Festival Canby 2014

Yesterday, I met for the first time, one of my favorite Oregon bloggers, Teresa Kasner.
She writes over Corbett way with stunning views of Mt. Hood, Crown Point & Multnomah Falls - where she does volunteer work every week.
She is a gorgeous photographer and showcases a lot of iconic Oregon scenery.

She made some crocheted bunting that I just love. She used it on her annual family camping trip and it made the canopy very bright and happy.
She has shown Multnomah Falls in all seasons. This one is from last Fall.
She also likes to photograph flowers which I enjoy seeing.

She treks over to Canbyland for the Flock & Fiber Festival most years and I suggested we meet up.

The Flock & Fiber Festival is all about flocks of sheep, goats, alpacas, etc and their fiber.
How to spin it, dye it, knit it, crochet it, felt it.



Felted purses. I liked the felted 'leaf' flap with the burn outs.


Teresa coveted these baskets.


While I need to pull out my felting supplies and do some needle felting.



For the Bunting Queen, Benta,  over in the UK - apparently this trend has made it's way to Oregon. Quite a few booths featured bunting for decoration.

Vendors were selling wool, roving, felted creations, knitting paraphernalia - stitch markers, hand-turned needles - anything to do with sheeps, goats, rabbits, alpacas and llamas.
 
The Spinners were set up outside where the sun finally broke through the clouds and people in their wool jumpers suddenly got hot.

I rather liked the dude on the right with his hair-do.

Teresa brought her husband and two grand kids along. Her husband used to raise goats and told a few stories about how they get the horns off while still babies. These goats with the horns escaped that.
Her husband also flew helicopters in the Vietnam war and afterwards on the oil rigs and I enjoyed those stories too.

It was fun to watch the boys with the goats and alpacas. I miss having small children around.



These boys reached right in to pet these goats and alpacas.











This is for my bloggy friend Gene Black. The denim strips were woven along with some shiny silver  mylar and yellow ribbon to create this large shawl.

The Flock & Fiber Festival is a free event that comes to Canby each September at the fairgrounds. You can register for classes online or just come and watch the animal judging and vendor booths.
People come from far and wide with their creations to show off and talk to fellow fiber artists.

The spinner below in the video was telling me about the "2:00 pm   Spinner’s Triathlon Competition – Central Lawn" on Sunday.

 I've always gone on Saturday after work but next year, I think I'll make time for the Spinner's Triathlon - a fun way to show off your spinning talents.

If you've ever wanted to spin fiber into yarn....

Easter Egg Puzzle Balls

I saw this craft on facebook and needed to do it. Let me caution you right now, its a messy, three-day craft that takes up space.

This is a stiff ball made of yarn. Inside is trapped a chocolate candy (or 2 or 3). How did the candy get inside?

Use up your odds & ends of yarn, dipped in glue mixture, wrap yarn  around water balloons filled with candy, let dry and then pop the balloon ---what could be easier?






For every balloon I managed to squiggle a candy into, another was torn.
The egg with three candies? I now  declare it the Golden Egg!

The yarn soaks up the glue & water mixture (equal parts) and as you wrap it around the egg, it drips glue everywhere. Not to mention the sodden mess of yarn that wants to glom up into a celtic knot. So you should put down a thousand layers of newspaper to soak up the puddles--haha,  cant give away all the tips.




Some tricks to get those candies into the balloon.
Blow up the water balloon first to stretch it out.  Pull the sides out to make it squeal as the air escapes for the delightment of the dog.
Pull the neck apart and 'roll' the balloon over the Hershey's Chocolate Egg. Rolo's also worked fairly easily. Hershey's Chocolate Kisses, good luck! not so well.
Once candy is seated, you need to blow air into the balloon to partially blow it back up.
Squeeze what you blew up and the candy will drop into the bottom of the balloon.

If you want more than one candy inside, you'll need to repeat this.








Let dry for ThreeDays!!!.
 Until stiff.

Pop the balloon and carefully extract the balloon rubbage which has a disconcerting way of wrapping around the candy and not letting go.




One for each of my co-workers and assorted nephews & nieces.