Wire rack paint holder, disaster and triumph

My first disastrous attempt to hang the paint hanger with ribbon, 1 cupboard hook and staples at 3 am…took an hour before I gave up and began cutting it down (this pic is halfway through the cut down)

This lead to giving up, going back to bed and waking up in a horrible mood (that and other things lead to a melt down of epic proportions where the thought of burning every craft supply came to mind as I am feeling horribly overwhelmed)
Finally the Alex calmed me down and made me just shut the door on it for a bit.  I scraped up $10 and my mom and I went to Michael’s because in some weird logic getting more craft supplies made sense and it mellowed me out.  
Part of the stress has been the big 30 piece art project and feeling excited but stalled and trying to think of ways I can do it in time.  So what do we find for $0.25 each? 5″x5″ stretched canvases with some fruit printed on them that will be perfect for altering.  Yes I bought 30 of them but in my defense they immediately were put away in the hall closet.
So this cheered me up enough to try again with the rack.
I used 2 cupboard hooks spaced far enough to actually hook the bottom grid onto them then another cupboard hook above it with a ribbon to hold the outside grid up a pinch higher than the bottom grid so stuff would not fall out and a small ribbon stapled to the wall to hold the bottom grid flat to it so it doesn’t push away from the wall.
The results!

These are my puffy paints, glitter paints, screen painting paints and a couple of mediums.

Multipurpose art room?

We had the party and the Tea Room (lounge in my temporarily emptied out art room) was a huge success and it has made me determined to use every bit of space in the closet and come up with a way to cover it during parties (we removed the folding doors as they wasted a lot of the usable space) so I want to use some of my material and possibly grommets and cupboard hooks to make a removable curtain.

I intend to replace the wide rolling carts with a solid set of my thinner ones without wheels and use the top shelf of the closet for plastic bins that can be lifted in and out. The drawers of the dresser will have divisions like shoe boxes and cardboard dividers
My existing bookcase and the chubby rack will be full of supplies (need to buy the boxes for it) and I will use some of the shelves in the garage for items I seldom use, tools I would most likely use out there anyway and the material (in large ziplocs) that I don’t have a specific project for (those can go in drawers)
I will use the wide rolling carts and they can just be rolled in to our room which we close off anyway during parties.
I know it seems strange to plan my art room around using it for parties but we have amazing and very respectful friends and we love being able to allow them to have birthday parties at our place, heck we have a fire pit we dug out back and we partly chose this place for that reason.  Also by having events I hope to be motivated to keep my art room organized.

Upcycling as I pack to move

I am trying to sort and organize my studio and use up or recycle certain odd things I have around.  Last year in Feb a group I work with hosted a teen dance with the theme of 8-bit love, and so as part of the decorations I got a 125 count pack of 8.5×11″ astrobrite printing paper in 5 neon colors and made Tetris pieces by cutting the paper into 5.5″ x 11″ strips leaving 125 pieces of 3×11″ paper.
I just couldn’t throw it away and decided to use it as scrap paper but never really did since it was an odd size and I had it out of the way.
I also have some small sturdy cardboard boxes used to ship eyeglasses that are 5″long by 3.5 wide and 3″ deep so I cut off the lid on one and covered it in black duct tape and then folded the pieces in half and cut an inch and a half out of the middle leaving 250 pieces of 4 3/4inch by 3 inch paper.
Now I have a nice little box of bright (or astrobrite) note paper I can keep by the front door for notes.

Hair Bows

I am making a lot of these as I wear my hair back most days

I made these while sitting at the coffee shop

Metallic spider web cloth and sheer mesh from old Halloween Costumes and Sculpy Bats I made wired on to barrettes

Black plastic tape measures and skull beads from Halloween wired to barrettes

Faux tiled journals

Vinyl Wallcoverings with texture

Cheap Clearance Journal from Micheal’s

Random selection of the pieces of vinyl in neutral colors

Glued them down after trimming them with a slide cutter

I used Elmers first but it was annoying (slipping and sliding and taking a long time to dry) I now use a very small amount of E-600

I then painted the journal gold and used a foam stamp and matte red paint

Faux Arabic Lanterns

I had a great time turning an old stretched out sweater and a rotisserie BBQ cage into two faux Arabic lanterns for my front room.

A BBQ rotisserie cage I got at a thrift store for 30% off

I cut the cage in half (more or less) with wire cutters and tape to keep the little bits from flying around

This is an Old 4x sweater that got stretched out to about a 6X and I wear a 1-2X now but did not want to waste the material

The sleeves fit perfectly over the cage and I held them in place at the top with paperclips while I painted it

Due to the way the grid was placed the lanterns are slightly different sizes, I painted the sweater material with gold craft paint after spraying it with clear spraypaint to help keep it from all absorbing in too much

I then painted it with gold glitter craft paint

I wired them with the lamp sets from some Chinese paper lanterns and removable plugs (this was an adventure because I was exhausted and kept putting parts on the cords before running them through the top of the lantern)

I painted the small bulbs that were in the original lanterns with glass paint (the color is so much stronger than store bought colored bulbs) one has red and one has a blue green bulb

 

 

 

ALL SNAKES DAY hair clip

I was playing with sculpy to make little tiles, including some out of a mix of translucent, green and some irridescent pigment powder.  I did them a few weeks ago and had not baked them yet and so when I decided to make a little snake hair clip I simply reshaped two of the small tiles into a snake form and used liquid sculpy to help it have a smooth surface and hold together better.
After baking it I painted a layer of paper glaze on it to enhance the shine and looked through my sample book of faux leather for some little green and dark red pieces for the leaves and flower.
A little E-6000 and a hairclip and time to dry and this is what I came up with.

I got an amazing interior design sample book of faux leather for $5 at a place called Reuse Market that sells art supplies donated from people as well as design studios.  The sample book I got has 50 5×9 pieces of different color and texture faux leather samples and I am careful to only cut out what I need and to tuck any extra back. I really want to get more sample books of fabric and wallpaper.

Bleach pen ALL SNAKES DAY t and scarf

All Snakes Day t-shirt and sash/scarf
I have been wanting to try using a bleach pen on a t-shirt for a long time and since All Snakes Day (The pagan version of St Patrick’s Day) is coming up Sunday and I dont wear have any clothing with snakes on them (nor does my husband) I decided to use a second hand Calvin Klein T to make him a shirt and an Old navy T to make me a scarf/sash

The interesting thing to me is if I ever doubted why the CK shirt would of cost more new I dont now, it is thicker and the dye is much richer and darker and so when you bleach it out for the same amount of time as they ON shirt you get a different tone.  The CK shirt has a great dark rusty color compared to the equally great golden orange of the Old Navy T.

My husband still has to see it and decide if he wants me to over dye it scarlet but I am leaving the sash as is (I will say that if I ever try to put one piece of material on top of the other to transfer the bleach I am stretching them BOTH on cardboard not just the bottom one which is why the scarf is sort of smeared)

Upcycling a small bookcase

I found this heavy little bookcase made of some kind of hard wood composite and it was a nasty yellow so to make it fit in with my Bohemian Gothic front room I reworked it a bit.

Old yellow wood Bookcase partly painted

Painted and starting the top “Tile” work using puffy paint

Side “tiles” painted… they dont look so bright in the front room

 

Wire and bead Valentine decoration

I was given a few hundred 12 inch long wire and bead sprays that had been intended for bouquets and I have been figuring out crafts for them.
Here is my wire “lace” valentine made by twisting the wires together and looking them through each other in the middle.

Halloween wreath

I made this out of the flowers that were left from the centerpieces we had at our handfasting.. they are made like this and then I dip them in RIT dye.

http://www.auntpeaches.com/2010/07/coffee-filter-flowers.html

I will be making a Xmas one with different shades of dark red (WINE and SCARLET RIT dye) silver embroidery floss and a beaded spider with a white/silver marble for a backside hanging in the middle, I have to get started on making the flowers though I can dye some of the lighter ones I have left as well.

Here is the close up on the skulls and bats and you can see the way the flowers look

 

Coffee art

So I had seen pictures of art done with coffee, I am no where near as good as some of the artists I saw but I did have fun while sitting in the Dawson’s Downtown Coffeehouse with a piece of textured linen paper a waterbrush from my Koi Watercolor set and half an espresso, water and some espresso grounds.

Here is what I was able to do in 30 mins… pretty simple but fun

Coffee art

By the way I did not buy the espresso, it was given to me (hence being half a serving) so it does not count as going off my art supply buying wagon..lol

Steampunk slippers for a party

I love Isotoner Ballet style Slippers and they are great for decorating.

We are having an Engagement-Bachelor/Bachelorette-Anniversary-Shower party before and during a Steampunk Ball here in Boise on March 12th and I am painting a pair of slippers for event.

I finished them last night, trying to decide if I should add some rhinestones to the gears on the toes

Finished slippers

the clamp is just to spread the material tight so I could paint on it and the toes are stuffed with tissues