Paper Sewing

I haven't been doing too much sewing the last few days, but I did sew some paper today. Specifically Rancho Gordo "Bean Club" paper. This is a nice thick printed packing paper that's in our regular shipment of their very awesome beans four times a year.

But what could it be, with just one line of sewing?

It is a cat tunnel of course. She's been playing with the last shipment's piece of paper all this time, I thought I'd up the fun a bit for her.  We shall see how long it lasts...

She's pretty happy about this new paper format. We're calling this the upstairs paper. The other stays flat and remains downstairs. The reason is that she likes to run then belly flop and slide on the wood floor underneath it to "hide". Hard to do that maneuver on carpet.

She's been hiding in it for hours since I sewed it up for her. A good use of my sewing time I'd say.

 

A New Tool

Hey, so now I have a Cricut Maker, it was a total surprise gift from my DH this Christmas. I know I know you're supposed to say "cricket" but I have a thing about purposely misspelled words so I say "Cry-Cut".  The thing came with a ton of accessories and tools and materials which have been so fun to play with.

 The first project they have you use to figure out the machine and software is this cute card. I guess I didn't take a picture of it with the kite shape replaced with a fabric piece. It's all cut and drawn on the machine. Super easy to use, and I like how well the software works with my iPad.

Here's what the leftovers look like on the sort of sticky mat you use with the machine. It anchors the materials down so that the precise cutting can happen. I have to use a little spatula thingie to scrape them off. It's a whole new thing. I need more paper now....I wonder if that fabric paper I made would work, hmmm.
I've cut some fabric with the teeny tiny rotary cutter already and it works very very well, more on that later.

At The Local

I recently visited the local Japanese grocery store (Misuwa Marketplace) which is the size of a regular ol' American grocery store but has the added benefit of a very cool bookshop inside of it. This is once you get beyond the awesome factor of a whole refrigerated case of various sorts of tofu, another filled with an amazing selection of mushrooms of every sort, all the seaweed you could ever want, an in-store sushi chef, noodle cafe, a Shisiedo makeup outlet, etc.

It's a bizarre sort of place, but very enjoyable and friendly and I'm glad there's one not too far away to visit occasionally.

I found the above goodies in the bookstore.

•  A new watercolor brush that holds water in the handle, very handy for travel.  (And hard to explain to Chinese airport security guards, whoops)
• A new kind of origami paper, which I like to use in collages since I'm pretty awful at origami.  
• The beautiful red fabric is an official Furoshiki, a cloth that is used (and re-used) for wrapping gifts.  I've been doing my own half-assed version of this when I give presents, especially to quilting friends, but I thought it would be fun to try it with a real one.  Who will be the lucky giftee has not yet be decided but the red and the almost polka-dots is a pretty big hint I'd say.

As I'm on a non-Nook-book diet, I had to put back several crafting, paper, Japanese clothing, knitting (whywhywhy, I don't knit) and art books.

A Mirror For Today

My friend Jaye just had her super-fun birthday party at a really cool place called A Work Of Heart. It is a "Creative Arts Lounge", AKA a fully-stocked mixed-media art studio, all set up for classes and groups.

The project we all did was an altered mirror. We started with a plain pine wide-framed Ikea mirror and 32 plain chipboard squares.

First step was to sponge paint the frame. While that was drying, we chose fancy papers, mostly the type you'd use for scrap booking I think. These were cut to size and glued to a bunch of the squares.

The remaining squares were stamped with distressed inks, embossing stuff, and crackle painted and inked in different combinations. We were instructed to paint the edges of the squares at some point, that helps the whole thing look more finished.

Next was the hard part, arranging all the squares in a pleasing arrangement. Looking at this more closely, the hard part truly, for me, was gluing the squares down in straight lines. Is this surprising to anyone? Nope? Good.

Finally we got to choose embellishments to glue on top of the squares. There was a huge assortment of all kinds of things, letters, buttons, charms, jewelry bits, ribbons, rhinestones,etc. It was hard to narrow it down and choose and not put too much "stuff" on top of the squares I'd worked so hard on. Luckily I was sitting next to Bron (she of the fabulous button stash), who had brought a nice selection of tiny Chinese coins, buttons and those cool yellow leafy feathers that I ended up using. Thanks again Bron!

It was so fun to get to:

• Hang out with Jaye and all her friends, lots of whom are mutual friends, the laughter, camraderie and talking was a high point for me
• Make art with a completely new set of materials
• Use supplies I hadn't ever tried
• Try a type of project I hadn't done before
• Check out what everyone else came up with, they were all so different in the end!

Thankful For Leftovers

Just a little leftover paper flower from the Give Thanks banner. This one was a little wonky and looked too different from the other ones to fit in on the banner, but I couldn't throw it away or afford to send it off to the Island of Misfit Toys. So I gussied it up with some inspiring words, purple paper, glitter (natch) and a red fibery thread. I have it hanging off my thread rack right above my work table.
I'm thinking one could make some very unique and cool tree ornaments in this manner...hmmm, even with a favorite fabric you've stiffened up instead of paper.

Note, this was done before hand surgery, back when I could hold and use scissors.

Citrus Colors

This is the next in the collaborative art project that I'm doing with a group based on the book True Colors. The artist who owns this particular journal chose citrus colors as her theme. The book we worked in, was like an old style cookbook which she had done a fabulous dimensional leafy cover for and we contributing artists were left to art up the cardboard dividers. See on the right there is the the little metal tab sticking out. It made a nice sturdy base to work on.

I started out by gessoing to get some texture built into the surface, painting in greens, then I started layering imagery. The peas,leaves,peppers and cucumbers are from a paper napkin which I peeled apart until I had the top layer only, this is a nice way to get some images with a lot of transparency. I had just used up yet another package of incense, this one is Japanese, and I liked the colors and Japanese printing, so this is on there, some origami paper, an artChix atc which I altered, and then a swag of furry fibers through some punched and eyeleted holes. As a final step I slathered on the gel medium and pressed into it a plastic netting (probably from fruit).

On the reverse side a similar process was used with some repeating of the elements. First gessoing, painting, then a chinese character doily, cucumbers from the napkin again, the same origami painting, as well as the same fiber and eyelets. I added a small quiltlet which I made in the citrus colors intentionally for this collage. Lastly, there is an artChix image which is a intensely tinted photograph copy on some interesting papers. One of the interesting papers behind the image is made from spritzing bleach onto a plain colored paper, makes a nice mottled texture.

Trimming the Moon

Bought this Fiskars rotary trimmer at Costco about a month ago, and finally got around to using it. After a little fiddling (duh, there is a lock for the sliding cutter), I got the hang of it and trimmed up the collaborative Halloween storyline deck (artwork similar to this deck shown but with a spooky story card too) in virtually no time at all. This was the first time I attempted to trim my cards with anything but scissors, and I was much happier with the results. Not as wonky or iffy around the edges.
The surface is smooth and slick, the measuring markings are clear, and the cutter moves easily. The little feet on the bottom held the whole shebang in place really sturdily on my table too. It came with an extra blade too, I don't know how long the blade will last on this gizmo.

But after trimming this deck, I was again disheartened by how completely off a lot of the measurements are in these collaborative decks. They are supposed to be 3x5". Seems pretty clear huh? But only about half of them actually were. Most of the errors were pretty close and I didn't lose too much of the image or the words. But some were off by quite a bit. I hope that the future decks tighten up on this. Especially for the useable decks like the tarot one!

Now to trim the two copies of the recent tarot Carnivale Mystere collaboration. That's a lot of cutting to do!

I was recently struck by the view of the half moon and the cloudy sky/silhoutte of my house and trees. So I'm sharing here my two best pictures which kind of captured what I saw.

A Box of Green

I'm participating in a round-robin swap based on the ideas in the very cool book about collaborative art journals, True Colors. Each artist chose a color, or group of colors for their "theme".
This first picture shows the top of my "book", which is actually a gigantic metal Altoids tin, about 6"wide by 10"high. I covered the top with fabric and lots o' glue, and beaded on some Ultrasuede which also got glued on.
Here's a closeup of the beads. These word beads are cool, but they have a different word on the other side! So I had to trap them so they wouldn't switch around and say something really weird...
Here's the bottom of the box, which I used matte gel medium to glue the tissue paper and magazine photo on. I liked how the matte gel looks when it dries all the way.
This is what the inside of the tin looks like. On the left is the sign-in pocket (a library pocket), with green cards all ready for the artists to sign and alter. The cards on the right are cut to the shape of the box, wrapped with instructions in ribbon, to help get them in and out of the box.
This is one of the cards that I did. I've been saving this picture for a long time, and finally I had a chance to use it! Something from Alaska native ceremonies out of National Geographic if I recall correctly.

I won't see this box for about a year as it travels around the country through our group, it is exciting to get a new book to work on every month and to imagine what everyone else is doing to my box of green!

Paper Quilting

Just for fun today, here is a how-to on the subject of paper quilting.

First I started out with a piece of white construction paper, layering torn pieces of colored tissue with white glue. As a last step at this point, I laid a white piece of tissue paper over the top while it was drying and then tore it off. This kind of muted the colors and made even more surface interest.

Definitely let it dry for at least a day, there are a lot of layers and you don't want to be sewing through wet glue(not good for your sewing machine!), or damp paper (it will tear).

My next step was stamping over the top with a large motif stamp that I carved a while ago. Just with regular ink.
Definitely looking interesting at this point, don't you think?

Next, I decided on a flowery garden theme based on how beautiful my deck flower bulbs were at the moment. I snapped some closeups of open tulips, and then some rosemary just for spice. These were cropped closely in a photo editing program and then printed out on silk. Arranged on the surface, then held down temporarily with glue stick.

For some reason, a Good Earth tea bag paper tag caught my eye, and I added it to the composition. I love their tea, and I love the little quotes on the tags. Plus if they get the tea on them, the paper looks cool when it is stained.

Make a quilt sandwich with your paper piece on top, batting, and backing fabric.

Now onto the stitching. Using an old needle (why waste a new one on sewing paper?), and your stitch length set on the longest possible length, slowly stitch away. Yes it is a little stiff, perhaps a little noisy, but it works.

When you are happy with how it looks stiching-wise, then cut it to the size you want, and zig-zag the edges. Voila', done!

Here is a detail that shows the writing that I did on the lumpy surface. The words are the botanical names of the flowers, their meanings in the Victorian flower language, and what they are used for in herbalism.

My Very Own Library Catalog Card

What fun is this? Go make your own library catalog card. Thanks to SharonB at In a Minute Ago for the link.

Made up ephemera, I love it. No more buying old stinky, crumbly paper off of ebay or at the flea market. Print your own, with the words you want...