Return of some favourite paper beads

I have some favourite paper beads back in stock after a year on vacation. Vintage Music, Vintage Script and Day of the Dead are all back on Etsy. They were some of my best sellers for years but, eventually, their popularity waned and I gave them some time off. In October, however, my Etsy store (and the beads) will be 10 years old and I feel it was only right that these beads get to take part in the celebrations. More news on that to come nearer the time.

Surprise!

I had the most amazing surprise yesterday. I ordered a book last week called Skulls by Noah Scalin, published in 2008. It is based on the hugely successful Skull-a-Day blog and shares images from the year long project to create a skull a day, fun projects to make yourself and a few fan creations. While Scalin was in the midst of his project I sent him some hand made crafty creations using hand carved rubber stamps I made from his own images. The surprise? My creations are in the book! I had no idea they had been published and it was only by chance that I went back to Skull-a-Day and found out the book had been published. Being a fan of all things creepy I felt I had to buy a copy and when it arrived and I was flicking through it, SURPRISE! Let's just say I was on cloud nine, ten and eleven yesterday. Although the book doesn't seem to be available on either Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk to buy new, it is available from several second hand sellers. If you like all things skully you might just love this book. The really spooky thing is that the book was published on my birthday in 2008.



In other news, I have been making new beads, indulging in some yarnful creations and trying to get work ready for the local exhibition next week. All after a week of dog sitting for my sister. No rest for the wicked.

Birthday biz

There has been a flurry of big birthdays in my family recently with more to come so making birthday cards has been top of the agenda. My Gran was 91 at the end of August and my Uncle and Aunt will both be 70 this month. However, to top off the birthdays this year is my Grandfather's at the end of the year. He will be 100. It is hard for me to imagine what that would be like. He still lives by himself and is fiercely independent so it even more amazing. Anyway, I have added a couple of the birthdays cards here. The first uses K and Co papers but the photo doesn't show it off at its sparkly best. The papers are foiled and I added some glitter and a shiny blue peel off to match the foiling. The other card is made from a kit bought from QVC UK and designed by their resident craft expert, Dawn Bibby. It's a lovely kit, pale and soft but with foiling and lots of butterflies and dragonflies.

The other photos include some of my Halloween themed swaps - a ribbon fairy/witch swap and a recipe card swap. But, not content with paper crafts I have gone back to making some jewellery. The pictures here are some of the pieces I have uploaded to Etsy. I enjoy making jewellery very much but I don't wear jewellery very often. So I figured maybe I could make a little money selling it. We shall see if it works out that way. The final photos are of a couple of Halloween bookmarks made using Cosmo Cricket papers and some of my own zany skulls which were then laminated. One is for a swap buddy and the other is currently in my copy of The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. You can never have too many bookmarks.

Gothic art

I finally got round to finishing up my final piece from the Mixed Media Gothic Art workshop I mentioned last time. It is painted in acrylic and markers with collaged elements. The bats are a Sizzix die, the skull, crow and girl were all drawn by me and coloured with markers. I had great fun with this short course. This summer has been spent trying out new ideas and techniques for my art but most of it has been done by myself, without any guidance. But I have to admit that it is nice to have a course material to follow and videos to watch. The videos are a great help. You can actually see how lines are formed the artist and that makes a huge difference when you don't have confidence in your own mark making ability.

The mermaids are coming along too. At the moment though they have the shoulders of Olympic swimmers and the hands of boxers. I am going to have to work on giving them a little more grace and finesse. But I will post some pictures once they look a bit more like mermaids.

Skull skill

I signed up for an Art Trader online workshop a couple of weeks ago and have been having such fun. I started with the Gothic Art one and have been learning how to draw little goth girls and associated goth bits and pieces. The course covers how to draw basic features, bodies, how to put together a goth girl, clothing, themes... the list goes on but you can find out more by visiting this link.

Anyway, the goth scene often involves skulls so I thought I would put together a little tutorial on drawing zany skulls. Skulls are often seen as white, cream, grey or even black but my idea is to make skulls that are a little more, well, zany. I love colour and don't see why skulls should always been the same. So this idea just seems to be a little different. If you look at the photos you'll be able to follow along with the text.


In the first photo we have figure 1. - the starting point. Draw a letter 'C' lying on its face, i.e. lying with the open end of the letter facing downward. You can vary this shape to be long and thin or short and fat. In figure 2. half of a slightly rounded rectangle is added to the opening of the 'C', extending downward. That's not a very clear description but I hope you can see from the photo what you have to do. You can make this rectangle as long or as short as you like or even make it slightly more triangular like the two skulls beneath. Figure 3. shows the features that I added to mine. Eye sockets don't have to be round or equal in size. Just do whatever you fancy.

Now, this is just a basic skull (drawn with a rather shaky hand too - sorry) but what makes them zany is that you can either fill them with colour using acrylics, markers, coloured pencil, etc or draw them on patterned paper like scrapbook paper or paper you have painted yourself. I have included a photo of some that I have made using both techniques.

The last three photos are of skulls I made and used in some creations. The first is a collection of inchies, the second two are collages I did for the Gothic Art course.



By the way, I loved the Gothic Art course so much I signed up for the Whimsical Mermaid class this week ;o) Even if you don't want to take a class you might want to check out their FREE online magazine. It's brilliant, full of information on ATCs, journals, altered art and related techniques.

Skull-A-Day pt 2

I'm on Skull-A-Day! Well, not me, personally. Some of my work is. Totally wonderful! The link is: http://skulladay.blogspot.com/2007/09/braincase-xi-doublewide.html I can't tell you how exciting it is. This guy is a genius and so many other talented artists submit work to him. I have a very silly grin on my face, let me tell you.