Mixed Media

hey bloggers.  hope your week is off to a great start.  i wanted to share this fun video of my cool and skillful neighbor Art (yep, his name is Art) creating a shelf for me out of one of my old suitcases.  thanks for filming the video mario – i love spontaneous projects like this…t!m

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I am cutting out and creating these most perfect stack of fabric flowers today.I am using this cute accuquilt cutting die.And testing all sorts of fabrics with my eBosser.With so many shapes cut I decided I would start sewing them into little corsages.With more than a dozen made I needed someplace to attach them.So I am decorating dollar store wine bottle bags!These could not be prettier or easier to make!

My first enamelled copper samples. I'll tell you more about this soon.Hope you have a great Sunday!A Bead A Day Ever have a reese's cup moment when designing a piece of jewelry? Lisa is sharing her latest.About.com Jewelry Making A pretty pattern on a bag prompted the design for a new necklace.Art Bead Scene ABS editor Tari selects Susan McClelland's quirky, art bead-filled design for her Designer of the Week piece. Check out Susan's gorgeous necklace!Beading Arts Aren't found objects fun? Join Cyndi to see what she does with ceramic insulators!Resin Crafts Blog You can replicate the look of kiln fired clay with air drying resin clay and brass stencils!Snap out of it, Jean! There's beading to be done! Jean previews an exciting blog hop and reveal hosted by Carmi Cimicata, using Dazzle-it's great new Chinese Knotting book by Fernado DaSilva! Come see the excitement!The Writing and Art of Andrew Thornton Andrew created a pair of summery earrings for a customer. Check them out!

If you would have told me a few years ago that there would be a machine that would emboss metal for me at home in mere moments....I never would have invested in all the tools I purchased to actually emboss on metal! Metal embossing is an art form and the tools are not inexpensive. It is also extremely time consuming. I love the look of embossed metal but can't afford the time to create it!So imagine my excitement that I can make a box top like I show on this post in 18 seconds!!All I did was use an embossing folder and a piece of craft metal pre cut to cover my box top.My eBosser did all the work!Can you believe how deeply embossed my metal is?I'll be demonstrating this on The Shopping Channel on June 17 and 18th!

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happy friday bloggers!  wow this week sure flew by for me.  my days seem filled with nothing but deadlines lately – i guess you can say being busy is a good thing.  i’ve got some serious creative ideas brewing in my head so luckily it’s the weekend so i’m definitely going to lock myself in the studio and just create.  i’ll be sure to share the process on instagram this weekend and the outcome on my blog monday… today, i wanted to share about a trip i took earlier this month to visit our friend paula cheney and attend remnants of the past.  even though my travel schedule has been insane this year, this was a show that paula has talked about for years so i needed to make it a destination for me this year, and i’m so happy i did.  we arrived early in the morning (a mere 2 hours before the show actually opened) to make sure we had first dibs on the goods, well us and a hundred other people with the same idea…lol.  the weather was perfect, the show was beautifully displayed with booths both inside and out filled with vintage everything.  we spent hours sifting through nostalgic treasures, grunged goodness, and fanciful findings – it was simply wonderful… although we walked in as a group, paula and i quickly dashed in opposite directions as we searched and scoured for the ultimate finds.  lucky for us we didn’t attend this show alone as mario and paula’s husband jay joined our mayhem.  they were so helpful gathering our purchases and taking them to the “holding area” so we could make our way to the next booths.  with the car fully loaded we headed back to paula’s to enjoy a bbq with family and friends and go through all of our treasures to see what each other got.  i didn’t take many photos (well honestly i didn’t take a single photo, mario “mr. BTS” did), but paula on the other hand sure took more photos - if you want to check them out on her blog click here… well between all of my to-do’s this week i did manage to take a little time here and there to work on unpacking everything and finding a new home for it.  i love it all so i wanted to share a look – enjoy your weekend…t!m

Watercolor pencil inspired by American folk art -- and a crazy day!I do enjoy hearing the birds sing outsideof my window... Mini collage, above. Who knew that shorthandwould have a symbol for gesso? Myspell check doesn't even recognize it so Ineed to add it to my dictionary...Watched an interview on-line by Danny Gregory, andadded some of his quotes to this watercolor collage.His blog and sketches are amazing...(There is a link to his blog in my side bar) Can't seem to resist the vintage bottles.Silk flowers stuck in an old medicine bottle.Above, Sharpie pen and watercolor doodlesjust for fun.Watercolor pencils and Sharpie pen.I drew this while at a gas station. We wereparked in front of the propane tank exchangedisplay, so had to draw the cool logo.Filled in the color when I got home. Collage from scrapbook papers and a color copy of a map in an encyclopedia.The flower is a photocopy of a drawingthat I did, then colored with watercolorpencils. And couldn't resist a bit more shorthand!That's my ICAD week.What have you been up to?

Earlier this year I started following the blog posts and Facebook news from Craftwell, the maker of the eBosser. I was very interested in the possibilities that this tool could present for future projects….and quite honestly, after seeing the Crafter’s Companion team in the UK show off their machines I just knew I had to have one.Well sometimes you do get what you wish for and I am very pleased to announce that I have been engaged by eBosser to represent them on the The Shopping Channel in Canada next week!I have been prepping samples and learning about all the wonderful features of the machine for the past two weeks.I am so excited to announce that I will be on air Monday June 17 and Tuesday June 18th.Please tune in for one of the shows (I’ll post times this weekend) and see why I have been having so much fun with the eBosser. I have several blog posts showing you some great projects and I’ll share even more techniques and ideas on-air. The pricing from The Shopping Channel will make this a very tempting new product to add to your crafty tool collection! My machine has earned a permanent place on my worktable and I refer to it as “the assistant.”

Since the arrival of the eBosser to my studio I have thought of dozens of materials I wanted to test cutting with it.It is such a powerful tool and yet it occupies very little space on my work table. This week I wondered how it would handle cutting felt.I set all these small thin metal dies on my platform. Then I simply placed a piece of felt over all of the dies and ran them through the eBosser.Clearly it has no trouble at all cutting it! The felt is perfect! These shapes are not something I would want to cut by eye. I had a wonderful time sewing them together. I added some stitch marks and beads.Then I cut a few more pieces of felt to glue to the reverse side hiding all my stitches.My necklace is so light and colourful. Felt is universally available and very inexpensive! I hope you make a felt wearable soon!