Lost... and still not found!

As some of you might remember, I held my own private art retreat last October when my hubby was gone for a guitar conference. I made some really cool faces using molds and air-dry polymer clay...

But now I have a mystery on my hands... I can't find these little devils ANYWHERE!! I recently cleaned out my studio and can honestly say that I personally touched every single thing in there and I did NOT see these guys. I've been looking for them for over an hour now and... nada. Did they sprout legs and wander off??

LA CRUZ - Newest Fabric Cuff

Here is the latest fabric cuff, La Cruz, finished just minutes ago! Since this is one of the projects on my roster for My Private Art Retreat, this cuff was great fun to make and I'm really proud about how it turned out. I wanted this piece to have a southwestern feel to it and chose turquoise along with shades of brown and silver for the color palette. The centerpiece is a vintage pendant - not real turquoise but still pretty cool. Vintage ribbons - velvet, brocade and silk - were paired with a vintage doily and some pretty crocheted (by me!!) lace along the edge. Hanging from the mandala pendant is a small silver cross for which the piece is named - La Cruz.

Nicely finished with soft felt layered between vintage fabric, this cuff closes with a ribbon and button. It is fully adjustable (one size fits all) - to clasp the bracelet simply wrap the ribbon tie around the vintage button. It will stay comfortably and securely.

The full length of the the cuff is 7 3/4" and it is 2 1/2" wide including the crocheted lace trim. You can find La Cruz for sale on Etsy.

My Private Art Retreat - Day 3

"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home." Twyla Tharp

I thought this was an appropriate quote for my little art retreat experience! Even though, on day three, I found it completely necessary to leave the house... dang.

So, here's what happened - I started the day by catching up on some of my favorite blogs and drinking a cup of my very favorite tea in the whole world - genmaicha. Next came the scheduling and set-up of the projects for the day:

1. Crack out the Makin's Clay and make some polymer faces using the Sculpey mold

2. Make some resin cabs using the Easy Cast kit.

3. Make some crochet lace for my latest fabric cuff project.

4. Try out the two sewing machine-esque thingys to see if they work of if they are junk.

Since I had not stepped foot out of the house for a while, a walk was in order. I checked out the garage sale listings, found two sales that were pretty close to each other and not too far a distance from me and had a wonderful morning walk. Wow! It was so beautiful out - sunny, cool, crisp - a perfect fall morning. I didn't find anything at the sales except one very tasty cupcake for 25 cents (SO worth it!).

Once back home, I started by getting out my new size C crochet hook and made some pretty edging to use on the fabric cuff. It's a little more wavy than expected but I was happy with the result nonetheless.

Next, it was on to the polymer clay faces! While unwrapping the clay from the plastic packaging, I noticed that some of the colors were more pliable than others. The beige and the brown had become a bit dry and were hard to work with but the other colors were very nice. This clay is really soft and pliable and pushed into the molds very nicely.

I still decided to use the dried out stuff too - as you can see from the photos, the beige faces are a bit rough around the edges but they reminded me of those great ruins you see in movies like "Indiana Jones" - great Buddha-like faces overgrown with vines, cracked from age and erosion.

Here's the complete collection - now I just have to wait for them to dry and they'll be ready for some higher purpose!

Next, I was hoping to tackle my first try at resin but was discouraged after reading the directions. When I read the part about curing and that it needed to be 70 degrees to cure properly, I knew this would have to wait until some nice warm late fall day (if we have any more of those!) or until next spring. Our house temp was 65 and the outside temp was cooler still. Refusing to crank up the furnace this early in the season just to cure 2 or 3 cabs, resin, I'm sorry to say, will have to wait.  :-(

Next came the sewing gadget trials and they both failed miserably. The electric one didn't work at all and the manual one was so cumbersome that it would just be easier to hand sew so there really is no point to the darned thing. Therefore, a decision just had to be made!! Do I need a sewing machine? I had, after all, sold my last one at a garage sale because there just isn't room to sew in this house. But, that was a full-sized sewing machine with fancy stitches and stuff which I never really used. I quite enjoy just sewing in a straight line - maybe a zig zag here and there would be nice every once in a while - but I could live quite happily with a simple little straight stitch sewing machine (so there.). After some quick online research, I decided that a new sewing machine thingy was most decidedly in my future. Besides, all of the "Harry Potter" flicks had been watched so a trip to the library was in order. And, since it's on the way, I'll most likely stop at my favorite resale store. And since I was going out anyway, I might as well go shopping for a new sewing machine! Yep, you can say it... go ahead... I'm weak!

So, off I went to the resale store where I got some very cool stuff! I bought this old jewelry box...

 

... these fantastic old spools...

 

 

... some crochet books....

...and a size J crochet hook to round out my collection - I now have all hooks size C - K. Anything is possible with those!!

At the library, I found this great book, Mary Jane's Stitching Room, by Mary Jane Butters:

This book has lots of great photos and ideas for projects - mostly I just like the photos. As I was flipping through the pages I found myself intrigued by tatting - maybe that will be on the schedule of retreat events sometime? Maybe for My Private Art Retreat #2 - in the spring - so I can finally crack out that resin!!

 

And, after much running around town, here is the new sewing machine! Still in the box - I'll give it a trial run on day 4 or 5. It's tiny!! I'm pretty sure it's a chain stitch machine but that will be just fine for the type of projects I want to make with it.

Finally, I was home! I watched the first two installments of Back to the Future and worked on my fabric cuff for the evening. Here's the latest:

I'm not sure what will be on the agenda for day 4. Saturday is the best day for garage sales. My husband, who has been at a Russian 7-string Guitar Festival for the past 3 days, will be playing in an evening concert and I will be attending that. A large part of my day will be spent on the road as the concert location is 1 1/2 hours drive from Dubuque. After that, a friend of ours is having a CD release party so we will be drinking beer and listening to too loud music into the wee hours. Phew! It's going to be a busy day! :) I like those.

My Private Art Retreat - Day 2

Well, here we are half-way through day 2 of my Private Art Retreat :)

Today started with some lovely Genmaicha tea...

...and an archeological dig through my craft studio (aka. closet). As hoped, I emerged victorious having successfully unearthed lots of crafty goodies purchased on a whim and usually from the sale table. Most of these have languished at the bottom of a bin or basket for many, many months but have survived recent organizational attempts. They therefore must have some true value or interest to me.

Here are some of the treasures I found and which have now made it onto the schedule of events at this sweet little art retreat I am giving myself.

Just about every type of antiquing solution ever made by Sophisticated Finishes - all unopened...

some no-bake Makin's Clay in earthy colors and a Sculpey face mold...

an Easy Cast resin kit and cabochon mold...

a one gallon zip-lock full bag of batik fabric scraps with fusible webbing on the back

and two odd sewing machine-esque thingys picked up at garage sales someplace and which I have no idea about how they work or IF they work.

These are all on my list of wonderful art retreat activities but I started my crafty day with some more tea staining and even remembered to take some "before" and "after" shots.

The fabric and trim before:

 Here are the tea bags all bundled and ready to go (I use 12 bags for every batch which is roughly 1 gallon of water). I'm using some very cheap tea bags which were bought on a whim at a dollar store somewhere. The tea was SOOOOOO bad that it wasn't worth drinking but that makes it perfect for this type of activity.

I boil the water and into the pot they go!

I let them steep FOREVER! well... for a really long time, at least... around 10 to 15 minutes. Then I take the bags out, giving them a good squeeze to get all the pretty brown-ness out of them and add the pre-washed (and still wet from the washing machine) linens and laces.

 

I let them stay in there for a REALLY long time - up to 1/2 an hour or longer because I want the fabric to absorb as much of the pretty color as possible! I also stir the pot every once in a while.

When I can't hardly wait any longer (or need to use the burner for some coffee or something), I remove the fabric from the pot and rinse it until the water runs clear. I pop everything in the dryer on high and wait (very impatiently) to see the final result. The color when the piece is dry will be lighter than when it's wet but I knew when I removed these pieces from the tea bath that this was going to be a great batch!

Here are some "after" shots along side the original "before"s. I tried to lay the fabric out basically the same way and on the same background cloth so the color change would be easy to see. Digital photography is a finicky thing - even though the color of the background cloth appears different in the "before" and "after" shots, it is the same. I hope you will be able to notice the wonderful color change in the original fabric pieces.

Before...

 

...and after.

 

Before...

 

...and after.

 

Before...

 

...and after.

And already the afternoon is upon me! So much to do! Yay! :)

My Own Private Art Retreat

That's right... an art retreat for me, myself and I... a private art retreat... in my own home... and it won't cost me a dime! :)

I love to hear about all the great art retreats, meet-ups and conferences going on in locales near and far - I mean, who wouldn't want to go to a bead retreat in Cortona, Italy or sail around the Caribbean on a fancy cruise ship for a week learning the latest mixed media techniques? Yea, sure... if you've got a few thousand dollars sitting around and don't have things like a mortgage or food to buy. Shheeesh!

So I decided to host a 4-day retreat for a very special person - Myself! No dishes, no laundry, no cleaning (except as necessary) - only art. Over the past few months I have been saving interesting tutorials found in blogs and on craft websites but I never seem to have time to actually use them. I gathered those together and made a trip to the library to check out some crafty books that sounded interesting.

The subjects/projects I wanted to try my hand at were:

Tea Staining linens

Making the spiral scarf from a tutorial by annekata

Taking a crochet refresher course

Making some crochet edging and ruffles

Starting work on a few beadwork ideas

Fabric Dolls

Hand sewing and Embroidery

It's only the end of the 1st day and what a great day it has been! Armed with the first 6 "Harry Potter" flicks, I got started at 7:00 this morning with crochet. After a few refreshers on the basics (my grandmother taught me how to crochet when I was 10 or so but I haven't done it since grade school) and learning how to read the charts, I was off and running! I did figure out that I needed a smaller hook and made an emergency trip to Hobby Lobby.

After a quick (and healthy) lunch...

It was on to the Spiral Scarf tutorial. This great tutorial came to me from Anne Kata's blog - called, appropriately enough, annekata. Be sure to visit her blog! You'll love it, I promise!

 

And, finally, tea staining some lace and linens. I only wish I had remembered to take a "before" shot :-P The wonderful shades of the tea stain are hard to capture in the photos but, trust me, the fabric turned out really nice. WARNING: this is addictive - I'm going to do another batch tomorrow (and remember to take those "before" shots).

 I want to start another fabric cuff during my retreat. After green, turquoise is my favorite color. Pair that with chocolate brown (do I really need to explain what I like about chocolate brown?) and it's simply heaven! I started by putting together treasury of some faves from Etsy:

Visit the treasury here and be sure to click and comment! :)

Here's the selections of goodies for my next fabric cuff:

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to tomorrow! :)