Coloring Meditation

Jeanne stopped by to spend some time in the Studio with me. Today, we decided to color. Julie gave Jeanne a beautiful mandala coloring book for Christmas. Jeanne found a mandala with hearts for me to color. I used vibrant colors.

Jeanne chose a more pastel colorway.

While we colored, we chatted via Skype with Jodie. A lovely crafternoon was had by all.

Gingerbread Train Station [part 2]

These are the individual cars each of us decorated.


JEANNE

I especially appreciate the icicles dripping off the side of the roof

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JULIE

Julie put her special signature on the roof of her engine. I like her purple smoke stack.

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JODIE

And who is this fine fellow?

Why, it's the Prince of Candy Cane Lane!

MARGARET

My car was overflowing with the presents, ready for delivery.

So long, gingerbread, until next year! 

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Gingerbread Train Station [part 1]

For the last three year, the AuralArtists have gotten together on the day after Thanksgiving to make a gingerbread creation. The first year we created a gingerbread house, complete with a fish in a brook and a rainbow bridge. The second year we worked on a little gingerbread village.

This year we created a gingerbread train station. Each of us decorated a car. Then we set it in a winter wonderland.


THE OVERALL VIEW

Two engines, two train cars, a licorice track with pretzel railroad ties. Four species of trees. Three expressive snowmen. Coconut and icing snow. Loads and loads of candy.

[click for larger image]

[click for larger image]

THE TREES

We used the fabric circles / wooden skewer / star button trees for the last couple years. The sparkly blue tree was found at a thrift store.

We made the centerpiece tree by curling a piece of paper into a cone shape, then wrapping it with gold tinsel garland. Then we gave it a garland of red and green ribbons and a jelly star on top. To finish it off, we added tiny wrapped gifts and sugarplum presents.

The chocolate trees are made from Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and a Hershey's Kiss. We finished them with a garland of frosting and lights made of teeny candy jaw breakers.

THE SNOWMEN

This is the third year the snowfolk have made an appearance. They're made from rolls of felt with felt and button scarves, painted faces, topped with a hat made from the fingertips of a knit glove.

This is the happy Christmas tree farmer.

This poor fellow's snow fort started to melt and fell apart.

This overly excited chap is totally wowed to catch a glimpse of The Prince of Candy Cane Lane.  You'll meet him tomorrow!

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I found the inspiration for the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup trees on Pinterest
Original by Good Housekeeping

Turkey Brigade

Say! Who are these fine looking bald fellows?

Why, they are the turkey brigade Jeanne and I made for Thanksgiving. We included one at each place setting to use as nameplate holders. 

We used a clothespin for the body. Painted the upper portion with brown acrylic paint. Added a felt beak, felt wattle, and googly eyes. We had a hard time finding feathers, for our fine friends, so off to the dollar store I traveled where I gathered up four feathered Mardi Gras masks. Jeanne carefully disassembled them and -- voila! -- tail feathers. The turks stand in a base made of spraypainted foam core.

But like all rafters of turkeys, these chums just wobbled around and did not want to stay in strict formation. Gotta love them gobblers.

Many thanks to Jodie for taking photos of the completed birds.
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Clothespin turkeys inspired by an image I found on Pinterest. If anyone knows the original designer, please let me know so I can give proper credit.

Treat for My Cat

Having helped mom pick out the items for our second Mystery Box challenge, I had an idea of what I wanted to do from the start. I played with a couple ideas before settling on this one: a small planter, which I seeded with catnip for my kitty.

I actually finished making this in June, but because of the plants, I've had to wait a few months to post it.

I bought a medium-sized planter tray drainage plate at the store to use as my base. I needed something fairly large, but didn't want a full-sized pot for this.

First, I cut the felt to size and hot-glued it to the edge of my pot, then added the ribbon on top. I glued the mirror to the styrofoam circle, and hot-glued it to the center of the pot. 

My pack of sequins had two shades of blue. After I decorated the pot, I sewed the sequins to some extra pieces of felt in flower shapes, then cut them out to use as decorations.































The candle is just sitting on top, and the flowers are attached with tape, so they're all easy to remove if needed.


I dropped in some dirt and seeds in, and put the butterflies in as guardians.

Then I waited.

It actually turned out to be quite the little adventure, growing catnip in such a shallow pan. My first attempt didn't go so well. They started to sprout, but when the temperatures hit over 100 F, the planter dried out too fast because it's so shallow, and all my seedlings died of dehydration.

My second batch went much better, after I remembered to water it every day. They were looking just about right to call it good when I forgot to water over a weekend, and half the plants died again. Sigh. 

Eventually, I decided to just call it good enough, and took pictures of my final product.

Some of the little plants are actually full-grown, I believe. I've tried showing it to my cat, but she's not quite sure what to make of it.





























I've dropped a few leaves for her, but she doesn't seem interested in them, either. Oh well.

I'm still proud of myself that I was able to grow the catnip, despite the challenges of excessive heat and shallow soil. 

Mystery Box Challenge 3

Our mom actually sent this box out sometime around Easter, but we've all been so busy this summer (wedding, college graduation, road trip), that we haven't had time to post the challenge.

So, our Spring/Summer Mystery Box included 10 items. 
































1. Felt
2. Decorative Paper
3. Candles
4. Butterflies
5. Styrofoam circle
6. Mirror
7. Lace
8. Ribbon
9. Pom-poms
10. Sequins

(All pictures courtesy of Margaret)


We weren't given a "must use" list this time, so it's completely up to each of us to decide which items to use.


Let's get crafting!

High In The Sky

I got this done by the deadline at the end of March. I really did. I'm just really, REALLY bad about making the blog posts. (There are at least two others I did last year that I never got around to posting, either.)

 It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with my basket and supplies. I had an idea forming slowly over a couple months, but nothing concrete. It wasn't until after Easter, when mom gave Jodie a hot-air balloon gift, that I came up with this idea.







































I got the pretty blue and silver ribbons from the table decroations at my cousin's wedding (with permission, of course). The silver ones were just the perfect size to weave into the basket.

And inside? 































The origami flowers I made for our July 2014 AuralArtists' Challenge.


Out of the 9 items in the mystery box, I used 6 of them for my project.
- Wicker basket
- Glitter paper
- Tissue paper
- Party beads
- Gold ribbon
- Pipe cleaner

I had to buy some extra pipe cleaners and the balloons. The rest of it came from my craft stash.

Now all I need is some fishing line to hang it from the ceiling!

October Group Challenge: Beader Late Than Never

So, October's AuralArtists' Challenge is supposed to be, crafting with beads!



It's quite late in the month to be finally posting the challenge, but we've all been a bit busy with jobs, school starting, house reorganizing, and a year-long project that was finally completed. 

Hopefully, at least one or two of us will still be able to complete this project.

Pintrest board ideas here!

By The Seashore

When I started, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I liked a couple of the ideas on the pintrest board, but wanted to do my own thing. This was the one that inspired me most.

I decided on a green/teal color pallet for this project. I wanted a color I haven't worked with before, and these paint chips caught my eye went I started browsing.

I used pinking scissors (special craft scissors with a design on the edge, instead of a straight edge) to cut out all the paint chips first - 3 copies of 6 different samples, with four colors on each, for a total of 72 colored rectangles to work with. Then I had to decide what to do with them.

After a little trial-and-error, I ended up with the plan that I would use two of each color, and make sure the pair of them were on a diagonal from each other. I think that's what made it take so long, but I also think it made the final product look better than complete randomness would have.

The project took 5 hours from start to finish.

I wasn't sure if I actually really liked it as I was working, since it wasn't in the right shape the whole time. I only cut it down to the rectangle at the end.  And then, I was very happy with how it turned out :)

And, I still have a whole stack of samples left. I'm thinking I might do something else with them another day. A mobile, maybe?

Everything's Coming Up Roses!

Not to be outdone, I've completed my July Challenge only 12 days late!

I've always loved origami, so this challenge was right up my alley. I found some origami roses on the pintrest board that I liked, and decided to give them a go. Unfortunately, the linked tutorial only gave about half of the instructions and I didn't know it, and I almost gave up in frustration when I couldn't get them to come out. 

But! I went on Youtube and found the full tutorials I needed, and ended up making four different variations of rose, as well as three different leaves. 

The large yellow one was the simplest, called a Bird Base Rose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hntACo6ZdMk

The blue one is a basic rose, and it gave me a little trouble because I kept making creases I shouldn't have. I ended up with two blue crumpled paper ball toys for my cat before I got one completed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSesWQ-51ZM

The small purple and pink roses are called Kawasaki Roses, and are definitely not for beginners. They were the hardest to figure out, but the most fun for me just because it was a challenge. (I just kept thinking, whoever first invented this rose must have been an origami genius.) Thus, why I made two. The first time I was shaping the rose, I kept saying, "IT'S BLOOMING! IT'S BLOOMING!"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSwiHZWjuZM  

The leaves came from various sources. 

The pointy one on the top-right of the yellow flower was from the blog post with the poor flower instructions. Fortunately, all the instructions for the leaf were there (it's also at the end of the basic rose tutorial): http://www.bloomize.com/origami-leaf-with-or-without-veins/

The other two, I found just by googling "origami leaves". 

The large rounded one was my favorite to make, although the instructions say to use scissors, which is blasphemy in origami! I used a much more acceptable way of folding it to shape it: http://www.origami-flower.org/origami-leaf-single/page-11.php

I'm not very impressed with the technique of the small wavy one, but it looks ok when it's finished:: http://www.instructables.com/id/Origamy-Leaf-Tutorial/ 

The last one was something I ran across on Youtube while looking for the other tutorials. I thought it was an ingenious idea, and looked nice when finished, so I went ahead and added that one to my collection last-minute. It's called a Magic Rose Cube, because it can be folded up into a box, and unfolded into a flower at any time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8EyLFWXV_0

So, overall, I had a TON of fun making these. I have lots of scraps of colored paper now, as well as a number of "cat toys"... though my kitty doesn't seem very interested in them so far. Oh well.