Artists and Illustrators of whom I am extremely jealous-Antony Hare

Wow. I just found out about this guy today from Notcot.org.

Antony Hare. His black and white, or two tone illustrations are just breathtaking. I love the inky black color, and his hand-drawn typography.

http://ahpi.ca/

Just fantastic stuff.

Property of Antony Hare

I completely understand the sentiment of the "bleeding pencils"

Property of Antony Hare

Mitch Hedberg portrait, oh how we miss you Mitch.

Property of Antony Hare

The Whopper, oh how it is aptly named.

Good job Antony.

Ruth

Lullaby Book-Finished

Hi Guys,
I've been working on this Lullaby Book for quite some time. The better part of a year honestly. It started as a little project for my son so I could sing him the correct lyrics to lullaby's. Then it became much bigger, to me at least. I had thought of getting it professionally printed and bound through several online book printers, but alas, most of them only had templates you could use and didn't allow the size or dimension of my illustrations. After months of trying to get my artwork to fit into their templates I just gave up and printed them out myself, and pasted them in to a scrapbook.  Maybe when I get a bit more patience for all the enormous changes it would require to get it printed, I will. But in the meantime, it serves its original purpose. I now know all the words to the lullaby's I like to sing.

Here are some pictures.

The Lullaby Book cover

I had ten lullaby's in all but only pictured my favorites. I'm very pleased.

Ruth

The Nook Cover

Last year I and my brothers and sisters got our Mother a Nook. She is an avid reader. Many of us are bookworms as well. I had borrowed it for a trip and before I went (because I drop things a lot) I looked for a cover to protect it. I never found one I liked (I only went to Walmart) and they were all too expensive. So I did what every weirdo person does...I made my own with things I had already.

Here it is.

I had this fabric in my stash. They were curtains that I had turned into a slipcover for a love-seat and then abandoned when I had gotten bored with it.

Aren't you glad someone invented Velcro? It's just super.

The nook cover is stabilized with thick fusible interfacing. It's normally for crafts or for sturdy purses, so it fitted my project perfectly. It's just fabric, bias tape, some rick rack, 1/4" elastic, 3/4" velcro, and some thread and interfacing. The bias tape stretched, which isn't surprising since that's it's purpose, and the zig zag stitching didn't turn out beautifully in contrast on the rick rack, but all in all, I was pleased and it functions perfectly.

Ruth

New quilt

I'm working on a new quilt. What do you all think? It's called a spiderweb quilt....

Paint my walls

I was thinking that I needed to paint a wall in my house. Just one. And had some super ideas. Or at least  I thought they were until I drew some out.

This is the wall that I'm thinking about painting.

The starburst just sits there, looking all bland. And I wanted it to pop. So I did a little drawing in Illustrator and came up with some ideas. 

The ever present arabesque pattern. 

A plain wall, no fancy painting.

Stripes

Chevrons.

I'm not really in love with any of them. Or maybe I just don't like my couch. Who can ever know. What are your thoughts?

Here were my inspirations:

Starburst Mirror-Tutorial

So, its been awhile. I have procrastinated getting back to blogging. But I hope I will be better in the future.

During the holidays I began a project. A project of decorating my house. I moved my furniture from storage, put pictures on the wall, and generally made my home my own. I had been living on borrowed furniture for almost two years because we had assumed living here would be temporary. It wasn't. So we moved our furniture in and I began a long awaited and very happy process of making my house a home.

One of my projects was hanging up decorations. Well, I had an empty wall for awhile above my couch. It was a lonely wall. I brainstormed and thought and searched and decided on a starburst mirror. But I wasn't in love with the size, styles and prices of the ones available. If they were perfect they were too expensive, if  I could afford them the size or color wasn't right.

I love Pinterest so I found many to look at. Quite a few people made their own. So, here's my inspiration and my subsequent tutorial on how to make a starburst mirror.

Lovely but not quite right.

This I found online at Target.com. I liked it but it was only a clock not a mirror.

I love this one but it's gold and I wanted silver.

So I got my materials together and began this crazy project.

12" plastic plate (hobby lobby $1.99)

100 (12") wooden dowels ($2.99 for a set of 25)

Glue gun (already had it)

silver spray paint (already had it)

Hang Tite Glue for slick surfaces ($3.00)

Picture hanging hooks

Garden Shears (already had it)

8" mirror ($3.99 on sale at Hobby Lobby)

First I divided all the dowels evenly and started cutting them into three sizes. I cut 1/3 in half (six inches), and the other 1/3 of the dowels I cut at 9". The others I left at 12".  Then I got my glue gun and started to glue.

I glued them in a pattern of 12", 9", 6", 9", 12", 9", 6" and so forth.

Yay!!! 

Then I spray painted the whole thing.

After spray-painting it I glued some hooks onto the back.

I also glued a bit of felt on to the sticks to stabilize them more and to make sure they didn't scratch my wall. I put some framing wire between the to hooks and voila!!! Ready to glue on my mirror.

Unfortunately, I didn't scrape off my spray-paint on the plate, or let the glue set for 2 minutes before putting on the mirror. Needless to say the glue never set and the mirror fell off. So I scraped off the spray paint under the mirror, and re-applied the glue, let it sit for 2 minutes and then squished them together. I set some weights on the mirror and let it cure for 24 hours and this time it held like a champ.

Here's my finished star burst mirror hanging out on my formerly naked wall.

I'm pleased as punch.

Here's my sexy instagram photo.

All in all it was a great project, not too hard, and in my opinion really worth it. And for those of you who might add that the starburst mirror is so over as a trend, you are correct. It is. But I don't care. I'll never be fashionable at the correct time. Go figure.

Ruth

Pinterest

I have been stalking Pinterest for awhile now and trying to do the neat crafty artsy stuff that is often featured.

Some are great and work out perfectly, some don't.

For the Christmas season I found some great wreaths that I wanted to make. I don't have any wreaths, I don't have much in the way of Christmas decorations so this year I wanted to remedy that.

Here was my inspiration:

I thought it was beautiful, especially against my blue door.

Here's mine.

All it took were some silver glitter snowflakes from Big Lots, an embroidery hoop, some silver paint, a ribbon, and a lot of hot glue.  I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.

Here's my other try at a Pinterest inspired Wreath.

I thought it was perfect because 1. I love candy canes, and 2. it's unique.

I found out that it was much harder than I thought.

I used the Bob's candy-canes in cherry. Which are my most favorite in all the candy canes and I have tried many. I had tried to avoid using hot glue since it would melt the candy and make it inedible, but alas, it was the only thing that would hold. I also used way too many ribbons in way too many colors. I changed the design too much and it just didn't look right after I finished.

In the immortal words of The Bloggess...."Meh, they're not ALL winners."

I'm not convinced that this candy cane wreath can't be done, I just need to re-think it some more.

Until then,
Ruth