Stash Swap & Sneak Peek at Felted Doll 3

A few weeks ago I participated in a stash swap at Creative Artitudes on Facebook with Cynthia Hanna hosting. This was my first stash swap ever. In fact, I had participated in only one other swap before, and it was an inchies swap a couple of years ago. 

In this swap, the participants were put in a list. What we chose to send was to be intuitive about what the other person might like. The person above you sent you some of their stash that they no longer wanted or needed, and you sent the person below you some of yours. There was no limit on how much or how little, only a $5-7 postage/mailing limit, and a deadline for getting the packages mailed out.  

I just had to share with you! It was like a Spring Christmas when I opened my package from Erin, and I hope she doesn't mind me sharing. Just look at all the neat stuff she included, much of it co-ordinated in spring colors. This is a picture of as much as I could get into the picture and still show a portion of it.

She sent embossing glitter powder! I've never used embossing glitter powder before! Of course, I had to open it and examine this wonderful stuff. Later that afternoon, in the Dr.'s waiting room, Mama noticed my face was all sparkley. Oh, well, I needed some sparkle! :/

There are decorative papers, tags, some gorgeous handmade papers, collage ephemera, the cutest kitty stamps and ink pads, an adorable stamped rabbit finished project with stuff for me to make one, various kinds of stickers,

lots of beads, buttons, an oragami album project, ribbons, pretty tape, heart-shaped paper containers to assemble and decorate...and I know there's more. I am still so excited over my "new to me" stash, and anxious to put it to use, merging it with my other stash and projects. I also look forward to playing with the things I've never tried before. Thank you so much, Erin, for all these wonderful items that you shared with me! I will think of you every time I use any of them.

Thanks Cynthia! This was so much fun! :)

OK, this has nothing to do with the stash swap at all. I just thought I'd share a sneak peek of Felt Doll #3 that is now in progress. I'm trying something new with this one, as she is seated. This is only the needle-felted core form, and as you can see she is missing a foot, one and a half arms, and a face, but she's getting there. I don't know if you can see, but she does have indentions for eyes and mouth, and a small bump of a nose. I haven't decided on her outfit yet, but her personality is beginning to emerge. I have to say that she's a patient soul. She hasn't griped once about it taking me so long to complete her. :)

I have several projects in progress, and I start another round of the 21 Secrets workshops on April 1, which I am so excited about. My main project right now is to clean off a spot to work in. :/

Have a wonderful creative week, and I hope something on here made you smile! :)

Inchies Swap Returns

I received my inchies from the first swap I ever participated in the other day and thought I'd share them with you. It was in the Mojo Art Group, and there wound up being only three of us playing, but that was okay. It was fun and a good experience. Each of us made twelve 1" x 1" square original works of art and sent to the hostess, Tammy, who divided them up and mailed us back twelve from the other players, thus I have twelve more tiny original works of art from friends to add to my collection.

Tammy also included a delicious bar of her favorite organic spice chocolate candy with the return. I had never eaten organic candy, so that was also a first experience. It was very tasty. I'm trying hard to save J (hubby) a piece of it. :)




Anyway, here is a photo of the inchies I received. Lori's are on the left and Tammy's are on the right. Click on pic to enlarge. Sorry, the photo doesn't do them justice (they have glittery accents), but aren't they gorgeous?

I selected twelve from the batch in the photo in the archives to swap. Just click on inchies in the labels list and it should take you there if you want to see them. Sorry I don't have a seperate photo of the twelve I swapped uploaded.

Thanks Tammy and Lori. I enjoyed swapping inchies with you. Maybe we can do it again sometime. :)

Inchies, Mickey & Minnie

I tried this yesterday and had a long post about what's been going on with me besides inchies, but as I was reading back over it my thumb accidentally hit the touch pad on my laptop and most of the post disappeared and I can't find it, so I'm going to go ahead and share my inchies with you today and when I can I'll try to re-post what I sent into oblivion. :)

This is my first batch of inchies made during Oct & Nov. I was going to try making some anyway, but Tammy over at the MojoArtGroup decided to hostess a 12 for 12 swap, and I decided to play. I started out to make enough for the swap, but got carried away and made a bunch. Some turned out better than others, but I had a lot of fun with all of them, plus it's good therapy. :)

I tried making pictures in all kinds of light, but couldn't get a good one, so wound up scanning them in. A lot of detail doesn't show up, such as most of the blue background ones have sparklies in the background, and some have glitter, the orange ones aren't that dark and have chinese characters in the backgrounds, etc. Some have a matte finish and some have a gel medium finish making them shiny, so that made it hard to get a good picture.

Rarely do I get excited over anything, but I'm a tad excited right now. I was checking out the post after I posted it and wishing the pictures were better, and I discovered that if you click on the picture it will enlarge and you can see a lot more of the details. I'm still a greenhorn at this blogging thing you know. :) Passing this on for friends/family that might not know you can do this either.

All kinds of things were used to make them. I made the backgrounds on watercolor paper using stamps, acrylics, watercolors, pastels, liqui-gem acrylic with sparklies, etc., then cut them into 1x1 inch squares after they were dry, which I then painted, collaged, stamped, added glitter to, etc. In other words, each square was an experiment. :)















I finally decided on 12 to swap and they are fixed up and ready to put in the mail (not telling which 12 yet though :)). This is my first swap and I'm a little nervous, but I'm sure it'll be okay. I look forward to receiving 12 back from the other participants. They are all wonderful artists and I hope they aren't disappointed in mine.

Each of these little squares is a seperate 1x1 inch picture. The clown faces and pears on some of them are miniaturized prints of some of my linoleum block prints. The hearts (except the white one) and feather ones are carved eraser stamps (the gold ink on red doesn't show up much in the picture). The one in the top right corner of the first picture with the pink pears was my very first attempt. It has sparklies in the background that don't show up. I tried to make each one different. Sorry the pictures aren't better. :(

Anyway, as I said it was fun and therapeutic and I'm going to be making more, but not for a while. Too much going on between now and Christmas, like Christmas cards to make and shopping, which I haven't started yet, and Thanksgiving before that, plus a zillion other things that I've avoided while playing. :o

Right now I have to get busy on a project a friend dropped off on me yesterday evening. It's a wooden cutout blank of Mickey and Minnie Mouse sitting together on the moon. She brought me a picture to go by and wants me to draw in all their features, limbs, clothes, etc. so she can paint them. I tried to tell her I couldn't draw it, but she said I could do anything and left it. She's one of my best friends since we were kids, and she told me if it took me a year it would be ok (she knows I work slow :)), but patience is not one of her strong points, and I know she will call in a day or two to see if I've started it yet. I tried scanning and enlarging the picture so I could trace it off, but 2x the size isn't quite big enough and 3x was way too big. So I now have out a piece of charcoal and am going to see if I can sketch it off onto the wood enough that she has lines to fill in between with paint. If that doesn't work, I'll think of something else. So here I go... :)

Take care of yourselves. OK? :)

PS: I'm having a heck of a time getting this to post with seperate paragraphs, and have tried several times to get it to change, so I'm going to post it, and if the last paragraphs all run together again, sorry, and I'll try again later to fix it. If they're seperated...great!