Lovely Dress Embellishment

Although it's been a while since I've embellished clothes it's something that I really love to do. Once I get into that embellishment mood it's one of those things that'll take over my whole day. I get so absorbed in my work and am so curious to see the end result that I'll usually work on an embellishment project nonstop. Then before I know it it's all done! :-) It's fun and

relaxing for me as well so it doesn't really feel like work to me. Anyway, it was recently that I got into one of these embellishing moods, which I did along with cutting and hemming a dress. The green dress that you see in the pictures was originally much longer. I'd say that I cut off at least six inches worth of material. That involved cutting both the outer cotton fabric and an inner polyester-like fabric that was used as an inner skirt for lining. I didn't want the fabric to fray after hemming so I first folded over the fabric on the outer and inner skirts and then hemmed them. Those details aren't shown in the pictures but I just thought that they were worth mentioning. Anywho.....as far as the embellishing goes, it was simple, just time consuming. I had a bunch of really pretty green glass beads that I sewed in layers of two for a couple of rows on the dress bust. After that I thought that a thinner layer of beads would be a good way to trim off the embellishment. I didn't want the dress to look like it was too heavily beaded. I also didn't want it to literally be heavy with beads to the point that it would be weighed down at the top.

You usually don't think of things like that when you start to embellish, but after doing it a few times you learn to factor in the weight of your beads against the fabric. It helps to avoid what I call "the droopage". :-) 

Cool Patterns *C*

If there is anything that unifies the end result of most of my craft projects it is the incorporation of embellishment and patterns. Whether it be the beading detail on fabric or the studding of gems and rhinestones over paintings and drawings, I always find myself embellishing to add, for my own personal tastes, that last finishing touch. Displayed here are some more crafts I've done that haven't yet been posted to this blog. Collectively they represent a miscellany of crafting projects, though all of them have that personal embellished pattern loving touch of mine. :-)



This here is a pillow made from fabric that I designed and created. Using some plain white fabric I colored over the whole thing with fabric markers to create the orange, white and brown zig zag pattern with the green border. I also separately drew out the deer-like creature on fabric with fabric markers and sewed the little guy on top. As you can see I started embellishing the orange zig zags with beads. I haven't finished partly because I ran out of the beads that I was using for that. I really do need to get around to completing that. Bad Tanya! ;D

 This bag is another fabric markers related project, using a similar color scheme as the pillow shown above. I was lucky enough to find a blank tote at a local thrift store, so the only work for me was in drawing in and coloring my designs with the fabric markers. Afterward I added some gems to the top handle area of the bag, and then added some fabric touches to the triangles and orange background to create that nice finished 3d effect.

Recognize this little gal? It's Miffy the Bunny! ;D I decided one day to sketch out her picture from an old Miffy book that I had lying around. Then again I couldn't resist and just had to add the beads and gems. I think that the bright orange pony beads do a really good job of framing the little painting.

This painting involved a lot more work than one might think. It was originally a fashion art print of a mannequin that I picked up at the dollar general store for a few dollars. I wasn't that crazy about the print but I thought I would be able to make do with the wooden base. SO... what I did was apply several layers of streamer tissue and glue to the board to create a good painting surface. After it was all dry THEN I painted the polka dot vase with flowers on top. I've used a similar technique to decorating Styrofoam balls. That is, first give the streamer and glue treatment to the surface, and then paint over it. Really good technique to use if you want to make your own custom hand painted ornaments with the Styrofoam.

And lastly is a purse that I embellished the heck out of! It used to be all black, but seeing as I had a ton of rhinestones lying around I thought to myself "Hey!!! Why not give this purse a makeover?" ;D I really like how the rhinestones create an entirely new look for the purse with the contrasting black and white. Mind you though that this was a lot of work since I literally hot glued each individual rhinestone to make the front and back of the purse look like this.

Plant Pots Prettiness *3*

Gardening has become a newfound hobby of mine this summer, sort of to the point of obsession actually LOL. I water my plants regularly, check up on them all the time, keep a journal about their daily growth, draw them, and even decorate the pots that they reside in! That brings me to this post, which features a few of the well decorated pots in my plants collection. The painted pots were done by me and my brother earlier in the summer. The one with the coral background and intricate pattern was done by myself, the red and

green one by my brother. We simply purchased a couple of ready to paint pots in the crafts section of Target and painted them together that evening. It was during a later visit from my brother that I thought hey,..., why not start growing some seeds in them? I wasn't using the pots for much else, and they turned out to be the best starter pots for sproutlings. I scattered a bunch of English daisy seeds throughout the soil of my pot, while my brother carefully placed a few red sunflower seeds in his. My daisies are growing a plenty, and as you can see by the sheer size of them my brother's flowers are growing at an incredibly fast rate. They sprouted not too long after he planted them. I'm going to have to transfer his sunflowers

to a bigger pot very soon, one which I plan on painting as well. I actually already sketched the design for that pot painting last night LOL. The third plant in the green pot is a celery that I have been growing since early summer. I am amazed by how many stalks it sprouts from the center. I'm curious to see how many it will end up growing. Right now I believe that it has 13 stalks with two more on the way. I can't wait to start using some of the celery leaves for some god awesome tempura. Mmmmmm *C* But yeah onto more crafty matters, you can see that the celery's pot is also well decorated. I chose to hot glue a bunch of beads onto the plastic pot. Although the plastic beads were quite cheap coming in bead bins from Michael's and Walmart, I think that the combination of colors is quite elegant and once again comes to show how you can make very nice looking crafts without spending much money. Awesome!!! ;D

Paintings By the Craftista

These paintings and drawing were done quite a while ago, but partly because of a bad camera I didn't take these pictures until now. Both paintings feature a character of mine, which if you look throughout the blog will recognize in the dolls that I created some years ago. I had always wanted to do paintings featuring my Louise Brooks

inspired character and often sketched little portraits of her in different costumes and settings. I was really happy with both results and have both paintings hanging in my apartment. The one with the green skin is of course the wicked witch of the west, and the one with the orange cap on is just one that I thought of sort of free style to go along with the red and yellow pattern in the background. In both cases I glued on gems as embellishment, which I feel adds a nice 3 dimensional finishing touch. I have planned on painting other wizard of oz inspired portraits, just haven't gotten around to finishing them. One portrait that I have worked on some is one made to

look like glinda of oz. When I do get around to finishing that I will of course post a picture here as well. The last photo of this post is a drawing of my girl wearing a little carrot couture costume. I've actually sketched her in various other fruit and vegetable inspired outfits. I think it would be the cutest to create little outfits for my dolls like these. The carrot couture drawing I have taped to the window of my school office. It adds a nice cheery touch to look at now and then for some eye rest from the computer. :-)

Oh the Things Modge Podge Can Do! *3*

So it was some time ago that my mom gave me a couple of black bookshelves which were nice and all, but for my own tastes what I really thought would be cool would be something on the brighter more colorful side. I had successfully painted a couple of white

bookshelves in the past, and so I thought that I would challenge myself by giving one of my black shelves a makeover. What you see in the pictures is the final result, which turned out well enough that I don't think you would have guessed that it had originally been black. What I first did was paint the whole thing over with several coats of pink paint. The paint did not have any fancy gloss finishing to it, so even after numerous coats of paint it still looked sort of dry and unfinished. That was when the idea of using modge podge came in. If you don't know, modge podge is basically an adhesive that is sold in jars in the craft sections of many stores like Wal Mart or specialty craft shops like Hobby Lobby and Michael's. People often use them as a final sealant over paintings or projects to give that final glossy finishing touch. There are numerous varieties of modge podge, some being totally clear and others having a slight tint to them. I chose the rose tinted kind as I thought it would go well with the pink base that I had already put on the bookshelf. The tricky thing about modge podge is applying it so that it dries as evenly and as clearly as possible. The thing to remember is that applying modge podge to things is basically like painting on glue, so it will dry on thick as is, often times resulting in a streaked appearance. This becomes even more apparent when you apply the tinted kind. To get around this I thinned out the modge podge with some water. When you do so you might think at first that it looks too runny, but I've learned that modge podge can never be too runny and usually the runnier the better. Diluting it with the water thins the adhesive out and results in an even glossy coating to finish off the project. The gloss definitely did make the shelf look more finished, though some areas were a bit streaky from some earlier trial runs with the modge podge. So...to give it that final FINAL finishing touch, I added a red blotched pattern with paint all over, used the same paint to

color the frame, and then spread a little bit of glitter paint all over. The result: an awesome bookshelf to proudly display your most girliest things! *3* I chose to use it for holding some of my shoes, especially the ones with more color, patterns and bling. I think that it adds a nice glamorous touch to the bedroom. <3

Past Artwork

So I thought I'd continue posting some past artwork of mine. As I've started painting again I decided to begin the art selection with some watercolor paintings I did several years ago: 

Watercolor #1: so the materials used weren't anything fancy, just some watercolor pencils on construction paper. This one is like most of my paintings in that I usually don't plan things ahead; just start doodling and experimenting with colors and see where it goes. I ended up liking the red with blue a lot and I really liked how the watercolor strokes came out on the paper. Comes to show that you don't need to have expensive materials to make something to your liking.

    

Watercolor #2: I tried painting a window with a curtain nearby at the beginning of this one which it may still resemble, but ultimately I ended up laying down some bright colors and defining the areas around with lots of black and dark brown strokes. I'm pretty sure that this one was done on watercolor paper.

This is a pencil drawing that I did some time ago on loose leaf. I've always felt the most amount of flexibility and control when drawing or painting with a utensil that I can firmly hold in my hand (like the watercolor pencils). Drawings like this usually start with me doodling a little with pencil and end with me feverishly layering on lines to define the image to my liking.

I consider this some practice drawing of what I ultimately envision to be a painting. Now the source of this is not at all mine; when I drew this years ago I was trying to get the shading down on a Tamara de Lempicka painting: Le Dormeuse. I always found that painting to be relaxing to look at and plan on someday taking the time to recreate my own. 

 

So I'm really not trying to sound cliched here but I think that I drew this on a Fall day. I don't know..... the leaves, wind, and colors at the time made me feel like drawing a red riding hood type of person taking a fall afternoon stroll. I'm not sure where it is at the moment but I think that it was around the same time that I drew a tree with a bunch of crayon pastels that looked a tiny bit like the tree in the background. The drawing spanned multiple loose leaf papers and made for some really nice wall art. I'll post it on this blog if I find it again.

And to mix things up here is a painting of Miffy that I did one or two years ago (I think). I always liked how cute and simple the drawings in those books were, and just felt like making a larger version for myself to hang up by the crafting corner of my place. Nowadays if I want to paint I'll buy a cork board at a thrift store really cheap (up to this point I think that the most I've ever had to pay was two dollars) and just paint over that. It's perfect because once you're done you can hang it up and don't have to worry about framing it. A much cheaper option to painting than the traditional canvas route.

Another pencil drawing. It was around the same time that I was producing the other pencil drawings that I was trying to get better at drawing people. For this one I chose as my subject one of my most favorite flappers: Louise Brooks. She also inspired the dolls that I made and posted on the blog some time ago. I haven't committed to the same amount of practice that I had those years ago lately but from what I remember the most challenging thing for me was in balancing the facial features. Drawing individual components of the face are not hard: I can do eyes, noses, lips just fine. It's balancing them out that's difficult. Most of the time I space things out too closely together. 

Those viewers who checked out my last blog post will have seen lots of yellow, red, black and orange lines and rectangles. Those were illustrations I created through Paint to make cleaner more polished and printable versions of the original artwork they were based off of (basically crayon colored squares on graphing paper). This one obviously follows a different color scheme and pattern than those (I was thinking of water when making this one). I would love to turn this into a painting and/or a quilt. Right below this is another example of my crayons on graphing paper art. :-) 

So yeah.... that's all for now folks! ;-D

Some Patterns Old and New

These little art pieces are both recent and old. The originals they're based off of I created 6 years ago or so. It was basically one afternoon that I had a bunch of crayons and graphing paper and decided to color within the lines to make my own colorful patterns. It was a simple and addicting activity, and I ended up spending the rest of the day churning out one abstract looking pattern after another. The patterns were stored in a binder and forgotten until this new year. I liked the originals as much as I did those years ago, and as a renewed activity I decided to recreate the patterns within Paint. The results are a lot cleaner looking than the smudgy crayon versions, which I am happy about. I'm not finished recreating all of the originals, so it is very possible that I will have a future post with more abstract looking lovelies. :-) The last one looks a bit different than the rest because it's the beginning of the ones that I made with a different color palette. Think of it as a prelude for things to come. ;-D