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