Carina's Dala Horse CraftAlong

I jumped in with both feet, or maybe that's with all four hooves, after seeing the Dala Horse Craftalong over on Carina's Craftblog.




Image via Carina's Craftblog

 
Carina, along with Hanna (iHanna), Kathryn (The Pickled Herring) and Pam (Gingerbread Snowflakes), are running a Dala Horse Craftalong through August 21st. Go immediately to Carina's post here for the details and/or click on the Dala Horse Craftalong button in my sidebar to go to the Flickr group. You will love the pictures of the beautiful horses that have already been added to the pool. I tossed in my IKEA Dala Horse Hack from last year just to get in on the game.

I had tremendous fun decoupaging this gal. Just wish I had photos of the wonderful mess. We have a saying at our house- "You're not having fun if you're not getting dirty."

I originally found Carina's lovely blog last summer when we were both enrolled in Sister Diane's Blog Tune-Up class over at Craftypod. I was immediately drawn to the colors of her blog as they are My Colors (in spite of how my house looks now- my husband drew the line on the amount of pink in the decorating. Party pooper) and it made me think back to the days when I used to do mostly cross-stitch but a bit of embroidery as well. I sat at the dining room table for a couple of hours on Sunday tracing one of my Dala Horses and doodling around with embroidery pattern possibilities. That was the easy part- now I need to chisel out some quiet time to actually do the work. Oh, and such "work" it will be, toiling away with needle and embroidery floss. Whoa is me and all this "work."

Going for something just a bit different.

So anyway, back to the Dala Horse Craftalong. Click on the Craftalong button in the sidebar to visit the Flickr group. Then go over to Carina's and get the details, then join in the Flickr group fun with your project(s). I hope to have something show you later- it's been decades a couple years since I've done any embroidery so who knows what it will look like.


Thanks for visiting today and I hope to see some of your Dala-gals in the Flickr group- let me know.

And Flowers Too

I am so thrilled to have been featured again on the Crafty Crow, this time in their Fourth of July Round-Up with the Fireworks T-Shirts we made last year.  I love each and every one of the comments that have been coming in and am so glad that so many of you had a great time doing this project with your kids. Click here to jump over to that post to get the low down and the "How To". Dawnetta sent a photo of the shirts she made with her kids... love it! Thanks so much for sharing, Dawnetta. Did you notice the heart center on the shirt on the right? Outstanding!

JayLeigh posted photos of the shirts her kiddos made on her blog, Pacific Northwest Nature for Families, such as these colorful shirts from her two youngest. JayLeigh has lots of action photos of the shirts in process and looks to me like they all turned out spectacularly.

So I wanted to mention to you that I actually started doing these shirts as flowers, not fireworks. That gives this project a longer season so it's not too late to fire up the fireworks. I mean flowers. Flowerworks?

Once you make your flowers, go back and add leaves, stamens, sepals and any other shazaam marks you would like. Of course don't forget the butterflies, caterpillars, and even...

 ... a sun. I made this shirt with my Zippy when she was about 6 years old (oh my, half her life ago!). She wanted a little flowerbed for her shirt, no bugs. You can see that these shirts do eventually fade so it's important to heat-set them as best you can.

I made these with patients at work once and one fella made a bouquet and drew in a lovely vase for his flowers. I love that- these crusty ol' coal miners, lumberjacks, truck drivers, and laborers roll into Craft Night and turn out some super great stuff. All they need is a chance.

We also decorated some canvas tote bags once (again, at work)- the heavy duty ones you get at Wal-Mart. The ink doesn't travel quite as fast or far on this heavier fabric but they worked out OK. (Sorry about the glare in this photo- darn sunny days!)

OK so there you go, more inky fun. It's all about the color with this project! Thanks again Dawnetta and JayLeigh for sharing your photos and for all the visitors here in The Jungle. I appreciate every single one of my Butterfly visitors.

Have fun.

 

Addendum (7-8-11) I received an email from 4ofwands about her shirt fading and she suggested vinegar as a way to fix the ink. These do fade, mostly with the first washing, and I've been wondering about using a soda ash solution to spray on the design while the alcohol is still wet, before heat setting. I'll do a test with vinegar and soda ash and let you know how it turns out.  Thanks---

Paper strip Collages

Way back last May (already!), one of my very first posts on The Butterfly Jungle was a test post. I knew no one was listening and I was mainly just playing and experimenting. Actually, that's what The Butterfly Jungle is for me: playing, experimenting, sharing, goofing around. It's not my vocation, it's one of many avocations.

Anyway, if you've clicked over to that post you know that I was goofing around that day, scrambling to come up with a craft activity at work.

Since that day, the craft I came up with has become one of my favorites to do with my patients. It's fairly easy, readily adapted, and oh so colorful.

Mostly colorful. But maybe you're feeling a bit monochromatic.



Like my sparkly Barn Swallow?

Anyway, the basics of this project are that you cut paper into strips and glue them onto a piece of tag board that has been cut to the dimensions of a frame mat. This project is super cheap- get the mats at a dollar store (usually two in a package), use scrapbook paper, magazine pictures, wrapping paper- anything you have around the house, and tag board or posterboard for the backing. You could even use cereal boxes- heck, don't spend lots of money on this. Most of you dear Butterflies have ribbon but if not, hit  up Wal-Mart for a couple of spools at 97 cents each. Cheap!

I'm going to have to send you elsewhere for the tutorial on this, acutally two tutes. I made the original tutorials for The Creativity Greenhouse, my "professional" blog, and since, as we know, tutorials are time consuming to make, I won't re-invent the wheel but rather send you over there to check it out.

The first post- Paper Strip Collages, Part 1- gives the basic directions for making this project. Keep in mind that the audience of The Creativity Greenhouse are professionals who mainly work in healthcare settings with individuals who may have varying degrees of cognitive or physical impairment. Some of the instructions may seem obvious to you but The Creativity Greenhouse is intended to target folks who may not necessarily have had so much craft exposure in their lives or for whom crafting and creating is serving a different purpose.

Paper Strip Collages, Part 2 gives some adaptations that make the collages easier for folks with some type of impairment, even craft impairment. Seriously, I once had a patient who was a physicist but she just didn't get this at all so she and I worked together ("Let's do this in the closet", she said, "So no one can see what a dolt I am.") at a fairly basic level. It was like Einstein not being able to figure out the yo-yo. Anyway, she got it and proceeded to go to town with it.

I love it when that happens!

So since you'll not be getting the tutorial here (and I do hope you'll click over the The Greenhouse and give it a try), I'll show some of the collages I've made- nothing too fancy. I love variations on a theme and tend to get a bit carried away. Check it out.



I loved cutting out this girl and her doll! More cutting in my future.



This one is a bit different in that I cut th paper into wavy strips
and highlighted the edge with a silver Sharpie. After I glued them to the
backing, I put a piece of vellum over the top of the strips.

For the butterfly on this one, I used a favorite photo of my daughter, taken by my dad, and colorized it in Picnik. Fun stuff.

So jump over to The Creativity Greenhouse to get the lowdown on how to make these. Scissors and glue- doesn't get much more basic than that!

Thanks for visiting and have a great day.

Lamp Shade Graffiti

I was messing around in the Family Waiting Area at work the other day-- just straightening things up so it would look nice. It's not a fancy little room but it's a good place for families to have some quiet and privacy. Or a quick nap.

Anyway, I was sorting and stacking the magazines on the end tables when I noticed one of the lampshades.

Someone had drawn a design over the entire surface of the shade with a blue ballpoint pen.

I suspect this is where he or she started. The panel to the left of "Love", maybe you can make it out, says "God". The rest of the panels are just the abstract, tribal looking design- all eight sides. I was just incredulous. It's one thing to sit in a public waiting room, bored out of your mind, staring off into space while you have an ill family member up the hall, and you think, "Wouldn't that lampshade look cute with some decorations on it? I bet I could do something clever. Maybe I'll try it when I get home." It's an entirely other thing to actually pick up the ballpoint pen and draw on a lampshade that is not your own. On the most basic of levels, that's vandalism. Thank goodness this person did a really nice job, but I'm still kind of amazed by some people's nerve and audacity. And I'm wondering where the staff was because this room is right across from the nurse's station.

If you look closely at the bottom of the shade-- sure enough our midnight Michelangelo signed his work. Even more nerve!

My next thought was, of course, "I'm going to try that when I get home!"

I bought this buffet lamp years ago when we first moved into our antique house. There was no light over the table area so we used this buffet lamp on the table until the remodeling progressed to the point where we could put a light fixture over the table. Since then it has been on the fireplace mantle, right next to the table, as supplemental lighting. The shade that came with it had a plastic lining and it was developing cracks. I was nursing it along until I could find a nice new shade when I knocked the lamp over one day as I was hurrying through the dusting. End of lampshade. Thankfully, Target had this shade on clearance for $3.00 so that's where things stood until we had to replace the natural gas line with propane, which meant that we had to replace the gas fireplace because .... oh, you can read all the nasty details here.

Anyway, new fireplace mantle means new decorating fun so away went the lamp. Enter hospital graffiti artist and a reason to play around a bit.

And.....

Ta-Dum! I used a fine point Sharpie for this and would probably go with the ballpoint pen if I had a do-over. You can see where there is a little "blop" in the places where I lifted the pen to turn the shade, but they aren't huge spots. You can see in the picture below where I started to draw the design with pencil and then abandoned that to just wing it. It's around the back by the seam so it won't ever be noticeable.

So I just sat on the couch, in the sunshine, while our power was out one afternoon, squiggling away. It did occur to me that this is exactly something I would have gotten a lickin' for when I was a kid!! And I probably would have done this too. Like the time in 2nd grade when I was admiring another girl's dress at school (we worn dresses back then) that had pretty lace along the edge so I started snipping along the hem of my dress with my school scissors, hoping to get a similar look. I didn't and got bored so ended up with about 12-inches of snipped hem on my dress. Yes, it was in the front. I can still remember hearing my mom, ironing away at the laundry, "What in the world!" Busted. Thank goodness my mom is the creative type who can appreciate experimentation. Anyway...

Then I added some trios of dots here and there around the shade, just for fun and because no one was going to bust me for doing so.

And I too signed my worked...

So how fun was that? I don't know that I'll ever use it anywhere in the house but it was fun. I even discovered another unused lampshade- I've been sitting here staring at it wondering how I can doodle on it and what sort of embellishments I could add. Rhinestones? Fringe? Oh wait, I have an idea .....!

Hey, thanks for visiting today and please remember- doodling on public property is vandalism so do a good job. Just sayin'.  

A Rainbow of Your Own

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day- a rainbow for that pot of gold. I was brainstorming St. Patrick's Day projects at work one day and I wanted something that was colorful and not green. It's been a long, gray winter in my next of the woods so colorful was a high priority. I keep a stash of terra cotta pots on hand and as I stood looking at them in my craft closet the whole thing sort of congealed.

I also worked up a color scheme for Easter.

I posted this project over at The Creativity Greenhouse so you can see all the nitty-gritty details over there by clicking here. The blog is designed for therapist and Activity Directors working with older adults in long term or rehab settings so it's a bit different than posts you may be used to seeing. But check it out and then get your rainbow groove going.

I hope to be getting back to a regular schedule here- I've been having tremendous technological difficulties that I think are healing now.

See ya next time!

Knifty Flowers

Last time I shared my fun and adventures with becoming a knitter. Well- OK, with learning how to cheat at knitting with a neat-o gadget called the Knifty Knitter. Today we're going to look at the Knifty Knitter gadget for making flowers.

I originally assumed that this was to be used with yarn but the directions that come with it say to use raffia. No raffia in the house so ribbon was the winner!

The pegs on the knitting hoops, while removable, fit fairly securely into the holes on the frame so I was kind of sputtering and fussing about how these pegs kept falling out. In fact, I came very close to super gluing them into the holes. Don't do that!! This is an instance where it would have been helpful to read over the instructions first but I was so excited to start...

Anyway,

Secure the end of the ribbon onto the side peg, leaving about 6 inches or so.

Pull the ribbon straight across and wrap around the 6th peg from left to right. Come back to peg 1 and wrap around peg 12 from right to left (opposite).

Turning the loom a bit with each peg, continue wrapping in the same manner all the way around the loom.

Back to peg number 1.

Now do it again, same way, until you have gone around the look a total of three times. Yes, three. Do you want a fluffy flower or what?

Tie the end to the anchor peg and cut the ribbon, leaving a tail.

Cut a length of ribbon for the center of your flower, about 18 inches or so, and secure that to the anchor peg (it's getting crowded on the anchor peg, isn't it?).

Come up from the bottom, between two pegs, cross over the top of the flower, and go down between the two pegs directly across. Come up between the to pegs to the left of your starting point, go across and down between the two pegs to the right of where you went down the first time. It sounds worse than it is when you're doing it. Go all the way around ...

... until you've come up between each peg.

Make sure you pull the center ribbon up nice and snug.

Now go around again only this time come up between the ribbon strands that loop around each peg, not between the pegs. Again, pull the ribbon snug but don't strangle it. Go all the way around.

Now you have a nice full center for your flower.

Now turn the loom over and tie off all the loose ribbon ends. Sorry about the picture-- I've been having trouble with the focus on this camera.

Take your flower off the loom by ..... pulling out the pegs! So glad I didn't super glue them into the holes!!

Yeah-- signs of spring! The loops of ribbon will be kind of folded from looping it around the pegs so go ahead and fluff them apart one at a time.

Band-Aid does not come with the kit so you're on your own there. No, it wasn't a Knifty Knitter injury.

It's so fluffy !

Another one with a nice sheer ribbon.

And a heavy ("6") yarn.

This one was made with grosgrain ribbon. It has a really cool feel to it but is heavier than the others so you would want to make sure that whatever you attach it to would not sag under it's weight. If you made it with brown ribbon for the center you would have a great sunflower.

The literature that comes with the kit suggests using these flowers, made from raffia, for packages and gift bags. Cute. Ribbon ones would be fun too. The directions also suggest gluing a pin back onto a ribbon for a little shazaam on your lapel. Cute!!

These flowers take about 15 minutes each at most to make, once you've humped over the learning curve. A great thing to do out on the enclosed porch during yet another snow storm, heat on high, dreaming of spring...

... when it ain't spring.

Yet.

Hope you had fun today. Thanks for looking in on me.