Showing posts with label fall art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fall art. Show all posts

Thursday, October 15, 2015

DIY: Halloween Craftin'

Hey, lookie! I created a club! Here are the rules:

1st Rule: You do not talk about the Naughty Kitty Club.
2nd Rule: You DO NOT talk about the Naughty Kitty Club. 

Oh, crap, wait. My bad. That's Fight Club rules. Carry on. Let's talk away about this ultra-photo heavy blog post and this imaginary club I created cuz that's what you do when you're not cool enough to be invited to join a bona-fide club (tho I guess using cheesy terms like "bona-fide" will prolly get you ruled outta just about any club). 
I actually have no idea just how this here needle felted number came to be. It most def wasn't planned. I mean, I'm currently buried under half finished sewing, painting, crafting, art teacherin' projects. So piling one more on top of that Mountain of Mess seemed like such a great idea. You know. I like to use crafting as a means of avoiding unfinished crafting. I'm sure it's how Martha Stewart lives her life. 
Since I'm currently in full-blown Halloweenie mode, I've got a big fat pinterest board bursting with vintage fall images. And images of black cats keep popping up and I'm loving them! Our first cat, Mama, was a sweet black cat and I'm always reminded of her when I see them. 
So, on a whim, in-between 23 other projects, I pulled this rarely worn lace jacket thing from Forever21 outta my closet and set to sketching out my plan. 
I started with this vintage Halloween kitty as my inspo and went from there...

You might notice I later dropped the bow tie as I thought it was two similar to this OTHER needle felted cat ensemble (yes, I've now created two needle felted cat wears. And, yes, I'm completely aware that this makes me a Crazy Cat Lady. Whateves.) After this was drawn, I cut it out and pinned it to the back of my jacket.
Using chalk, I sketched out the circle to go around the cat and started needle felting that part in with a combo of yellow and orange wool roving. Oh! If you'd like to learn more about needle felting supplies, how it's done, the whole thang, go here and check out some crappy videos I made! 
I like using the wool yarn as an outline because it gives me some super hard edges and also allows me to fill in my spaces Paint-by-Numbers style. 
Omg, everytime I see this photo, I think of Donald Trump. Tell me I'm not alone!
The parts of the face came together really fast. I just started outlining and filling it in. 
I tried to limit my color palette so that it had a vintage look to it. Instead of using black for the cat, I have this great roving that is a blend of purples, browns and blue that I thought worked well. 
The eyes proved to be a pinch challenging in that I had to really thing about what colors to use. If I had used black to outline the eyes, they would have disappeared into the background color. So outlining 'em in that deep orange was my solution. 
And, c'mon, I needed a slogan to go with the kitty, right? I was thinking of those jackets the Pink Ladies wore in Grease or the hot pink satin roller skating jacket I had as a kid. I toyed around with a couple of names and this is the one that I liked best.
I managed to get this done in the time it took me to watch Pulp Fiction and Ghostbusters. I'm on a rando retro movie watching bender. Did I mention it's fall break and I have a week off? Yeah, don't hate. 
During a coffee-refueling break, I got sidetracked and made a new table runner! I'm really loving all things mid-century mod right now (like, aren't we all?) and I found this fabric in my stash from Ikea. All it needed was a lil hemming and boom! New runner. I love how well it goes with that Williamsburg marbled platter (a thrifted score, if you can believe!) and the antler and feathers that el hubbo has collected on his hiking trips. 
Still loving the Halloween display. The only good part about taking it down at the end of the month is that it will be replaced by Christmas goodness, yay!
So this is what our table pretty much looked like over those first coupla days of fall break. Peaky Blinders on one laptop, pinterest on the other. Oh, and a Big Fat Frothy Coffee. That's a must. 
A buddy invited me over for a craft night. In preparation, I dug out a coupla old canvases and painted 'em white and then gave them orange stripes. In the end, one became the cat painting and the other as the background for my craft. 
At my buddy's house, we used this air dry clay stuff (I can't recall the name but it wasn't like Model Magic) and I shaped the parts to this Pumpkin Dude.
Once dry, I painted him in that went over him with some watered down brown acrylic paint. That was brushed quickly off to leave an antiqued-ish look behind.

Then I shoddily put him together with some wire and glued him to the canvas. The prob? He blended into the canvas too much, says me.
 So I lightened the orange lines with some watery acrylic and added the vertical stripes. Done! AND I just realized both he and the cat are winking. What the what? Am I on some sort of winking kick? Are they both missing an eye? Do they have an eye-winking twitch? 
All I know is that guy ain't winkin' fer sheeeeeet. Pumpkin! Get off my a$$!
Oh and then there was this painting. So, the back story on that crazy texture is that I painted that in oils a million years ago. The colors I used were horrid but the texture was cool. So I painted over that in watery creme, added the stripes and started busting out this witch. I have NO IDEA how to finish this beast but I'll keep you posted. 
 The texture has me really excited tho. 
 UGH. Speaking of beasts, this bad boy has been on my easel for a while now. I thought it would be so easy to bust out. Turns out it's taking foreverness. I'm determined to finish before the 31st, y'all. It's gonna happen. 
Unless I get distracted and make another jacket, that is. Oui! I think instead of the Naughty Kitty Club, I should change the name to Messy ProCATinator's Club. Tho it just don't have the same ring to it, does it?
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Sunday, October 28, 2012

DIY: Flattened Fall Leaf Fantasmic

You can find two other leaf-craft posts on this here blog. There's Leafy Prints post and the Leaf Relief project. Since you've got those leaves collected, why not try these other two crafts?
Happy fall, ya'll! 

It's autumn here in Tennessee complete with brilliantly colored leaves, chilly mornings  and a constant craving for hot apple cider. Every year I forget just how beautiful and brilliant fall leaves are. And every year I collect dozens of them to be pressed and used for craftasticness.  I thought I'd share with you one of my favorite fall projects which I've been calling Flattened Fall Leaf Fantasmic (guess who was just at Disney).

My arrangement of leafy-ness hangs above my rarely-used because it's often too-stacked-with-stuff desk.
 Dude, if you are looking for a simple fall craft, this is the one for you. You'll just need the following:

  • Leaf Press....you can find these for about $10 at any craft store. Or you can just use a telephone book and some heavy weighted books to stack on top.
  • Leaves...if you pick them up off the ground, be sure they aren't so dry that they crack and break when you bend them gently. These should be freshly fallen leaves.
  • Canvas
  • Modge-Podge
  • Paint
If you are handy, a leaf press like this one would be simple to make. You'll need to change out the cardboard every now and then as it will wilt from the dampness of the leaves. I just cut cardboard scraps from the recycle bin to fit my press.
  1.  After you've collected your leaves, press them immediately. If you use a press, you'll need to tighten the screws every day to help flatten the leaves. A telephone book also works great and can old more leaves. Simply stack more books on it daily.
  2. After a week or more, the leaves should be ready. They should no longer be damp and they should have held their flattened shape and kept their color.
  3. While waiting for my leaves, I began to work on a background for my canvas.
You can see by the year that this one was created several years ago. I was very surprised that the leaf kept it's brilliant color after all this time.
 4.   I wanted my canvas to have an antiqued look, so I used a coffee dye. I really had fun playing around with some different textures. Sometimes I let the coffee drip down the canvas. Other times I pressed the damp surface of the canvas with a paper towel. I also used a doily as a stencil as seen on the canvas above.
 5.   Once the canvas was dry and the leaves were flattened, I began to play around with the composition. I used Modge Podge to adhere the leaves to the canvas both under the leaf and on top.
This is the canvas I used the paper towel on. I loved the delicate pattern it left behind when I lifted the towel.
 6.   From there I began lightly drawing in my design in pencil. I used black ink to paint my design as it seemed to flow better on the canvas and give me a hard edge. I wanted the painting above to look like a cameo necklace.
I love all of the different colors in each and every leaf.

For this one, I used a doily in the back ground and many leaves from the same tree. To connect them, I painted a tree branch.
Once complete, I covered each canvas with a thin layer of Modge Podge. I wrapped the edges in black ribbon and hung them up as a grouping together. So easy! 

If you happen to give this craft, or any of the other leaf projects a shot, please let me know! I've gotten several emails from folks that have tried out both the Leaf Relief and the Leaf Prints projects with success. I'd love to know what you think of this latest leaf-y project.

Happy Fall!
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