Might we please have a lil confession time up in here? Cuz I need to unpack some stuff and I don't mean those boxes that have been in my garage since we moved seven years ago (real talk: those boxes ain't never gonna see the light of day, y'all, let's just be honest). Confession Numero Uno: Not only am I crummy housekeeper, I'm also pretty sucktastic at that whole decorating thingie too. You can't be good at everything, y'all (hair flip). And I most def have a big fat hairy list of items at which I am no bueno: cooking, cleaning, yard maintenance and, you guessed it, decorating. I mean, I can decorate an art room like nobody's biznatch but working on our house has me all...
I just can't even. I don't even know where to start. In fact, we've got this one room that normal folk be calling a bonus room which I've dubbed the BOGUS room. It's just one more space for me to not clean and not decorate. I did attempt bedazzling it when we first moved in and painted up these round paintings which have that lovely early-2000's color palette...
AND that's pretty much all I ever did to that room. In fact, every time I wandered into the bonus room with a lil decorating on my mind, I'd take one look around and be all...
Now I know I sound totes ungrateful as many folk don't have a surplus of space. And lately, I've been working on a Super Top Secret Project (details to come!) in which the bonus room has become a great place to stretch out and work. For that reason, I'm really putting my heart into making this space one that I love to come to and work in. And I decided my first order of business was updating those horrible round painting thingies.
Now if you've been hanging around this here blog for a hawt minute then you know I love all things Mary Blair. I've created paintings inspired by her, made necklaces, you name it. So I decided I wanted to Mary Blair-ize the bonus room! But I wasn't feeling very certain I wanted to invest a ton o' time into it if I wasn't gonna love it. So I uprooted these white and gold plate/frame thingies I found for cheap at TJMaxx several months ago and decided to create some wee needle felted sketches! The above is what my sewing table looked like before...
And then after. Now imagine that as MY ENTIRE HOUSE and you've pretty much got the picture. Say a lil prayer and light a candle for my hubs, would ya?
After a little bit of playing around, I came up with this! I was super pleased. Y'all know I'm a big fan of needle felting as it's just about the most easiest thing in the world. In fact, I always find myself needle felting to excess in the winter months. Check out last week's DIY!
Just a lil closer look.
I wasn't as in love with this one but I figured, eh, it's just a sketch. I'm sure to change it up quite a bit when I design the larger format circle.
I like needle felting on patchworked pieces of fabric. One of my first wall pieces from needle felting was done that way. I like how it adds just another layer to the design.
Even though I still had one more little needle felted sketch to complete, I decided to dive right in to the making of my first large wall hanging. Mostly cuz I knew I'd have the help of this bad boy...
What you see here is not a sewing machine but something far more magical: a needle felting machine! That's right, y'all, like a rare rainbow farting unicorn, they do exist! The hubs got it for me for Christmas for not too much dinero on el Amazons.
I love the thing. All I had to do was just tack some of the roving into place and slide it under the half dozen needles on that machine, hit the pedal and let the machine do the stabbing. It isn't great for detail work so I do resort to my trusty Clover needle felting pen for that.
But it's fab at blocking in large areas for me and look!
One down! Only two more to go!
C'mon, man! How about a lil power of positive thinkerin'?!
Okay, confession numero dos: this is pretty much how I feel. However, I'm determined-ish to follow this through and have at least one room in our house that looks decorated and finished. I'll keep all y'all posted.
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?
Hey there, buddies! I hope y'all are doing swimmingly. Here in lovely Tennessee, we're in that moody in-between summer/fall phase which makes is impossible to dress without being horribly under/over prepared. Don't believe me? Lemme paint y'all a visual: Today it was 80% rain/80% sunny/99.2% cloudy/chance of sweating your butt off in the sunshine/chance of freezing your butt off in the shade. It's no wonder my sinuses are causing brain swelling. Tho with a brain the size of mine, a lil swelling never hurt nuthin. There's plenty of real estate between these ears o' mine. During one of those moody fall days this weekend, I had the wonderful, super-duper, uber-exciting opportunity to teach a workshop at Nashville's Frist Center for Visual Arts!
That's right, this crazy art teacherin' lady got to teach adult-sized artists my fave craft: needle felting! Our creations were inspired by the Postcards of the Wiener Werstatte which translates to the Vienna Workshop. The Workshop began in the early 1900s and was a means of turning your life into a "total work of art" (sounds fab, right?). Meaning they sold everything you could ever desire as a lovely artistic creation so that your life simply permeated art. The best seller at the time? Postcards! And that's the basis of this incredible exhibit.
My buddy Rosemary Brunton, associate educator for community engagement at the Frist, lead us through the exhibit, filling us in on the history and allowing us time to explore and sketch. When we returned to the studios, this incredible group of art teachers, fiber-arts lovers and workshop-junkies (you know who you are!) were busting with ideas for their needle felted postcards.
That's right, we created needle felted postcards! AND mailed them (more on that shortly). We created these little 4" X 6" masterpieces to tiptoe into the fine art of needle felting. It allowed the participants to watch me give a short demo and explore the medium in anyway they wanted. It was a fun and quick-ish intro for the crew. If you wanna catch a snippet of what they learned, you can check out these videos I filmed a while back that will walk you through the needle felting basics and supplies.
Supplies purchased from Amazon:
* Clover needle felting tool
* Replacement needles, fine
* Roving, variety pack of colors
* Cushion. I prefer the Clover brand bristle brush but you could use foam in a pinch
* Fabric to needle felt on. YOU CAN NEEDLE FELT ON ANYTHING. Seriously. Jersey, acrylic felt, wool felt, wool, cashmere, you name it. Shoot, sometimes even your flesh but that's usually after a glass or three of wine. Which I don't recommend.
Stabby-stabby-stabby. It's seriously a stress reliever!
Exploring on an inexpensive material like acrylic felt or muslin will allow you to really explore the medium without getting hung up on doing it "just right".
These participants did a fine job of really trying out their new craft. I love this spiral!
You can simply use roving in needle felting or you can combine it with yarn like the example on the right. I've only used wool yarn when needle felting but was told that even acrylic yarns would work.
I love the three dimensional quality of this piece!
And this one! This and the one above were created by my art teacher buddies whom I've dubbed my Pensacola Friends! These lovely art teacherin' ladies drove all the way from Pensacola to attend the workshop. They were so sweet and fun, I loved having them!
I can see this being a great exploration of the use of line and shape for older students. This piece is just so happy!
Once the postcards were complete, we wrote messages on card stock and hot glued them to the back. We popped them in the mail...but, sadly, Rosemary informed me today that they were returned to her. She was kind enough to stuff 'em all in envelopes and resend them. Lesson learned...but it was such a great idea, I thought!
Once our practice pieces were complete, we moved on to a larger format work of art. Some participants sketched their design in chalk as I often do. I love using chalk on fabric as it "erases" pretty easily (just look at any sleeve of any sweater of mine!).
Others just dove right in with the roving like this van Gogh's Sunflowers-inspired piece.
Did you know you can needle felt felt to felt? Did you know I can use the word felt in one sentence three times? How does that make you felt, er, feel? I love this piece...just wait til you see it complete!
I loved everyone's unique ideas and hearing about their inspiration. We had such a happy group that loved to share ideas, thoughts, awkward youtube videos (what WAS that hand-held needle-felting tool/vibrator thing?!).
I love the graphic nature of this piece.
And my Pensacola Friends were all about the texture! I love the idea of "yarn painting" with needle felting. I never thought of that!
Text-ure, baby! Love all the feels!
Didn't I tell y'all it was amazing?!
Did I mention that there were art teachers in the house?! This one needle felted pencils onto a pencil case that she hand embroidered. Oh! AND made that wet felted button. WHUUUUT?!
Alright, art history buffs, can you spot the artist-influence behind this tabby-cat piece? If you guessed Georges Rouault, you are correct! I love the stained glass quality of this piece.
Look how painterly this piece turned out?! I love it!
Seriously. I could not have spent my Saturday with a more fun (funner!) bunch. Thank y'all for making my workshop such a blast to teach. And special thanks to Rosemary and the Frist for allowing me to do so!
