Daffodils on my mind

This is my first post to Philly Makes. Eek. How exciting.

This is the week the daffodils are really, truly finally blooming. They always do in time for my birthday, which is this Friday. So all I can think of are daffodils, daffodils, daffodils. I made this little Tshirt design for my new etsy shop to release some of the daffodil love floating around my head. Ha! Sorry. I'm not always this corny.

The phrase "jocund company" comes from Wordsworth's poem "Daffodils," which I've always loved. I thought it gave a nice poetic twist to the overall design.

Boats and Travel

Here are some travel related cards for men. I am really digging the second one, because I tried my hardest to make the paper containing the compass look like a sail. I think I did the best I could with a stiff material like paper. I also use 100 lb weight cardstock, so it is thick and certainly doesn't help when you are trying to go for the "flowing" look! I also like how the linen thread looks when I wrapped it in a rope like way under the eyelets. For the first card, I sewed fabric onto my paper and inked up the boat stamp in matching colors using chalk inks. When doing this, it is so much easier to use the chalk inks because the ink pads themselves that I use have a teardrop shape and are small, so I can use the ink almost like a pen to get pretty exacting on the stamp. You always want to work with the lightest color first, so I actually inked up the middle of the stamp first and then hid my imperfections with the darker colors on the top and bottom of the sails. For the boat bottom itself, I used what is called a "kissing technique." This is when you have a solid image (the bottom of hte boat IS a solid image) and you take a clean stamp (in this case I took a stamp that looked like a rope) and after the solid image is inked, you go and actually stamp (using the rope stamp) on the already inked stamp (solid boat) to create a pattern on the solid image. It is really fun and I should honestly do it more often. Hope you all have a great day! Lancaster was so much fun. No pottery was bought, because the piece I wanted had some major glaze issues. Oh well, I bought a really nice shelf instead! Spent the whole day in NYC yesterday. You know what? Philly is SO much better than that city!

Pillow Cover- WIP

I'm a little disappointed that I didn't check this week's theme a little sooner... I've had this sail boat idea kicking around for a while... oh well, maybe I'll just be a week behind for next time!





Anyway, I have some new ideas that I'd like to try this year, and one of them includes some new designs for pillows and wall art. Here is a pillow cover in progress:

Sorry for the poor photo quality. And I did learn why we use embroidery hoops! (I tried without one & it's a little bumpy). The backside will be an envelope closure in a fun print. I'm not sure how I feel about the design yet. I guess I'm still experimenting. Any suggestions/feedback?

Painting in Progress

This is a small mixed-media/collage painting on canvas board. I was hoping to finish it this past weekend, but I'm still fixing a few things. Namely, the sky area. First it was too white, but now it's too blue. One of these days I'll get it right!

Two for you...

I have two lovely creations for you today-since I missed last week, you get two for one today!
This pair of dragon wings is called Boris, and is so named after the scaly star of the Elmer and the Dragon series. These were a custom order for a special young man's birthday this month. As you can see, the wings are butter yellow and are accompanied by an extra long blue and yellow striped tail. I added a little bit of weight to the bottom of the tail so it drags realistically. These turned out so very cute!


And since I was so thrilled to find out the Twilight movie came out on the 21st, I decided to create a tiara for Bella in homage to Stephanie Meyer's brilliant series. This lovely piece features three gorgeous crystal hearts, suspended from non-tarnishing silver artistic wire. They are accented by black glass tear drops along the top and bottom edges. The tiara base is rimmed in deep red garnet nuggets while the space around the hearts has been woven in with black wire and glowing citrine chips.

Crochet: Work In Progress

Website Design

Oh man! I missed my day again. I'm so lost in own world lately that I don't know what day it is. Well, it's the time of year when we redo Hot Knots and Tara's website and catalog. I wish I could have 10 more clients like these gals. I love their stuff, I love how they run their company and I love that they love having a super creative completely redone site every year. Here's a little sneak peek, a (very) rough screen shot of what's happening this year. You can see past years archived here and here. This is where I've been all week. Oh and hey do sock monkeys count as animals?