My Cup Runneth Over

The studio, after a week of tidying.

Last week I managed what some would consider an Heroic Effort and (mostly) cleaned my studio.  I do not consider the effort heroic, because if I'd just clean it up each day, it wouldn't take a week! 

That wide expanse of work table, clear and ready to create, is captivating, motivating, and thrilling.  You'd think I would want to keep it that way, so I can create any time I want.  Why don't I?  That's probably a question best left to the professionals.

Perhaps it's this: each time I do The Overhaul, maybe once a quarter (optimistically), I rediscover all the different crafts, materials, and creative potential in that room.  I can make so many things there! My mind spins circles with ideas. I actually dream about them at night.  And all the projects shout; "Pick ME!"  In this one 11 x 12 ft room, I have materials for;

Quilting: (I did cull a good many books, planning some basic quilts and throws for our new house.)

General sewing: (garments, house goods, pet gear, doll clothes, you name it)

Rug Hooking: (books, TWO strip cutters, hooks, background fabric and shoes boxes of worms)

Wool applique: (bins of wool, freezer paper, and four giant shoe boxes of pearl cotton)

Doll making: (of course) with bins of fabric, little hats, glasses, baskets, even limb joints I've never learned how to use.  This includes material for cloth dolls with clay heads, mohair bears and critters, rag dolls with a giant bin of cotton stuffing, and another bin of poly stuffing.  Wooden bits for jointed dolls (dowel rods and toy blocks and sticks--oh my!)  Wigs, eyes, shoes.  I even still have the cedar wood shavings my friend Sheri Farley sent me a decade ago because I loved my Sheri-made Tansy Butternut doll so much.  Husband wouldn't quit smelling it--he's a fan of cedar.

Jewelry making: (and I don't even wear jewelry--but the dolls do, and daughters/friends)

Crochet: (knitting--someday) has recently added a great deal to the chaos with bins of yarn, and more than one loom for hats, socks, cords, and some long skinny loom, but I'm not sure what it's for.

Punch Needle: (with a small box of several sizes of needles and lots of embroidery hoops).

Hand Embroidery: (along with the pearl cotton, there is a rainbow of DMC).

Felting: A whole drawer with mohair for dolls and felting.  What, exactly, am I going to felt?

Pin-cushion and Make Do supplies:  I have this vision of tiny embroidered wool pin cushions, each in its own miniature tart pan.  Yes, I have a basket of tiny tart pans.  Also washed tuna and pea cans to make little sewing caddies for my Sewing Ladies who meet once a month. What about needle cases and scissors pockets? 
 
Stencils: I usually free-hand most of my furniture painting, but I have a small collection of stencils that I am planning to use for the new house.  Nothing big or busy, but yeah--stencils.

Wood Burning:  Why?  The last time I did any wood burning was eleven years ago when I did Celtic Knot Work patterns on our new cedar mail box post.  (Drawn there, thank you, using stencils.)  The post was beautiful, but why do I still have this???

Gourd Art:  Try as I might, and I have tried, I can't get rid of the gourds.  I put them in the Going to Sell Bin.  I even put them in the Donate to Thrift bin.  And each time I stole them out and put them back.  Because the potential of them calls to me. 

Painting, Painting, Painting: I could paint anything with the paint I have.  From miniatures to houses.  Furniture, walls, floors--even art canvases.  Water color, Gouache, Oil, Acrylic, Chalk.  Do you need something painted?  Come to my house, and we'll get started.  Want a particular finish or some antiquing?  Ooh--how about glitter?

Sculpting:  Of course.  Creative paper clay has long been my favorite, so I have culled supplies down to that for sculpting.  Except for a roll of cotton so (when I get to it) I can try spun cotton sculpting.  Because, you know--sculpting!  Only one set of sculpting tools, but I have armatures--foil, styrofoam balls, paper mache cones, you name it.  Sanding materials, of course.

Clay Molds and Cookie Cutters:  Don't forget those.  Because you never know when you'll need to make an ornament. Or ten.

Stamping and card making:  I gave away half the stamps and all the scrap booking stuff at least. But stamps are just so...clever and versatile! 

I saw a bumper sticker that read; She Who Dies With The Most Fabric--Wins!  But, when I do a quarterly clean and discover purse patterns I may never use, I have to doubt this is healthy.  Seriously! I culled a good deal of material out of this room just this year!  Minimalism reigns in the rest of the house now.  But in the studio...is there such thing as Maximalism? 

My bumper sticker would read; "Hello.  My name is Jan, and I'm a craft supplies junky."

But I have a new pile after last week's overhaul.  If you know anyone who wants to buy a wood burning tool, send 'em my way--otherwise it's going to charity.  Really!

So many new things in the shop!

It's Wednesday.  Groceries, working in the yard, and Cheeseburger Pie for supper. 

But at least I don't have to mess with making listings today!  I don't know why that chore pokes at me so bad, but it does.  It's a helluva lot more fun to MAKE the art than it is to list it.  Some of the listings I made a while back, but never did anything else with them. These are in the store now. 

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It's almost spring--even here in the desert--so the irises will be blooming in a month or so.  Time to feed them and feed and prune the roses.  This is the first year I've put a "Red, White, and Blue" bed out front along the street.  Interesting to see if enough are blooming at the same time to get the effect I'm after.  :~)  I try to live in the season I'm in, but dang, I am sooooo ready for Spring.  And we don't even have hard winters here!

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I mentioned a post ago about a crazy quilting class I went to, the one where I was bitten by yet another art bug?  The block in the top photo  below is one I made before the class--my first block--so I'd know what questions to ask.  You know how you just never know what to ask if you've never tried to do something?  So I wanted to know where the hard parts were to ask about.  Well, the ladies there liked it so much they wanted me to post it on a Crazy Quilt site on Facebook.  I did so, and the editor of Crazy Quilt Quarterly Magazine asked if she could put it in the summer issue!  Cool beans!  So it'll be there, along with a couple of my folk art pieces. Baby steps, baby.

The bottom photo is of two blocks I made in the class itself, and I have patches for two more just like them, which will all go on a big black tote-bag to carry a cutting mat and supplies to classes & stitching meets. 

Now I'm designing small crazy quilt projects, along with getting more things listed on Ebay and Etsy.  If you know anyone who needs doll wigs or eyeballs, there are some big lots on Ebay right about now.  I have to make some room!  :~P

Hope your Hump Day is spectacular, and your weekend even more so. 
Jan

One little box left.

Recently, because four million things on my to-do list is just not enough, I joined Primitive Handmades Mercantile.  I listed three things--Rachel, a not-quite-Izannah doll, and two little wool-applique boxes. I confess I stink at remembering to post it around on social media, but I'll get better.

Anyway, Rachel sold, and the little Thistle button box sold, but I still have the little covered notions box.  I'd never covered a box with cloth before, but it was not too hard, and the results were pleasing.  I guess I'll have four million and one things to do now, because I want to cover a bunch of storage boxes I keep my Christmas decorations in, atop the cabinets in our office! 

I hope your week goes wonderfully, and you discover something fabulous in your travels.

The arts! They are too many!!!

Punch needle, rug hooking, embroidery, household sewing, folk art--sculpting and painting and general making--as well as dolls.  Was that enough?  Oh no. 

I got a big curly hair to make great big quilted wall hangings.  I've wanted to for a long time, but I finally got out the paper and started designing.  I've made the blocks for each, sewed them together, and crazy-quilt stitched the block joins.  I'm now cutting out the wool design pieces and am appliqueing them on.  It's a verrrry slow process. 

In the end, I will create patterns to sell in my Etsy shop, and have the wall hangings for my home.  Wait, is that the end?  Oh no.

A friend in a local sewing group invited me to a crazy-quilting class.  I've always wanted to make a crazy quilt--there's something so wonderfully unrestricted about this form of quilting.  So I went, and boy did that bug bite me hard!  So add THAT art form to the too-many-bees-in-my-bonnet. 

Here are some photos of the wall hanging project.  My husband is so very patient with my messes.  The design stage required a bit more space than my studio allowed, so I set up a 6 foot table in our bedroom--which stayed there for three weeks!  (I have started a part time job, which causes the most inconvenient interruptions.)

 

 

Hope your February is going as you would have it go.  It's been wet here--which is good, because we've had a scary-dry winter.  Cheers!

Operation Tidy O'Studio and some works in progress...

Those of you on FB have already seen these, but I thought to share it here.  I got three days to totally overhaul my studio--and will be selling mucho doll supplies on Ebay over the next months. 

The trick now is to keep it clean, and I think some of my changes in there will help.  Every time I rework everything, I get a little closer to refining a system that makes it easy to keep it tidy--the tools I use constantly are stored within reach of my chair, so I have only to tidy it up before I even get up.  So far I've had the room a week and it's still spotless.  This might well be a record.  (Try not to laugh.)

The week wouldn't be so impressive if I weren't working in there daily, but I have been.  I have four pieces in the works--two are a pair and will be dressed in patriotic colors, one is for spring, and the last is for an "aquatic theme" challenge in a magazine.  I gotta say, it's nice to go in, sit down, and begin work right away, without having to scrape aside bottles of paint, root through piles of tools and brushes for "that one" and work on a tray on my lap because there is no room to work on the actual work surface!  Maybe it'll actually take this time.  Maybe, at the young age of 54, I will finally learn a lesson I should have learned in fourth grade.  Ha!

Hope everyone has a fun Halloween!

Busy times!

I got a new commission for a cat doll, based on one I did years and years ago (I think the Universe is telling me to revisit what inspired me in the beginning!).  I'll be finishing her this week, and will have photos.  The cat that inspired the commission is here--only the new one will have a tutu and ballet slippers.

This little witch doll sold this weekend and will be on her way to Ohio--she's been hoping to have a new home by Halloween, and it looks like she'll have one.  Once I finish the new kitty and get her on her way, then I'll get busy with my set up for the upcoming doll show down in Phoenix.

In the mean time, I finished this little guy.  Something about that face just kills me.  He's only seven inches tall, but he seems to have a big presence.

Hope y'all's week is fabulous. 

That was then, this is now.

A nice lady I met on Facebook bought my little Frankenstein character...and then while she was looking at my Etsy shop's past sales, she encountered a previous piece of folk art she'd bought from me--several years ago!  It was kinda funny.  But anyway, while she was in the past sales thing, she found one of my verrrrrry first art dolls--back when I was making them out of gourds. 

 

She wanted a custom character similar to him.  The original was trick-or-treating, and this lady wanted an Easter Bunny with a basket of eggs, but otherwise, I tried to stay with the basic idea of a kid in a bunny suit.  (Who, it must be said, was originally inspired by the movie A Christmas Story.) 

So of course my imagination kicked into high gear at the challenge--to revisit a thing I'd made WAY back then, when I didn't know much at all about paper clay, or how to assemble these characters to be sturdy, or faces.  Or painting.  Or antiquing.  My techniques are so different, and I think the sculpting is better.  The original is still fun, but I am pleased to think my skills have grown in the seven years since I made him.

Of course now I'm thinking of revisiting a lot of the ideas I had back then--they were good ideas, and with new techniques, they'll be good again.  Cheers! 

Smalls

That's what I call the little folk art characters--smalls.  They don't require sewing, and don't require wig-making, which cuts WAY down on the time it takes to make them.

 A couple of weeks ago, I got sketching and came up with seven little characters to make, and got busy.  (I had a minor surgery in between then and now, so its' not like it took a whole couple of weeks.) 

So this is a photo-heavy post, and I'm not sure I'm sorry about that.  Ha!  Little Frankenstein and his Mummy have already sold, but the rest are in my Etsy store.  Hope your week is amazing!