From Russia with Love

Wooden dollies!
Originally uploaded by Mixing-Katie

Haven't posted in quite a while! The summer was kind of a blur -- trip to Russia, a new job, and moving back to the East Coast. Now that things have calmed down (comparatively), it's fall already! Hoping to get back into the swing of uploading pics and posting. I've been busy making things, so plenty of art to post about.

Here's a set of nesting dolls I found while in Russia this summer. I was on the lookout for blank dolls the whole trip, but didn't spot these till a few days before we left. The vendor only had one set or I would have bought more. When I was in Russia in 2004 I saw blank sets all over the place and never thought to buy one -- regretting that now! I'm still thinking on how to paint these.

Matrioshka: Create
Originally uploaded by Mixing-Katie

And I've got dollies on the brain lately. I'm hosting a doll swap on ATCsforAll and made lots of matrioshka ATCs. I've also started working on a 12"x12" painting with dolls.

I just can't get enough of these sweet dolls. I love how they open up - it's so much fun to play with them! I've purchased many sets while in Russia, but most

Crafting 365, Day 72
Originally uploaded by Mixing-Katie

ended up as gifts. I've got one set with fairy tale paintings on the tummies. It's a lovely set, five dolls together. Since I'm not sure when I'll be back in Russia to get more dollies, painting some is the next best thing!

Art For All 2009

IMG_7417
Originally uploaded by vintagepix

Last weekend I went to Indianapolis to meet up with people from ATCsforAll. It was so much fun! There was a lot of trading, a lot of creating, and a lot of laughing going on. This is a photo that Vintagepix took during a watercolor workshop. I'm on the right in purple. It was fantastic to meet people that I've only known online and wonderful to try out new techniques with friends. I have a lot of unpacking to do and need to catch up on a lot of sleep!

Free-Motion Flowers

ATCsforAll.com is having a get together in Indianapolis in June. I am super excited about it because members are coming from all over the US and even from Canada and Australia. There will be art workshops and lots of trading! I have finally started getting ready by making up some fabric ATCs. I figured flowers is a theme that a lot of people collect, and I've been wanting to try out this technique again ever since I realized that my machine has the option to drop feed dogs and do free motion.



It took a while for me to figure out exactly how to get my machine to do free motion (I think I need to find a new foot) but even so it went a lot faster than the last time I tried these with just a straight stitch and lots of starting and stopping and rotating the fabric. I'm really happy with how these are turning out. I'm adding lots of beads, which I never do for cards that get sent in the mail.

Make it Mondays: Houses

I made these ATCs for a swap, and they fit with the theme of the Make it Mondays challenge too! Neato :) I had fun making these. I used my copic markers, then put some colored pencil on top. A few gel pen accents.

Tunes

I'm not sure why, but I haven't been listening to much music lately. Maybe it's because my iPod broke, but maybe I've just been in a funk. I signed up for a fun 'Mixtape' swap on ATCsforAll.com and had a blast going through my CDs and putting the music up loud to pick the songs for my cards. Here's what I ended up with:



These cards were really fun - for the backgrounds I used some of the paper that I cover my table with and draw/paint/whatever on that collects lots of colors.

Today I signed up for Amie Street - my BFF sent me an invite about a year ago!! It's lots of fun to hear new music. I'm glad I finally registered.

WIP ATCs

Here are three ATCs I made for a personal trade. The theme: Under the Sea. First, I cut printed papers into strips and glued them on to ATC blanks with a glue stick:
Next, I smeared on off-white acrylic paint, put on a few accents with permanent markers, and covered the cards with two different acrylic glazes; blue on top, brownish on the bottom:

Then I used solvent ink over stencil waste to add some "bubbles." I drew fish, an octopus, and a mermaid on copy paper (used stamps for the mermaid's hands and tail), colored them in with markers, and glued them onto the cards with gel medium. I painted tissue paper for seaweed, and added a few highlights with gel pens. Then I stuck on a few words with my label maker:

Very fun to make! The end result was a lot different than I expected in step one, but I like them a lot.

Altered Playing Cards

This week, perhaps as a result of having such a clean desk, I've done LOTS of ATCs and several altered playing cards. The playing cards that I posted on ATCards.com have traded really fast. I've enjoyed making them, but I started to wonder -- how much do you need to alter something before you call it altered? The deck of cards that I've been "altering" is beautiful to begin with -- so it feels almost like cheating to use them. But just ALMOST :)


I got this deck of cards when my mom and I visited London a couple summers ago. We saw The Tempest in the new Globe and I picked up a deck of The Famous Shakespeare's Flowers Playing Cards as a souvenir of making it through standing up in the sun for an entire Shakespeare play. Each card has a painting of a different flower, plus a Shakespeare quote. At first I didn't want to even play with the cards because they looked so nice. I got over that, though!

One night I took the cards to someone's house and we played a Russian card game that doesn't use cards lower than 6. We took those cards out of the deck and then I completely forgot about them! I didn't see that person again (a friend of a friend of my husband's) so that left my lovely deck incomplete and unsuitable for any game other than durak.

When I saw a swap for altered playing cards on ATCards.com, I knew exactly which deck of cards I wanted to alter. I thought, if I can't play with them, I might as well paint them :) So I started altering these already pretty cards. First, I used sandpaper to scratch up the surface a bit. Then I used twinkling h2o paints to color the background. On some of the cards I used fine point pens to outline the flower paintings. I used ink over sequin waste to make some interesting circles. Then I used eyelets, gel pens, stickers, and a label maker to add some accents. I'm trading them in one-on-one trades and can't wait to build up a whole deck of altered cards!