Trying some new things.....

I really love lettering and quotes so bought some books from Amazon the other day.  It's been a lot of fun to try some of the things in the books.  I got Craft-a-Doodle and Creative Lettering (both by Jenny Doh). I've mostly been working on girl faces.  It's so hard.  I can do the face, hair, nose, and mouth, but cannot get the eyes right.  I would really like to get a signature face figured out that I can incorporate into my art.  I want people to look at something and say, "Oh that's a D'Arcy Rowe piece".  So I will keep working on it.  Here are two of my best girls.

Industrial Lighting

I really am loving industrial decor.  Especially lighting fixtures.  I am working on a couple of hanging lamps for my art studio.  They are almost done.  I just need to figure out how they are going to be wired into my garage ceiling.

The first one that I did is a chandelier.  The top is a garbage can lid.  Dangling from it are four glass jars (different sizes and shapes), a tin can, and another metal light cover.  If I can ever get it wired into my garage then I will post pictures.

The second one I took a piece of wood I had laying around and drilled five holes into it.  I then painted it white and drew flowers around each hole with the hole being the center of the flowers.  I bought clear bulbs that come to a point.  They are inserted into the middles of the flowers and hang down as the stamens of the flowers.

The third light fixture I made I actually finished (with Don's help).  It's a table lamp and I have it in my Etsy store.  The base is made of wood pieces that I glued together, painted white, and then Zentangled a design on.  The middle of the lamp is a copper pipe with some washi tape around a narrow part, and copper wire wrapped loosely around it.  I have a white ceramic socket and handmade a very organic looking copper wire shade.

I'm having so much fun re-purposing different things.  

Today I went junking at a couple of thrift stores.  At Goodwill I found this really ugly huge metal picture frame.  It had a hideous picture painted on a piece of wood.  I brought it home, took the wood piece out and spray painted the frame white. I gessoed the wood piece and used my Copic markers to draw a simple design and then used watercolors to paint my design.  I think it's pretty cute.  I may put it in my living room after I get it painted.  Here is the painting I did.

I bought some grey paint from Lowe's to paint my living room.  A lighter color for the walls and a darker shade for the trim and door.  I started taping it and took down most of the pictures.  I have so many projects I'm working on right now that I'm not sure how long it will take me to get it painted.

My daughter, Danae, and sister, Theresa, are so gung ho on doing ATC's right now.  I think they have finished about twenty of them and we have to make five copies of each one.  I've only finished four and have two more half done.

Here are my four:  romance, Spring, under the sea, and industrial.

Rice sack!

My physical therapist (for my hip) suggested that I use a rice sack to put some heat on my hip.  So this is the sack that I made.  I wanted to personalize it and what better then ones name to do that with.

What can you do with a dollar?

This was the challenge for day 15.  I was not really inspired but did manage to fold a dollar bill into a tennis looking shoe.  I am working on some of the other daily challenges and will post as soon as I finish them.

Alphabet letters

I saw in a book that they made alphabet letters 3D.  I thought it looked like fun so decided to do some.  I finished one for Heidi and myself.  Still have to work on Ayden's.  I think I will finish his for his birthday.  First you find alphabet letters on the internet that look interesting.  Print one copy of it and then trace around it on two pieces of cardboard.  So you have two copies of the letter.  Then you cut strips of cardboard for the sides.  I cut them 2" wide.  You take some masking tape and tape the side pieces to the two letters a little bit at a time.  After I finished taping the letters together I put a surface coating on the letters.  Kind of to mask the tape.  Then I spray painted them and glued some pictures on them.  After I put the pictures on, I then mod podged them to hold them in place.  On Heidi's I found some cute pictures of owls.  She's really into them and on mine I used pictures of shoes.

The pinterest community

Well....I've joined Pinterest.  It seems kind of interesting.  We'll see how it goes.  I am also on Ravelry.com.  That's a fun website for knitters. I don't have school tomorrow so am going to add some new pictures and posts.