Pictures of what I have done. (you thought I was never going to post these didn't you)

At least I hope so. 3 months later and I finally do something. Isn't that horrible? I hope the images come up...

No idea what this octopus person's deal is. I thought it came out well despite painting acrylic on glass. The coloring is mostly sharpies that I utilized the bleed through and the fact that it always smears on glass to my advantage so the paint itself is really just white with some medium added in. Great for when you want a variety of colors but don't feel like mixing a bunch of paint.

More after the jump!

A small apology

Or maybe some excuses.

It has been a somewhat busy summer with a vacation and now Evan starting pre-k and all (they grow up so fast!). I have been making work just not taking pictures and posting it. I am hoping tomorrow I will upload them and have a new post ready soon. I have painted some magnets, jars, boxes and even a few plastic animals. A lot of fun :)

Just words for thinking (I think).

No images just yet of what I have been working on just yet, but maybe some rambling time instead?

I feel a sense of urgency to sell something, which is funny because I haven't set myself up to do so just yet. I have not advertised on Facebook or did anything to art page on there since I made it like two years ago. I have not set up an Etsy account, nor gone through specific local venues/galleries and say "here look at some of this stuff and maybe put it in your store/gallery", and I haven't looked actively for  craft fairs and so on.

Zombie shoes!!!

I'm pretty excited about these shoes. These cheap canvas shoes from Walmart were falling apart and I knew something had to be done. I knew it had to involve zombies in some way or shape....

These shoes are a dark grey as you can see so you can barely see the marker drawing on them. I gathered some pinspiration and saw some I really liked. I didn't really care that the images would match, but I liked the idea of zombies kind of eating your feet (I have seen slippers like that before).

Holey tank top embelishments!

      A few things I was working on that are not in any way massive changes to the original clothes. Sometimes I just don't feel like letting them be, and when faced with thought of giving it away or throwing it out I might as well try to make it wearable again, with mixed results. I have three here that might be finished or basically done.

      This first one is a simple tank top that was already a tank top to begin with, so not much of a change in that regard. I added a few cut outs, which were like so "in" a year or two back. What I don't like about the usual cut outs is that it is left with raw edges which eventually loose shape and stretch out. I suppose the easy thing to do would be a small stitch around but leaving the edge bare, but I thought it would be interesting to do some colors that would pop out.

Not bad, although it depends on what is underneath as well....

cd holder turned hotwheels storage

So as with any of you with small boys know that hotwheels and matchbox cars are a pain in the butt to store. We have some cases for most of the ones Evan has, however for his birthday my father got him a set of 70 of these small cars. Besides buying yet another case or getting a tackle box, I tried looking to Pinterest for ideas on storage and there were some interesting ones, none of which I could make on hand with what I had. Well there was one involving toilet paper tubes but I knew in reality that would be torn to shreds in the manner of minutes. What I did have was an old cd tower. I looked for any heavy duty cardboard I could find as anything that bent too much would be unusable. Cardboard from sketch pads work well as did old book covers (another reason to save otherwise wrecked board books). I measured and cut accordingly and spaced them every three slots or so. Depending on your cd tower your pieces may not all be the same length, as the top was much more shallow and increased in depth as it went down. When they are all set just glue them in place. One thing I didn't do which would of saved time would have been to spray paint the inside a contrasting color, or even pre-painting your boards the color you want. The only reason I painted the inside blue wasn't for looks really as it was because I couldn't find any of my black paint. I'm sure there are many uses for cd tower re-purposing, if you have the need for small shallow shelves that is. Here are the pictures of it as of now.

As you can see I need a few more coats of paint but all in all I'm pretty happy with it!

So what happened?

Whatever happened to this blog anyways? Mild confusion really. It is always said that you should stick with a topic and go for it but as of late all of my "making" is pretty spread out while not being satisfied to the point where I feel like things should be shown to the public. There are no excuses because I am continually making things, though sporadic, it is the quality of those things I do have issues with. Instead of focusing on something to increase the craftsmanship of something that could be a product I move on to something else. Lately I have been very interested in refashioning. Finding Refashionista.net online has brought up many ideas and motivations to make remake clothes. Interest in refashioning has always waxed and waned for me. I remember in highschool (I think) when huge flares were popular and I did some jean extensions with old sheets. While an undergrad in college Project Runway was a new show then and it was so exciting to think about making clothes. THINK is the key word, not make. I am pretty sure I tried to make a few things sans sewing machine...I even made my own duct tape form. Things quickly fizzled out, probably do to lack of patience and frustration. So here I am again, attempting to refashion some clothes. No sewing machine again. I don't know maybe I like torturing myself? Usually it is just detail oriented things I have been doing like cut outs, shirt to tank tops and so on, nothing too major and with stuff I already have. Imagine my excitement in Salvation Army where I found something I could really and honestly refashion. A muumuu. Let me tell you something upfront. I am fat. Size 24 fat. So you have to take that into consideration when you are doing anything relating to clothes. In all honestly the biggest sizes you are going to find in any thrift store is your size. So I am left wondering what I could do when I see thinner women taking huge clothes to them that are my ordinary size and fitting them into something sleek, sexy and flattering. Should I just stick with minor details or try to work on something completely ridiculous and hard? So anyways I found this muumuu for half off ($2 and some change). Why was it ever worth $4 something is beyond me. Do they look at any of these clothes before pricing them? I apparently don't look hard enough because not only where there a few light stains but a cigarette hole in the pocket and on the dress itself. I cut off the sleeves and trimmed the fabric off from there making spaghetti straps (screw up #1, one of the straps twisted and I did not notice before attaching it). I then proceeded to shorten the arm holes haphazardly and patching the ciggy hole. Made an uneven sash from the extra fabric and cut some inches off the bottom because I figure it would do better as a top. I ended up cutting out the pocket so the seam is messed up from that. Not bad for a first major try with no sewing machine. Will I plan better next time? Probably. If there is a next time...