Craftside

Getting Ready for Halloween with a Recycled Sweater Devil Horn Headband

This book is getting just tons of use right now in my studio!

Creative Costumes & Halloween Décor:
50 Projects to Craft & Sew

The Lifestyle Editors of Creative Publishing international

The all-in-one Halloween book!

Creative Costumes & Halloween Décor combines costume and decorating projects into one convenient book. The costumes are designed around three basic styles: tabards, gowns, and full suits (made from pajama patterns). Accessories like wings, capes, skirts and lots of headwear are also included. Details like collars, gloves, spats, and face painting instructions offer lots of ideas for personalizing costumes.

The décor section includes 30 unique projects for decorating your house inside and out, along with special projects for throwing a Halloween party. The projects use common household products plus lots of craft-store items like wood pieces, paints, paper mâché, felt, craft foam, floral materials, and polymer clay. Elaborately propped beauty photos and step-by-step instructions with photos of every step make the projects--both costume and décor--easy to understand.

Now I have a bunch of bunny ear headbands but I am in the mood for something a bit different this year. So I thought I'd give devil horns a shot. I think they came out pretty cool (or hot, hehe).

So to start with I went off to the felted wool sweater stash and picked a nice deep red one.

I cut a strip long enough to cover a plain plastic head band. I hot glued the strip onto the head band.

Devil Horn pattern, cut 2 sets out of the felted wool sweater. Then follow these great directions for making horns from Creative Costumes & Halloween Décor

Click on image to enlarge.

I used the little sweater scraps to stuff the horns!

I put the head band on and marked where I wanted the horns to be with a few pins. I then hot glued them in place.

Devilishly cute!

Mosaic Art and Style- Recycling Wowie Zowie!

Form, function and recycling-I love it!

Mosaic Art and Style
Designs for Living Environments

By

JoAnn Locktov

Mosaic Art and Style is a celebration of how mosaics can be integrated into our environments. Author JoAnn Locktov explores our fascination with mosaic art and illustrates how artists have crafted architectural installations as well as decorative and functional objects that have added immeasurably to living spaces.

Readers will enjoy seeing how mosaic art can be applied to every surface imaginable. Mosaic Art and Style tells the story of how the projects were conceived and fabricated from the artists' points of view.

Locktov has forged special relationships with a multitude of artists, who have allowed her to feature their work in Mosaic Art and Style. Through these relationships, she takes the reader into the world of the artist and gives readers a behind-the-scenes pass into the artists' workshops, where she shares their personal thoughts about the creation and inspiration that imbues their work.

JoAnn Locktov has been an advisory board member of the Society of American Mosaic Artists since it was founded in 1999. She also contributes articles to the quarterly newsletter, Groutline. JoAnn lives in Mill Valley, CA

This is a detail of an oriental oval bowl. It is made from antique china and glass. But what is really cool is the beaded grout! I think that is the coolest.

I love mosaic work. I have had to jack hammer a lot of my walkways for various pluming redo's and so I have the need to put new walkways in. So making mosaic stepping stones is in full swing here at Casa de canejo diablo. I find making mosaics with broken dishes and found objects random and cathartic (the breaking of dishes part especially!)

My favorite mold is this one I picked up at Ikea. I hadn't bought mix in a while and the first bag I bought was the wrong stuff. :( Oops! But I gave it a shot anyway. The little rocks in the concrete mix made the stepping stone way too flimsy, bumpy and subsequently broke. I still thought it was pretty so it is staying for now.

These two came out great. I used the right mortar mix this time. Nice and smooth and strong! The top one I used that motorcycle gear I have been using in just about every type of craft project I do and broken Fiestaware like the chartreuse one. Below I used a random selection of beer bottle caps. I liked the negative space and relationships between the "dots"

Here they are in place. I was pleased how each stepping stone randomly interlocks.

I will be making a whole bunch more. My next one will be with little beads like the oval bowl in Mosaic Art and Style. Grab yourself a copy for tons more inspiration and eye candy!

Oh and if you need to see a way-funky recycled mosaic Halloween decoration click here.

And as always, safe crafting!

Intricate and Easy Necklaces from Making Designer Mixed-Media jewelry

I love making "special occasion jewelry". It is particularly easy to do when you work with found objects, pictures and unusual elements. This book is packed full of great ideas and inspiration for just such projects.

Making Designer Mixed-Media and Memory Jewelry
Fun and Experimental Techniques and Materials for the Home Studio

By

Tammy Powley

Using beads and other materials to make unique jewelry

Boutiques and department stores are filled with jewelry featuring charms, photos, fibers, shells, recycled materials, and other exciting embellishments. This book teaches home crafters new tricks and techniques to expand the styles of fashion jewelry they create with beads and other materials. Compiled by Tammy Powley, the book includes the work of many exciting jewelry artists who are breaking new ground using mixed media materials and techniques in their work, along with step-by-step instructions.

Tammy Powley is a writer and jewelry maker. She writes about arts and crafts in books and articles for print and digital media, and is the host of About.com's jewelry-making site. Tammy sells her work primarily through galleries and commissions.

I was inspired by this cool necklace designed by Lori Larson:

Click on the images to read how to make this intricate bottle cap necklace.

And now for the easy version perfect for Halloween:

I scored this great bottle cap at BevMo, but you can probably go to just about any mainstream or boutique outlet and find yourself a fun bottle cap to work with.

I simply  drilled a tiny hole in the side and hooked an "s" link into it. Then I linked it onto a necklace of two sizes of black bead links. How simple is that?

I also save the label which I plan to use for another crafting project as yet unknown, but I certainly wasn't tossing it!

And if while you're out shopping for cool bottle caps and run across a bottle that strikes your creative fancy see a project here that will put it to good use after it's empty!

Acorns Made from Clay and Cloves to Celebrate The First Day of Fall and Crafty Blogger Links

It was actually a tiny bit cool yesterday while we were crafting yesterday, wonder what we were crafting, hmmmm??? You'll see soon, I promise! But today I want to give you a follow up I promised in this post. But as with designing and crafting things change. Instead of polymer clay, I used Makin's Air Dry Clay and and the cloves and it worked great.

These acorns have the bonus effect of smelling great! To see how to make these neat little acorns full instructions are posted here. They are a creation from the book:

Fun & Fancy Cake Decorating
Tips and Techniques for Decorating Unique Cakes for any Occasion
By
Kate Sullivan

Kate Sullivan has baked wedding cakes and party cakes for some of New York’s most interesting weddings and events. Her sought-after recipes, designs, and tips are compiled in this extraordinary volume now available in paperback.

Featured in numerous magazines, and on television, Sullivan is a respected and creative baker. For the first time, she brings her knack for creating the unusual to those of us who want to bake more than a layer cake but aren’t sure how.

Fun & Fancy Cake Decorating features her delicious recipes and unique cake-decorating tips, as well as personal stories about creating and delivering cakes. She has used cookies as cake toppers, made dozens of multicolored flowers on a hat-shaped cake, and created cakes in the shapes of taxis and diner coffee cups. Whether a lush, vibrant “Monsoon Wedding” cake or a larger-than-life, 3D “Cup o’ Joe to Go,” Kate’s cakes always inspire people to ask, “How did she do that?”

Basic and special techniques are illustrated in detailed step-by-step photographs, as well as complete cake recipes for Kates’s favorite cakes.

Kate Sullivan’s wedding and party cakes have been featured in numerous magazines, including Oprah, the New York Times, Self, and Time Out New York, as well as on VH1 and in Broadway theater. She lives in New York City.

 

And  since it's  Monday, it's Crafty Blogger Links and my fellow crafters have some great stuff posted out there!

Crafty Princess Diaries
Flower power time! Tammy posts about a CFE over at CraftStylish for all your flower fanatics.

Layers Upon Layers
One of the most frequently asked questions at Layers Upon Layers is how to do image transfers. Here are Cyndi's favorite methods and tutorials for each!

Stefanie Girard's Sweater Surgery
See some pumpkins that are "carved" out of some cute sweaters and a classic saying in cross stitch.

The Impatient Blogger
What's your brand? Madge shares some thoughts about branding and a new demo reel in this thought provoking post.

About Family Crafts
Check out these spotlight crafts... Make everything from a scarecrow candy jar to a Beaded Safety Pin Bear.

About.com Cross Stitch
Connie has been feathering her stitching nest. Find out how she made her stitching spot work.

Aileen's Musings
Aileen's been having fun again creating another Día De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) project.

Cathie Filian
Halloween is just around the corner so fly on over to Cathie Filian’s blog for some spooky new ideas and frightfully fun projects.

Fall into a fun craft today!

Silhouette Figure Study Technique from-L. K. Ludwig's True Vision

Today's way-cool technique - Silhouette Figure Study is from:

True Vision
Authentic Art Journaling

By

L.K. Ludwig

**Featuring the artwork of over 25 leading artists**

As art journaling grows in popularity (even attracting a new breed of scrapbookers who call themselves "life artists"), there is a movement afoot toward creating more authentic, personal, what some people call "raw" journals. These journals are filled with not just attractive, well-composed pages, but pages that are filled with personal, meaningful content.

True Vision is focused on ways to bring authenticity and meaning into one’s art journaling. The book examines themes and topics common to all while offering activities and exercises to create rich meaningful content. Each chapter highlights familiar subject areas such as life events, spirituality, childhood, and even an artist’s favorite writings. Within each topic, readers are given guided activities and exercises for developing content, provided one or two artistic techniques, and are shown inspiring examples of work by a variety of talented art journal artists.

L.K. Ludwig works predominantly with mixed media artist books and photography with a strong inclination toward creating personal intimate works. Her artwork has been featured widely in books, magazines, and galleries and is held in private collections. She is also the author of Mixed-Media Nature Journals

This is from the Current Events Chapter:

Click on the page to read all about this Silhouette Figure Study Technique.

Here's how I did it:

I printed out a picture that had pretty clean lines as indicated in the directions. I then traced it onto vellum.

I cut the silhouette out and then traced it onto an Asian newspaper. I scored this newspaper at the ATC swap and making day with Lisa Engelbrecht. So this will add to the "journaling/memory" aspect of this page. I then cut out that silhouette.

I then went through my scrapbook paper stash and found this cool modern bold black, red and white paper.

I trimmed the paper to the size of my art journal and attached it with a couple of round paper clips. I rubberstamped another page element on the Asian newspaper combining a scissor stamp and a set of wing stamps. I inked the edges of the square to make it pop just a bit. I also only glued it to the page on each end because I'm thinking I can slide something behind it in the future.

This page will always remind me of the great party the original photo was taken but not in a literal way, more in an artistic way, isn't that the point? Pretty cool.