I want a red apron!

Okay, you must have guessed I'd be doing an apron page sooner or later, right?! All this apron love just had to end up in my journal:The background is watercolor crayon smeared with a wet wipe, the doodling is a silver gel pen and the images are from magazines (with a few used for packing tape transfers), except the lower right corner, which is the front of a gorgeous notecard that someone sent me ages ago. The journaling is done with Pitt pens, with the 2 quotes coming from EllynAnne Geisel's The Apron Book. I absolutely adore this book! I've read through it twice and have even made 2 aprons using one of the patterns in the book (no, I haven't posted pics yet ... one of them is going to be a Christmas gift and I don't want to spoil the surprise ... but don't worry, I will post pics as soon as I can).

After making this page, I noticed that it fits Blissfully_Art_Journaling's theme #12 "Red" ... I want a red apron so bad LOL! I really do need to get back to Target and get that red dishtowel before it's gone ....

Mmmm ... chocolate ...

A gluebook-style page in my art journal that really says it all ...Background is acrylic paint left over from when I was making this project, then some chocolate wrappers and magazine pics glued down ... the words are packing tape transfers.

Living in the Land of Lincoln

As I mentioned in a previous post, the theme for July/August at the Tie One On blog is "local pride". I live in Illinois, the "Land of Lincoln", which always makes me think of log cabins and copper pennies with Abraham's well-known profile on them, so they were my inspiration for this apron.

Here's the front and back of the skirt I used to make the apron:











And here is the finished apron, with a close-up of one of the pockets (the fabric used along the bottom edge and for the ties is a woodgrain fabric I had in my stash, and the pennies on the pockets were done with a QuickFuse fabric sheet):

Yes, another one ...

These dishtowel aprons are just too easy!! Yes, yes, I made another one this morning. A little bit more involved than the last one because this time I used two towels ... but still, very easy. These I got as a pack of 5 on sale for $3.88, so now I have an apron with 3 matching towels ... love it! When I bought them a few weeks ago, I sort of had an inkling of an idea how I was going to use them, but it wasn't until a new friend on the Sewing Aprons Yahoo group (yes, of course, there's a group for this!!) posted a link to this cutie yesterday that the ideas started to come together.

So this morning, I read through the pattern a couple of times, then did it the opposite way. Why? Because the pattern on these towels is directional. If you hold the towel up to yourself, the print is upside down at the top and right side up at the bottom. I wanted the bib of the apron to have the print going right side up, so I had to be creative. I just used the basic concept of the pattern but cut the bib towel instead of the skirt towel ... and then I used the leftover half of the bib towel to make a pocket. I really like how it turned out! I still want to try making the pattern the right way someday, so will look for a towel that doesn't have a directional problem (still thinking about that red "salt and pepper" one I saw at Target ... better get over there before they're gone LOL!)

Hmmm ... I'm amassing a bit of a collection here ... I'm going to have to start thinking about where I can hang these so they're accessible ....

Need a quick birthday present?

What do you do when a friend invites you to a last-minute celebration that evening for her daughter's 10th birthday? Well, if you're me, you make the birthday girl an apron! This young lady loves all things prairie and so I knew she would love this apron that turns into a bonnet. No problem, right? Free pattern, enough fabric in the stash ... let's get to work. Oops, wait ... the pattern pieces need to be enlarged ... I can't do that here. And I don't have any bias tape that matches the fabric. So, now what? A trip to the nearest toy store? No way! There's a Kinko's down the street and a Hobby Lobby right around the corner ... two trips and I've got what I need ... now I can get busy.

Once I had everything I needed, this apron went together relatively quickly. Only one word of caution ... make sure you get all the layers into the bias tape (trust me!) Here is the finished apron:Happy birthday, Maggie! Hope you like it!

Easiest apron ever!

Last night, after the kids were finally asleep, I looked through my little stack of apron wannabe's, trying to decide what to work on. I was a little tired myself, so decided to pick an easy one ... a dishtowel that I bought at Target last week. Simply lop off the top two corners, stitch on some bias binding and voila! A cute little apron ... love it! Now, of course, if you know me at all, you know I didn't just "lop off" those corners willy nilly ... I measured first LOL! But it really only took a few minutes to hold it up to me and decide how wide I wanted the top to be (8") and then where the waist should be (even with the bottom of the stem of the center flower). Then I was able to quickly lop off those corners, add the bias tape and have an apron ready to wear ... I didn't check the clock when I started, but I don't think it took me more than 45 minutes tops (and it wouldn't have taken me nearly as long as that if I hadn't had such trouble with the thread ... changed the needle 3 or 4 times before the thread finally stopped breaking!)

So, armed with a $3.99 dishtowel, a $1.59 package of bias tape, and an hour to spare, I now have a cute apron ... easy! Hmmm .... they had a red towel with "salt and pepper" written all over it ... just might have to get it ....

Paint scraping technique

Have you seen this tutorial before? I had, but didn't do anything about it ... just added it to my "list of things to try someday" (do you have one of these lists, too?!) Then the other day I saw this, and was reminded again of this neat paint scraping technique. I even commented on that post that I really wanted to try this and would definitely try it soon. And, what do you know? I actually did! That same day, in fact LOL! While my girls were outside playing Thursday afternoon, I realized this was as good a time as any to just do it. So I did. I did 6 spreads in my art journal (wax paper is my friend!) and learned a few things along the way. First, it really does only take a swipe or two before the colors can become muddy, especially if you're using complementary colors, so be sure to keep a paper towel or wet wipe handy to keep the credit card clean. Second, I found I really love working in layers ... for the third layout I did, I tried a layer with 3 or 4 shades of one color, then let it dry for about 30 seconds or so before doing another layer with 2 or 3 shades of another color. Doing it this way is especially nice when working with those complementary colors because you can avoid the mud problem. And, third, I really like adding a final layer of white or light gray when it's getting to dark. All in all, this was a fun project that I will definitely be doing more often! I really like that you get the look of texture, but the layers are so smooth that it'll be nice to write on. Go on, try it!!

Just be careful ... see my last spread? I was trying to lift the right-hand page to separate it from the back cover and it suddenly flopped over on itself. When I tried to pull it back up, it tore off and this is what I ended up with. Of course, if you use a sturdy paper or cardstock, this probably won't happen to you, but I was doing this in my art journal, which is a composition notebook with flimsy paper. At first I was so upset because I was really happy with how the colors turned out, but the more I look at it, the more I realize that I kind of like it with the back cover showing like that. I'm thinking of painting that back cover and then gluing this page down to it, and then journaling about the end of this journal and the beginning of a new one ... though I think I'll wait until I'm closer to really being done with the journal. I still have quite a few pages to fill.

Let me know if you do try this ... it is really easy and lots of fun!

Apron Wannabe's

Today was such a great day! My girls and I went to a favorite thrift store with my mil and sil ... always fun! It's on the other side of town and kind of awkward to get to so we don't do it often, but when we do go, we always find something good. When my sil called yesterday and asked if we wanted to go, my first thought was "aprons"! Yes, I'm on an apron kick now. (Actually, I've always had a love of aprons, and it's been a little desire of mine to have a bunch of different ones to wear for different jobs and occasions. There's just something about wearing a cute little apron or a let's get cooking apron that puts one in a good mood ... know what I mean?)

So, anyway, I decided that this trip was, at least for me, going to be an apron hunt. I'd never searched for aprons there before, so first I checked all the aisles ... no apron section. Hmmm ... if I were an apron, where would I be? "Excuse me, worker lady, if you got any aprons in, where would you put them?" A murmur and some gesturing over to the back wall ... oh, by the tablecloths and window treatments ... alright, I'll check there next. Nothing. Well, I mean I couldn't find any ... every time I saw something that might have apron strings ... nope, it's crib bumper pads or a window topper with ties or some other strange household item I've never seen before. So, scratch the aprons. Darn, now what? Hey, maybe I should look around for clothes that I can turn into an apron ... YES! I want to make my own anyway, so that's what I really should be looking for, right? Of course, I never would have thought to turn an item of clothing into an apron if it weren't for the neatest blog called Tie One On. I love this blog! Every couple of months they post a theme and people make an apron to fit the theme ... love it!! And one of the themes had been to turn clothes into aprons.

First I looked at the skirts ... I figured that would be the easiest to turn into aprons. Just cut a slit up the back, add ties and it's done. Well, I struck gold right there in the skirt aisle ... I found 7 skirts that I think will work easily into half-aprons. I chose skirts that would normally be too small for me, figuring that once they are cut and ties are added, they'll be just the right distance around to look like a proper apron (fingers crossed here!) Then I checked the dress aisle to see what I could find. Not so easy ... I found many cute ones that would be darling aprons, but I wasn't sure how I would go about turning them into aprons without having to basically reconstruct them. But I did find one dress that had a halter-style top that I think will work well. So, 8 items to turn into aprons ... yay me! And what made it even better was that almost all of them were 1/2 price today (another fun thing about this store, each day they pick 2 or 3 colored tags to be 1/2 price ... today all the yellow, blue and green tags were the lucky ones ... gotta love that!)

And to top off the day, we stopped at Dairy Queen for lunch and a treat ... yummy! Bargains and ice cream ... what more could a girl ask for?!

Here are pics of 6 of the skirts and the one dress I found (the 7th skirt is a dark red so that's still in the dark laundry pile waiting to be washed ... I'll post a pic of that one later when I actually turn it into an apron, okay?):










I'm thinking of starting with the long denim skirt in the picture on the right ... I've got ideas for the current theme "local pride". Oh, and ignore the little spot ... must be something on the camera lens ... believe me, when I saw that in the pic, I raced back the studio to check LOL!

FYI, on the journal page at the top of the post, which I'm so glad I did on the same day that it happened! I used watercolor crayon for the background, rubbing it with a wet wipe. All the writing and scribbling was done with a no. 2 pencil. A simple page ... I like it!

A place for everything ...

and everything in it's place (yeah, right!) As you can see, I struggle with this concept big time. In fact, this fits the "confusion" theme (week #20) at Blissfully_Art_Journaling (formerly known as ATCA Art Journals) ... at least, it does for me ...

Of course, it's not hard to find a place for wild blackberries ... yum!! Just don't look too closely at my hand-drawn bucket ... I was trying to make it look like you are looking down into the bucket, but the proportions are waaay off LOL! But, check out the slightly darker color in the blackberries ... I took one of the blackberries and smashed it onto the page, then drew the blackberries after the stain dried. Pretty clever, eh? Please say yes, because my dh just thinks I'm nuts ....

Black and White and Red All Over

Dawn at d'Blogala posted another prompt yesterday ... mapping your day. I knew right away that it would be the perfect way to journal the day because Fridays are my errand day. So I brought my journal along and jotted down where I went and ended up with this page (the background was painted several weeks ago with the red and the black X's with watered down acrylic paint):
As you can see, I didn't get all my errands done LOL! Will have to finish up today. Btw, I did NOT eat at Wendy's just so that the logo would match my spread ... it just happened ... I wrote that right on the logo, too LOL!

Then last night, I sat looking at the opposite page and decided to do Dawn's second prompt, making a list, to finish up the spread. The hardest part was trying to decide what to list in the various sections LOL! Here's what the page looks like now:Thanks, Dawn, for the fun prompts!

Doodling

I've found a few new (to me) art blogs that I just adore ... and one, Dawn at d'Blogala, has recently started doing weekly prompts (you know I love 'em). The first prompt was to doodle. Simple, right? Except I'm not one for doodling ... to me, doodling is just random marks on the page ... they might make a picture, they might not. However, I tend to overthink each mark I'm going to make on anything, so to just be random and free is not easy for me. But, hey, it's the first prompt so that's where I'm going to start. So Thursday, I opened to a blank (except for green paint) page and draw a line across it (stressing over making the curves look natural ... sheesh!). Then I drew another wavy line woven around it and started filling in the spaces left between them ... after the swirls and the diamonds, I sort of stressed about what to do about the other 2 spaces so that they'd be different (see how I overthink things?!)

Then Friday night I went down to Chicago for the Women of Faith conference, bringing my journal and a few pens, of course. During the Friday night pre-conference, I started thinking about Dawn's live earth doodle page and thought that maybe I could sort of do that for this page ... just doodle about things that really stood out to me at the conference. So I tried it. It was slow-going at first, but as I got into it, it got easier. And a bonus was that I think I paid even more attention than usual because I was looking out for things to doodle about LOL! Here's the result:

Finally finished!

I finally finished my first spread in my "All in a Day's Work" journal. This combines two prompts ... an intro and a job description.I knew what I wanted to say, but I just couldn't decide how to get it on the page ... it wasn't until I thought of writing in white instead of black that I realized I could get it all on the page by writing over the top of the "MOM" and "WIFE". Love the layered look! The background is acrylic paint, the words "MOM" and "WIFE" were made by tracing alphabet puzzle pieces (thanks, kiddos!) and then coloring in with a Sharpie, and the definitions around the edges were cut from a fabulous old dictionary (it's huge!) that I got at a garage sale for a buck. A Sharpier poster paint pen was used for the journaling.

Now to think about prompts #3 and #4 ... #3 is about my daily routine and #4 is about where and with whom I work. I've got a few ideas brewing on those ... let's see if I can get them done before prompt #5 gets posted on Monday!

All in a Day's Work

I've been having fun this past week working on a project that Scrapdolly is currently posting on her blog. The project is called "All My Own Work" and each week for 10 weeks she is posting a prompt. When we're done, we will have a nice little book, album or whatever that documents our jobs. I thought it sounded like a fun project so decided to join in. Prompt #1 was to select the vehicle for this project and get it ready ... I chose to alter a board book (formerly one of my kids' books), turning it into an art journal for this project. Last week I tore off the top layer of all the pages and painted the backgrounds, just playing with color combinations.
Then over the weekend I did the cover. Love how it turned out!
The background and 24/7 are acrylic paints (I created a stencil for the numbers and dabbed the paint on with my finger ... love the texture that made), the 365 in the corner is a dymo label, and all the lettering is rub-ons, except WORK, which is wooden letters painted black. When I was done with all that, it felt like it still needed something. I ended up splattering the whole thing with diluted white acrylic and just that little thing really finished it off.

Prompt #2 was to do an intro page and a job description. I decided to combine the two and am still working on it (though you can see just a hint of it in the pic above of all the pages fanned out). I'll post it as soon as I finish the journaling. Now to think about prompt #3 which is to do a page about a typical day or week at our job. I'm thinking I'll do some variation of the journal page I did here, since it's basically the same prompt ... just need to figure out how to get all that info into a 7"x7" page LOL!

Inspiration Wood

The creative theme for this past week at Inspire Me Thursday was "wood". That made me think of the IKEA drawer unit I use for some of my sewing supplies. Here it is all painted up:









You can see other wood-inspired projects here.

Flying at the speed of sound

Whoa! I'm on a bit of a roll with these ATCA Art Journals prompts. For week #7 the theme was "super fly". Now, when I first read the various past prompts, this one was one I actually knew for a fact I wouldn't bother with. But while I was browsing through a couple magazines for images for some of the other prompts, this woman with a cape practically jumped out at me. And when I saw the speed limit sign a few minutes later, I knew I was onto something LOL! Guess it's true that you should never say never!The background and swirls are watered down acrylics. The title is stamped and the writing is a Pitt pen. The writing on the left is some quotes I found on the Internet. In case you can't read my handwriting (yeah, it's bad ... sometimes I can't read it either!), here's what I wrote:

FLYING AT THE SPEED OF SOUND
(especially those sounds that mean my kids are getting into some kind of mischief!)

"The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and torturous." ~Anna Quindlen

"To fly, we have to have resistance." ~Maya Lin

"The phrase 'working mother' is redundant." ~Jane Sellman

"A man's work is from sun to sun, but a mother's work is never done." ~Unknown

"Motherly love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible." ~Marion C. Garretty

"The most important thing she'd learned over the years was that there was no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one." ~Jill Churchill

Redefining myself ...

As I said in my last post, I had an idea for ATCA Art Journals' week #14 theme "definitions". When I read that prompt the other day, I immediately thought of how my husband has been saying that he's noticed I've got more definition in my shoulders and upper arms since we've started exercising on January. I just had to jump on this prompt to document my goal of being healthier and more fit. I finished it yesterday:I love it! (Of course, it seems that my most recent entry is always my favorite LOL!) The background is acrylic paint. The border was done with a Pitt pen with some watercolor crayon to darken it. The lettering and quote are rub-ons. The figures are old dictionary excerpts, watered down acrylic and Pitt pen to emphasize the outlines.

Here are some close-ups:

Up in smoke

I just joined another Yahoo group about art journaling ... this one's called ATCA Art Journals. I have no idea what the ATCA stands for, but that's okay. I can still play LOL! They post a theme each week for the members to make a journal page about. This is week #19 and the theme is "up in smoke". Here's what I came up with:While I wait for next week's theme, I just might go back and work on some of the past themes. I've already got an idea for week #14 "definitions" ....

Outside my window ...

The current journal prompt at Inspire Me Thursday is "outside my window..." I started out by painting the background with shades of brown and green because those 2 colors are very dominant outside my window LOL! Then I added a few touches of pigment ink (pounced through some punchinella), using colors that I also see outside ... like dark red for the mulch around our plants, blue-violet for the lobelia, yellow for the swings on the swingset. Then I added the journaling with a Pitt pen. In case you can't read them, here's what's outside my window:

neighbors waving
fog rolling
flowers blooming
birds singing
steaks grilling
sun setting
rain pouring
squirrels chasing
children playing
grass growing
wind blowing
vegetables ripening
weeds multiplying

You can see out others' windows here.

Roots

This week's creative theme at Inspire Me Thursday is "roots". I got an idea right away, but as I started painting the background, another thought came to me. So I went with it. I'm glad I did ... I really like how it turned out! The background and trees are acrylic paint and the writing is done with a Sharpie paint pen. The texture in the water at the top was from pressing a paper towel into the paint and then removing it. Love it!

You can see other interpretations here.

And another one ...

This page started out as journaling about homeschooling and turned into a prayer: