Down where the Sasquatch hide....

Beauty of a day!  A seven year old birthday party.  Rain.  Sun.  Ahhhh, the Northwest.  Just missing a Sasquatch sighting..... Ha! 

I have been wanting to show y'all these lovely badges I made for my Juji (Julie for her 40th!) and for Jasper (for his 7th!).  So so easy yet quite a statement!  Here are some photos below.  I wish I knew how to do a little tutorial for you in case you want to make yourself a badge.  I will try to explain below.  It is really, soooo easy!

Julie's Birthday Badge!

Jasper's 7th Birthday badge!

The back of Julie's badge.

Front and back of Jasper's.

I was able to purchase several of these green rimmed milk bottle caps from the Queen of Tarte last time she was in town.  She was doing a show in Bothell and there was not a lot to drool over from other vendors but Q.O.T. had these and Kathy and I were drawn to them.  Numbers were already printed on them, just like Jasper's 7, and I instantly had the idea for his birthday badge.  The one I made for Julie has a number under it too but I had to cover it since none of the numbers were 40! 

The first thing I did was take some of my many rolls of crepe paper and started pinching and gathering them and just hand forming them into a circle shape until it looked ruffley.  Then I started on the next color or row, and so on.  Once I had what I wanted, I just used white glue to begin adhering the crimped, ruffled, pinched, circular shaped crepe "wreaths" to the back of the bottle cap.  I just overlapped the crepe where it met in a circle shape.  The caps are a kind of waxy, papery like thing but the white glue seemed to work to adhere it all together. 

Then I had to decide what kind of ribbons I wanted hanging down from the badge.  I have a massive collection of ribbon, vintage and new.  I also have a ton of seam binding, edging, ric rac, etc.  The green "ribbons" I used here are actually like hem tape that you might use to cover a hem on the inside of a garment.  Its cotton and very stretchy and I have several rolls of it so this was a good way to use some up.  I just decided on how I wanted to layer them and then trimmed the ends to make points.  You make the points by folding the ribbon in half length wise and then cut a 'V' shape from the fold to the outer edge.  You can make the points as long or as blunt as you like, depending on how long your 'V' is.  Once I have my layers of dangling ribbon situated, I glue them all at the same time and together, to the back of the ruffley crepe lined bottle cap, on the back.  You can make them hang straight down or flare them at a slight angle.  You could also just do one strand of ribbons or several strands! 

To cover up all the glue, ribbon ends and crepe circles on the back of the badge, I cut out a nice little circle of wool felt, with my pinking shears so it has a 'ruffley' edge too, and glue it on the back.  BEFORE I glue it on though, I hand sew a pin to the felt so I have a way to attach it to my clothes or wherever once its all dry and ready to wear.  I have several leftover early entry badges from The Sandpoint Design and Antique Market so I just detached the safety pin part from the plastic and used the pin to sew to the felt.  There are several types of pin backs at the craft store so you just have to choose what works best for you.  Once the pin is attached to the felt, THEN I glue it to the badge back.  Voila!  You are pretty much done!  You just have to wait for the glue to dry and then wear your badge or give it away!

Here is my sweet Julie with her Birthday badge:

Here is tired Jasper, on his birthday, after horseback riding in the desert, but still wearing his Birthday badge:

Oh!  I almost forgot to mention!  Look at this close up of Julie's badge.  You will notice the background behind the 40.  I used the inside of a Yogi tea box!

I did this specifically for Julie because it reminded me of the amazing henna work she does.  I am tellin' ya, this woman is a master!  Getting a henna blessing from Julie is one of my most favorite things to do when we are together.  It is amazing art that stays with me for days and slowly fades as the time since our last meeting grows.  I need to scan the photos I have of Julie's henna work and do another whole post just on that!  The 40 is just stick on numbers that I glued down and sprayed matte varnish over to help hold them on.

Here's to art, craft, milk caps and crepe paper!

Go make art!

Ships Ahoy!

Ann Wood Pattern Ships in Progress!

Here is our first fleet of Ann Wood boats in progress.  (Dont forget to drool over Ann's stuffed owls while you are visiting her blog!)  I will post some more process photos so you can see our version of it.  These have been painted but are awaiting mast and yard construction.  This was a great family project and it can be done in a weekend or you can stretch it out for a couple months like we did.  Since we made so many to start, we did one step at a time with the entire fleet, so it took a little longer.  Most of the ships you can see here are the original pattern blown up 100% or so.  I do like the bigger size for the amount of time these take to make.  You might as well make big ones because I think they will be easier to see hanging from the ceiling too! 

Above you can see some of our small and large patterns cut out of cereal boxes and a few actually taped together and ready to be paper mached.  I don't think we have any photos of the paper mache day since we all did it and had really sticky fingers!  I just use a mix of flour and water and few drops of white glue for paper mache.  We tore up small pieces of newspaper and just basically followed Ann's directions and did two layers on each.  Let me see if I can find a photo of them all mached.....nope....

Painted inside and out.

I started the draft of this post way back when but was waiting to finish it since I was giving a few ships to friends as gifts and wanted it to be a big surprise for them.  They most likely would not have seen this blog post anyhow but wanted to be on the safe side!  These ships were so fun to construct and Ann Woods work is so inspiring.  I can't wait to try making my own ship design and creating an even bigger, more beefy one, to hang with these.  Check hers out and you will see what I mean.  Ann also does amazing things with cardboard and fabric and her work has been featured in severl magazines worldwide. 

I will post some more process photos and tell ya about what we did:

One side of Jasper's ship with mast inserted.

The other side of Jasper's Ship.

The inside of Jasper's ship.  I love his style!

In all, we made 4 small ships and 5 large ones.  We will keep and hang the 4 we made for ourselves and gift the others.  We have given three small ones away so far and they have been well received!  I will show you here:

Here is the one we made for our friend Steffen for his birthday.  You can kinda see the fabric here.  It has octopus, ship wrecks, seals, fish, seaweed and coral.  This is the other side of the sail:

I used cheese cloth to line the back!  The sail pattern does not call for it to be lined but I got this wild hair and wanted to see if I could make it work.  It looked great and it didn't add a lot of heft, bulk, or stiffness to the sail so that was good.  You can see the detail here of how we painted most of them with thin paint so the newsprint would show thru like Ann's.  Also you can see a little detail of how the sail is hand sewn to the yard.  Sewing the sail to the yard really makes you feel like your ship is coming together!

Here are two sails in progress for two ships.  These each went to Maurisa for her birthday and Julie for her 40th birthday!  I used an old indian paisley spread that had lots of various stains and holes.  I really like the reds, greens, and yellows in the fabric.  I did not line these sails because I liked the gauzey feel of the fabric just the way it was.  Here is Julie's finished ship below:

These ships have string attached so you can hang them from the ceiling.  Also, you might notice the buttons attached to the ends and sides.  I used shell buttons on these and they are meant to be decorative and to use for attaching your sails strings to.  I followed Ann's lead and left all my strings long and dangley.  Love it!

And on this sail I used some contrasting but complimentary fabric to make patches on the sail.  As if the sail had gotten holes while sailing the high seas and needed to be repaired!

We have not finished out own four ships!  I wanted to get the gifts done first so we will be working on ours soon.  I will post more as they get finished.  Please check out Ann's blog and website to get inspired to create these!  And let me know if you, a. come across any more ship patterns, and b. make any of your own!  I will leave you with a group picture of all our ships, with their masts attached, awaiting sails.

Hello from Tucson!

85 degrees and dry, every day.

Standing on water?!

Having a blast at the Vaudeville Variety Circus Sideshow!

Having a lot of fun in Tucson!  Have shopped to the point of needing to buy more luggage, ate fabulous food at Club Congress and Sauce, and went to a Circus Side Show that was the most fun so far! Swimming, soaking up the 81 degree sun, and taking naps. Gotta love a vacation! Jasper turns 7 tomorrow! Going horseback riding, eating Sonoran Dogs, and seeing Goonies at the Loft Theatre. Hiking Bear Canyon to Seven Falls on Friday and maybe go to Bisbee on Saturday. Phew! I will post more pictures when we get home and the videos of the boys taking part in the circus side show! Gotta love Tucson!