Charms for the Good Life

My "Anything Art" bee met on Monday at Roberta Morgan's house.  Roberta is best known as a garment maker, who has won big awards in all the shows for her coats, jackets, and ensembles.  She also makes art quilts, and as a visit to her house proves, almost anything that doesn't move is fair game for her art.  I take that back...she also painted her car!


My digital camera has gone to the repair shop, since the lens will not retract.  I did not have a camera with me at the meeting, so I'm sorry I have no pictures of Roberta's painted furniture, room full of mannikins wearing her jackets, and all her other fun home decor.  It reminded me of pictures of Violette's Magic Cottage.




Our project for the day was making charms from either mat board or a precut product called Stampbord.

The stampbord has one smooth white side for a smooth, absorbent surface.  You can also scratch or etch into the surface.


Roberta provided some pages of bright collage prints for us to decoupage onto the rough side of the Stampbord.  We used Mod Podge for this.  I chose some bright birds and some vintage ladies' faces.


On the other side, we used Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks to add color.  Roberta had a whole box of these.

We dabbed a little ink onto a cotton gauze pad, dipped in a bit of alcohol, and then dabbed blobs of color onto the surface.  After that, we used some of Roberta's stamps and ink pads to add more imagery to the painted side of the tile.  I chose these funky-looking women's faces. 

When we used mat board, we worked in strips about three inches wide, and then cut them apart with a rotary cutter along the edges of the images.  Then, the charms were coated with a crystalline hard sealer product.  Roberta used Diamond Glaze,

but also showed us another product that you mix together called Envirotex.  You basically drip some of the glaze onto the surface and let if flow to the sides, watching for air bubbles.  Then you have to let it dry.  It becomes a crystal clear, hard surface.

I coated one charm at Roberta's with Diamond Glaze, and on the way home stopped at Michael's and bought a small package of Envirotex to finish the others.

Roberta drilled holes in the tops and bottoms of most of my charms with her Dremel tool, and showed us how to attach jump rings.

A very fun and creative day with artistic friends!

In other news, my new on-off switch for my Gammill finally arrived yesterday afternoon, and my personal mechanic installed it for me last night.  I seem to be back in business, so I guess I better get upstairs and get busy!

Wednesday Works-in-Progress

Yesterday I mentioned that I would be experimenting with Shrinky-Dinks. This is a type of film that you can decorate with heat-set paints, colored pencils, acrylics, or other media, then bake for a few minutes in the oven. I decided to paint with Lumiere paints, most of which have a metallic gleam. I just painted some basic shapes and embellished with dots and squiggles. The words were added with a silver pen. You cut them out and punch a hole prior to baking. For sewing down these charms, it would have been helpful to have two holes, or it just dangles.

Then, put them in the oven. I used a low temperature of about 200 degrees F, and look what happened! These are shown on the same size sheet as the originals.

They come out like a hard, clear plastic. On mine, the paint kind of globbed in an interesting manner. The silver pen looked good for the text. I put some of the charms to immediate use on my works-in-project from last Wednesday.




This piece is done except for adding some kind of label. I have just been calling it The Pink Artist Project. Will come up with something better.

Here is the other project from last Wednesday. It is the one with Textiva film on the center block.

Last week I showed you the center block with some stuff sewed on, quilted and heat-blasted. Here is what the back of that block looked like after quilting. The base is a stiff interfacing like Timtex, with the pink fabric wrapped around it and mitered (sort of.)

Now I have added the outer frame. After auditioning a lot of fabrics, I chose this embroidered pink linen-type fabric. It came from a skirt I bought at the Goodwill thrift shop and deconstructed. It has embroidered daisy-like flowers in gleaming threads. I like the look, but it was a mistake to have one of the embroidered parts at a corner. Hard to miter over all that thickness!I added some beads and silk flowers and a yo-yo.

The center piece is sewn on to a larger piece of Timtex covered with the linen fabric. Right now, it is only attached at the edge of the center block, and it needs to be anchored down with a few stitches through the center so it doesn't buckle out.

I have experimented with some of the drinking-straw fabric beads sewn to the outer border, but am still working on that.