Janet of All Trades

A few years ago  I visited a sleepy beach town,Carolina Beach,NC, for a much needed vacation. While visiting I came across a local artist that inspired me to paint. Her name is Kristin Gibson and you can view her work here  . She paints oceans scenes as well as still life scenes in a technique called "all at once" with beautiful results. My attempt to reproduce these type of painting was not very successful so I will share with you more of her work. They are totally captivating to me.. I love each and every one of them.. I love the colors and the use of textures. And these painted on driftwood... Posting these today still inspire me and encourage me to get my paints out very soon and try, try again to create some beautiful art.

It's not really a crabby monday, it's really a rainy monday at the beach, but it hasn't kept me from thinking about projects for my list. A large weathered white crab.. It's a friendly large crab that sits on the deck. Looking out to the ocean and probably wishing it was in it. I think it might be possible to duplicate this with a little quick-crete or paper mache. I will add it to my project list and we will see how it turns out. It might be a crab and it might be something that makes me crabby! Enjoy!

I am on the road today headed to the beach. It is just a few hours away at this point and can't wait to stick me feet in the ocean. I fear that I have not brought anything to craft with except some colored pencils and a journal,but I am hoping to come up with some awesome craft ideas for the fall and winter while allowing my brain relax for just a few days. So I ask all of my wonderful followers to please keep reading and following since over the next few days my post maybe sparse, but I promise it is for good reason and that my new ideas will be worth the wait. Enjoy the weekend and I will be back next week.. I  promise!

I have tons of projects on my list but I also have tons of fabric. And who doesn't right? There are so many gorgeous fabrics out there and I keep finding exciting new ones everyday.This is what I recently purchased.. A collection of reds from by Patty Young for Michael Miller called Andalucia.  They are vibrant, fun and modern. I bought a set of 7 fat quarters from  Christa Quilts  . It is a great online shop that has coupons and a blog! I plan to go back and visit very soon. I like to buy small pieces of fabric since I feel it is less of a commitment if I buy 1 or 2 yards. I just need a small sampling to get my creative ideas flowing. Next is just figuring out what I going to make with those small beauties! Enjoy!

I've got a secret and it has been making me less motivated than normal with my crafting. I am headed here.... in just a few days. This will be the view from my beach chair and it is all that I can think about.My brain has already been there for a few days so my creative ideas are not really flowing well (as you can see from yesterday's post!) But before it left for vacation, I was able to create more headbands that will be in my Etsy shop  here  when I return.. I created these headbands in this new fabric... Some great fabric scraps from my stash that are modern and fresh. Also this new design with two strips of fabric. This was super fun to make and after I figured out how to make them fit just right, the sewing went very fast. These will be available in many fabrics in my Etsy shop after I return from vacation.Please bear with me over the next few days while I get my motivation back and maybe I will have more secrets to tell! Enjoy!

I love the white gourds and pumpkins that seem to be coming a staple Halloween decor. Every year I am determined to buy some but get lured away by the bright orange regular pumpkins. So this year I decided to make my own. I must at admit before you read this, I am not totally in love with how these turned out. So you can stop now and turn back if you are scared to read on... I found these two at the Dollar Store. The large one is a carvable and the small a plastic hollow pumpkin. I first painted the stems white. The smaller pumpkin had a removable stem and it was much easier to paint. The larger one took about 2 coat to cover the brown. Next I took the classified section on the newspaper and shred it into 1" strips. At this point I might had shred it a little narrow or possibly run it thru a shredder to get consistency. Then I took the strips and applied to the pumpkin with Mod Podge.  This was easy since news print is very thin and the Mod Podge soaks right in and you can gl...

I have been admiring all the Halloween crafts on all the other bogs I follow and I have become very fond of the Ghost globes I see everyone making. I thought about making some of my own but putting my own twist on them. First I started with these three glass cylinders that I already had , but I have seen similar at the Dollar Store. Then I cut 2 pieces of white tissue paper exactly the size of each cylinder. I wrapped each cylinder with one sheet of tissue and secured with tape at the back. Next I selected some black paper to cut out my images. This was all that I had in my paper stash but it will work fine. Next I free hand drew a ghost image. This took me a few tries and if you can't draw there are numerous images and clip art on the web. The I applied double sided tape to the back of two ghosts and applied them to the front of each cylinder. Dont worry that the ghosts don't lay flat since that will be fixed in the next step.  Next I took the second piece of tissue and ...

Seems like I am really good at making list but not good at crossing things off those so called lists. I think I write a list every few days with the projects that I would like to try or create. I find inspiration everywhere from the changing of the seasons to the shape of a paperclip. Inspiration is right in front of me sometimes and today I have a list of the items that are inspiring my next projects. First is this incredible Fabric cuff that I saw here on Etsy I think they are stunning and they have inspired me find other was to use fabric in unusual ways. Second is the change of the season and the color of leafs.. There is something so beautiful about the way leafs change so gradually and the colors can be so brilliant. Third is the approach of Halloween, one of my favorite holidays, and the simple images of pumpkins and ghost. I just love the vintage feel of some basic Halloween clip art. I think it is because Halloween was a time for me to make my own costumes and decoration...

I have been thinking about changing my Blog image for awhile now. The image of the colored pencils slightly reflects who I am but not exactly. I don't have many photos of myself since I am usually the one behind the camera and I can honestly say that really don't like any photos of myself anyway. So when it came to changing my blog image, I stepped back and thought about how my image has changed over the years.. First I was this girly girl in the pretty pink and blue dress looking for rainbows.. Then some years passed and I went thru those awkward preteen and teenage years playing tennis and trying to stay out of trouble... The after college, getting a job and dressing for the office... (yes I made that costume) Then after meeting my husband, I became a biker chick for a few years.. Riding and documenting our trips... And then lastly become a blogger and searching for my really talents.... Sorry no photo me sitting here at my desk at 6:18 am with bedhead. So I have change...

It feels like Fall is officially here and I have been thinking about a few Fall projects lately. I talked about last week the Ghost globes and they are still in the planning phase and hope to have them finished very soon. While in the process of figuring out the design for the globes, my mind went astray and found another project for me to work on. I have lot of scrap fabric and I am always trying to use every last bit of it and so I created another project..Scrap Fabric Pumpkin Art. First I started with an image of a pumpkin. Just a nice black and white image that I download from the web. Then I used my favorite technique and cut the image it to pattern pieces. Now I numbered them so I knew what order then went in since when I first cut them out I got them a little mixed up. Next I traced and cut the pieces from my fabric. Pretty easy, just trace and cut. Then I laid out my pieces to make sure they looked like a pumpkin. Looking at this now, I could have done two things different....

I have a confession for today, I am not as neat as I think I am.  I tend to think I am organized and everything has it's place. Well after the last few weeks of creating I think this might not be true. You see I have a little secret that I hide in my craft room and it is called a large mess. Lately my craft room has looked like this.. and this..... and this drawer...that needs a makeover... So I took a little time this weekend to clean it all up and put everything away and do a little organizing. Remember the huge box of seam binding (that I still have many projects planned for).. I found a home for it in the messy drawer above, but needed to organize it better. I found these wire baskets at the Dollar Store looked like they might help.. They come in a variety of size and economically use drawer space. So after cleaning out the drawer, I had a nice organized place for my sewing supplies and notions. Not very exciting, but to me a little organization makes me happy. Oh and for...