A snap­shot from our Christ­mas card pro­duc­tion this year. It’s one of the few (some­times the only) art projects that Mike and I col­lab­o­rate on every year. Mike set the O’s using a design pro­gram and I print­ed the Christ­mas trees and the stars with this fun foam stamp­ing method :D

This made me curi­ous about the ori­gin of the car­ol, O Christ­mas Tree. So I looked it up, and want­ed to share with you an excerpt of it on this Christ­mas day, trans­lat­ed from the orig­i­nal Ger­man song, O Tannenbaum.

O Fir Tree, O Fir Tree,
How stead­fast are your branch­es!
Your boughs are green in sum­mer’s clime
And through the snows of win­ter­time.
O Fir Tree, O Fir Tree,
How stead­fast are your branches!

O Fir Tree, O Fir Tree,
Your boughs can teach a les­son
That con­stant faith and hope sub­lime
Lend strength and com­fort through all time.
O Fir Tree, O Fir Tree,
Your boughs can teach a lesson.

 

I like using the words Fir Tree instead.

May good will, faith, hope, strength, com­fort, and peace fill our hearts not only dur­ing Christ­mas but through­out every sea­son this year.

Mer­ry Christ­mas, friends!

 

 

 

Last week was the first week after school was done, I quick­ly filled it with trips to the craft/bead/fabric stores and a craft day with friends!

Found an acorn charm for 75ï¿  at the bead store :D It’s my new favourite neck­lace at the moment.

 

Then my friend and I went to the friend­ly fab­ric store down the street from the bead store, and African print cot­ton was on sale! Going to make more square blous­es (like the blue one in this post).

 

Lat­er in the week a friend came over to make uni­forms for her floor hock­ey team. We made sten­cils out of trans­paren­cy plas­tic (I hap­pen to have stacks of them at home) and applied fab­ric paint on the t‑shirts with a cut-up kitchen sponge.

 

We print­ed 22 shirts! One set of navy blue and one set of white. They were lying on the couch drying…

 

And my friend brought over home­made mac­arons! :D They were so good… felt so com­plete­ly spoiled!

 

A very pret­ty pink one with green tea fill­ing :D

 

Have a great start to the week!

 

 

 

Remem­ber a while ago I made some okra prints? Well, I don’t blame you if you don’t remem­ber, because I’ve for­got­ten myself! But final­ly I remem­bered the prints last week­end, and fin­ished what I had intend­ed to do with them.

Make busi­ness cards! :D

 

A cou­ple of orders had come in through the shop and as I was pack­ing them I thought, would­n’t it be nice if I can throw in a cute busi­ness card with some con­tact information. 

So that was why I made the okra prints, to print my shop info on the back of them. I was real­ly look­ing for­ward to flip­ping them over and see the com­po­si­tion of the prints on each one after they’re cut.

 

I used beige and light grey card stock. And they’re MOO Card size. I kept see­ing busi­ness cards this size at craft shows and such and thought they looked real­ly cute.

Hope you’ve had an awe­some start to the week! 

 

 

 

Final­ly got around to use the okra I bought a cou­ple of weeks ago. I was­n’t real­ly in the mood of mak­ing any­thing, but the okras were going slimy on the out­side :S They were going to be wast­ed if I don’t use them, so I forced myself to dig out the paint.

And it turned out to be quite an invig­o­rat­ing expe­ri­ence! (Mak­ing things always makes me feel bet­ter, it’s just a mat­ter of get­ting start­ed…) The pat­terns that the okras made were sim­ply delightful… 

 

They remind me of jel­ly­fish :D

My first sheet of prints was a bit blotchy. The sec­ond sheet was a bit more consistent.

 

Then there were the more angu­lar prints of a dif­fer­ent okra, com­pared with the more round­ed ones.

I’m going to make some­thing with these lat­er… will keep you posted!

Have a hap­py Wednes­day! :D

 

 

 

Last week I was mak­ing some greet­ing cards and thought they would look nice with some stamped let­ters. I don’t own any let­ter stamps, but I thought I could make just the let­ters I need­ed with my col­lec­tion of corks and a glue gun.

 

The stamps them­selves looked bet­ter than the imprints they made. It was just dif­fi­cult to get an even sur­face. Writ­ing with hot glue was hard­er than I thought! And the let­ters turned out rather squig­gly. It was alright, but not quite what I had in mind…

 

Then I remem­bered that Mike has a col­lec­tion of met­al types. To stamp these, I made a makeshift ink pad with a wad of paper tow­el and some acrylic paint.

 

But are there enough let­ters to make up a greet­ing phrase? Or even just a greet­ing word? It’s time to put my Scrab­ble skills into good use.

 

elm…
loft…
globe…
norm…

Ok, greet­ing words…

Aha.

 

The lit­tle joys in life, are stamp­ing let­ters and socks with cher­ries on them.

 

Have a hap­py Wednesday!

 

 

 

Print shop à la mud­pie, that is. It’s an exper­i­ment. And it’s per­fect­ly accept­able to print in flan­nel pants.

Unlike the Macken­zie’s print shop, there are no machines here. No press. Just me, some cut-up plas­tic bags, some torn up Sty­ro­foam trays (washed and san­i­tized), some card­boards, and the trusty PVA glue.

 

I was hop­ing to make a back­ground for the plarn bet­ta fish, and what would be bet­ter than mak­ing it with plas­tic bags? :D I’ve print­ed with bags before, at school, on a press. Actu­al­ly, print­ing with found mate­ri­als (i.e. things that peo­ple con­sid­er trash, like plas­tic bags, bread tags, and pop tabs) was my favourite thing to do in print­mak­ing class.

I don’t have any of that equip­ment at home, but I do have a plan. I start­ed by cut­ting up the bags and glu­ing them onto a piece of card­board. That’s plate #1.

For plate #2, I tore up Sty­ro­foam trays (again, washed and san­i­tized) and glued them onto anoth­er piece of card­board, to resem­ble riv­er stones.

 

I don’t have block print­ing ink, but I thought acrylic would be fine. I brushed it on so it can get into all the crevices.

 

I always like the test prints on newsprint the best. The feath­ery details were mes­mer­iz­ing, like frost.

How­ev­er, this makes too busy of a back­ground for the del­i­cate plarn fish. So I sprayed water on it to dis­perse the paint a bit before it dries. But then I got car­ried away and it got too wet. So rather than patient­ly wait for it to dry, I laid anoth­er piece of paper on it, hop­ing that if it does­n’t make a half-inter­est­ing print, it would at least soak up the watery mess. Kind of like a ghost print, and out came this…

Isn’t that so love­ly? Well, at least I think so. Has a kind of smoky qual­i­ty to it. Reminds me of aquatint…

The lay­ered prints did­n’t come out so great. But I did sal­vage this one after rework­ing it sev­er­al times.

I’m not in love with it. I thought it need­ed some red. So when it was all dried I added some watercolour…

Like leaves car­ried by the cur­rent or a school of fish. Still not lik­ing it too much, to be hon­est, but I think it’s look­ing a bit better.

I end­ed up print­ing the back­ground for the fish on a piece of canvas.

 

I trimmed it a bit, pinned on the fish (so I can move them to a new back­ground if I ever want to), and hot glued a strip of card­board on the back so it can stick on the mir­ror (because one large wall in our apart­ment is a mir­ror, and we’ve run out of reg­u­lar wall space).

 

Ta-da!

I hope they’re hap­py in their new habitat.

A cou­ple of things I learned from print­ing with recy­cled materials:

1) Must invest in block print­ing ink! I keep putting it off, but acrylic is real­ly too run­ny for printing.

2) Sty­ro­foam does not stick to white glue! The pieces kept falling off when I rolled paint on it. Next time I’ll use the glue gun.

 

Will def­i­nite­ly try doing this again. Thank you so much for stop­ping by!