Paint your own pottery

Check out what I made!

 
I recently tried one of those paint your own pottery things for the first time at The Pottery Stop. I wasn't sure how my piece would turn out since 1) it took me a hundred years to do, 2) I was trying a wax resist technique that seemed iffy, and 3) I made up the design as I went along. I also experimented with putting a ton of different paints in some of the areas which gave it a cool marble effect (but could equally have come out as a disaster for all I know).

But I totally love how this switchplate cover came out! The leaves look pretty cool. I would totally go again--and next time I want to make:

• a larger switchplate
• a round trinket box (maybe with a monarch butterfly on it?)
• a large rectangular vase

A big thank you to Juli for introducing me to this fun crafty outing! :)

And now for something completely different...

Today's photo is of a totally different kind of art...my friend Jenny asked me to design her a flower tattoo!

This is actually the second tattoo I've designed for her...the first one (several years ago) was a dragonfly. She picked out a few flower designs she liked and let me know what color scheme she preferred. I just sent the picture over to her...and I'm hoping it's just what she wanted! :)

What an honor to have my design drawn on one of my closest friends! Very cool.

Cleaning & reminiscing

I'm doing a lot of cleaning this week (yeah, trying to cram the last 3 years' worth of cleaning I should have done into a month). Today's cleaning project was the hall bookshelf, which turned out to be composed of:

40% fancy decorative papers and origami paper
30% blank sketchpads, bristol board, watercolor blocks, etc.
10% folders of inspiration and art projects/instructions from years ago
10% magazines and catalogs
5% games (so that's where the Mad Libs were hiding!)
5% stickers and stationery

Among the folders of old art projects, I found a folder from my Fibers I class in college (embroidery, beading, felting). This was a fantastic class--I got college credit for the kinds of craft projects I was already doing! Here's a picture of my embroidery stitch sampler from that class.

Yeah--check out those awesome French knots!  It definitely made me want to use more of a variety of stitches in upcoming projects. I think I could work a few of these into a felt purse.

Here's my finished embroidery project from the class, which I think sufficiently demonstrates my love of satin stitch. :)