2014 Where Bloggers Create

Wow! I cannot believe this is my third straight year participating in Karen Valentine's (at "My Desert Cottage") "Where Bloggers Create" party. What a great way to drop by the studios of old friends, discover new bloggers, get inspiration and receive visitors from around the globe to my creative space. Huge appreciation goes out to Karen as always for the opportunity to participate.

This year I thought I would expand my tour just as I have expanded my creative ventures. No longer am I limiting myself to art in my Studio - I now find myself knitting in other rooms of our home too. Coincidentally, not only have I ventured outside my Studio; so have some of my vintage treasures that used to live in my small craft room.

Without really realizing it, my antique collecting focused on two distinct styles from the same time period: the late 1800's.

One is Victorian (natch): although Canadian, both sides of my ancestry date back to England and Ireland. British artifacts with the Union Jack, crowns, regal icons, English transferware and ornate silver adorn my Studio; featuring the more "civilized" side of the late 19th century with a touch of Steampunk thrown in for a touch of whimsy.

The second style I am drawn to is Rustic - from my vintage railroad treasures (I once worked on a circa 1882 steam locomotive) to chippy wood, rusted tools and antique farm implements. These are the items I have pulled from my over-crowded Studio and began displaying in other parts of our home.

I hope you enjoy the tour; if you've visited previously, there are a few differences from last year. Oh and click to biggify the images and feel free to Pin away if you so desire!


Part One:  Victorian Studio

View as you walk into my 8x10 Studio

Main workspace with lots of drawers to store tools and supplies

The wooden Lazy Susan is new (well new to me)
I use three glass flower frogs to hold pencils, scissors, tools - very handy!

Closeup of desktop - repurposing old silver as storage

This bunny has been front and center of my desk for years

A few creations, some hourglasses and Beswick bunnies
My Tim Holtz autograph is inspirational too!

Vintage products - love the graphics

RCA Victor sign and vintage Nipper salt & pepper shakers
(thanks to Maureen at "It's All Connected"
for an informative post about them, I knew what to look for.
Her grandfather designed these for RCA Victor!)

Three Edison items - that sign kills me...

Hand painted mouse plate circa 1905

My thrifty chandelier - perfect for $45!

View of the closet (door removed) and 12 x 12 paper stand

At the top of the closet are vintage holiday decorations

My Halloween Apothecary and knitting stash

South wall with cabinets on top of and inside a former dresser
(drawers removed and shelves inserted for more storage)

Antique collapsible top hat on a House of Lords cigar box
I think that postal scale is one of the very first antiques I collected!

Two Singers: one an antique toy!
Pincushions, notions and pins from 1806

Storage inside dresser - boxes, cabinets & small printer's trays all
make finding supplies so easy

Baby shoes under glass & pretty vintage doorknobs

My newest acquisition: a treadle sewing machine desk
(yes, there is a working sewing machine inside too!)
Perfect for extra room to cut paper

or, more often than not, extra room for a cat to stretch out on

East wall - Regal china, crystal, silver and cobalt

Candlestick phone and bell box
The drawers below store oil and acrylic paints and painting supplies
the breadbox holds completed cards

Meggie models my circa 1980 wedding dress (hat made last year)
She stands in front of an authentic Union Jack about 80 years old

Sheba - the master of "feed me" pleading eyes
She magically appears anytime I am snacking...

Glitter in crystal salt & pepper shakers, other vintage glassware and buttons

This fruit peeler looks very Steampunk to me...
luckily, the cats leave it alone!

Once again, Dakotah snags the prime napping spot

Under desk storage - file drawers, baskets, milk can and jars

Part Two:  Rustic Home

Living Room: Where I do the majority of my knitting (on the chair to the right)
The blanket and pillows were all knit by me in recent weeks

A pallet turned into decor thanks to inspiration
from Donna at Funky Junk Interiors!
A vintage duck decoy sits on the table
and my antique bridge lamp now sheds needed light behind my knitting chair
(previously located in my Studio)

Everything is securely wired -
don't want to skewer any guests on the couch now, do we?

More rustic on the fireplace -
lanterns, wheels, wooden pulley, railroad spikes & watch
and a painting of the 1882 train I worked on - again these used to be in my Studio

Hearth re-do. Pulled the blue crate from my Studio
Milk can on the left, CPR rail water can on the right
Also, that's a shoe shine box in the middle with old brushes and tools inside

Antlers, birdcage and vintage clock
That lamp was once in my Studio too

More birdcages; there are seven in our living / dining spaces
instead of crowding together in the craft room

Old game pieces in our dining room (where we played family board games)
including my collection of 100+ Monopoly tokens
The silver trays, cup and cloche were from the craft room
So much better to have these items grouped together out here!

Antique fan and scale - moved to the dining room
along with a few other rustic gems

Kitchen vintage - heavy scale, tea box, pie birds and green utensils
The pie birds used to grace the high shelf in my Studio: so much better in here!

More green utensils, boards, and egg cups from the Studio
in Coke crate that was once in the craft room too

Over the stove: fruit box with rustic treasures
Makes so much more sense to have food-related items out here

A crate of geese and cows -
love the way the geese ended up "peeking" out of the cheese box!

Whew! Thank you for staying for the entire tour, I hoped you enjoyed it!

On July 12th, be sure to check out the whole list of participants in this year's Where Blogger's Create party over at My Desert Cottage. Karen, as always you are so wonderful to host this awesome event - thank you so much. As I've done in previous years, I am looking forward to visiting each and every participant!

More Needlework

Knitting needles that is...

It seems if I don't have a paper craft to do, I pick out another knitting project to keep busy. Recently I've made a couple of pillows for the living room couch. Both are removable covers with button closures.

I LOVE cables!

After completing those in a few days, I decided my next project would be another scarf - one to wear over a shirt once the cooler weather returns. But first I had to figure out a way to wrap the wool I chose into a useable ball. You see, most yarn from a specialty shop comes in neat twisted skeins - they look so pretty on my shelf awaiting a project assignment! But unless you want a twisted mess, you can't knit directly from a skein.

Some people have yarn winders and swifts. I spotted an old wooden swift AND a beautiful spinning wheel at the antique mall - sadly they were too far out of my budget - and where the heck would I PUT a spinning wheel anyway? Nevertheless, they were awesome.

Some knitters use the backs of two chairs to pull their yarn taut. Yet others recruit a family member to hold out two hands whilst they wind...

So what did I do? I used my trusty laptop. I looped the wool around the screen and was able to wind it around a cardboard tube with ease!

I saved the tube from a roll of plastic wrap - it's more sturdy than a paper towel tube. I made sure the start of the wool stuck out so I could grab it once the yarn was wound around it.

Then I slid the wool off the tube, and voila! A center-pull ball that is perfect to knit from, doesn't get tangled or roll away like a regular ball of wool does. And with three cats, the less balls of yarn rolling about the floor, the better.

Here's what I made from two skeins of that Peruvian hand-dyed wool - another kerchief for the Fall. Meggie is kindly modelling for me yet again.

So now that this one is done, off to decide what to tackle next....

Tim Holtz Tags of 2014 - June

Another month nearly over, and another tag in just under the wire; I seem to be developing a pattern... Anyhoo, here is Tim's awesome June tag:

This month is all about watercolouring... with Distress! I was able to create June's tag without purchasing any new supplies - I gathered what I would need...

... and began. As usual, I was making two tags, one for me and one for The Scrapbook Cottage.

I used Tim's full sized Distress Ink pads instead of his new Minis (they are so cute!). I hope to add those to my supplies one day, but for now the regular will have to do. This made colouring the back of the Harlequin stencil a bit more difficult - I can see how the tiny pads would make this so much better - more colours in smaller patches. I used Broken China (blue), Evergreen Bough (green), Worn Lipstick (pink), Spun Sugar (light pink) and Dusty Concord (purple), tapping the pads onto the back and spritzing with my Mini Mister to activate the inks.

Tim mentioned that the amount of water spritzed to create this effect was a matter of choice to get the result you wanted. I know what he meant. The first (left side) monoprint had too little water. The second try was a lot better (on the right):

After cutting, tearing, inking the edges and adhering the backgrounds to my tags (made with Tim's Tag & Bookplates Bigz Die in my Cuttlebug), I inked the tags in Vintage Photo too. I love Tim's round Mini Ink Blending Tool... once I use a foam pad for a certain colour, I keep it with that pad to use over and over again. That way, all I need is the two handles and can whip the pads on and off the velcro base for each colour change.

Here's something else I do. When I want a clear, dark stamped image, I pull out a piece of fairly dense foam and place it under the paper I am stamping on. The extra cushion really helps achieve a great result! As Tim instructed, I stamped the images using Ranger's black Archival Ink.

I stamped the butterfly images again on another piece of cardstock and with my water brush, painted them in using the same Distress Inks colouring the background. Since I don't have his butterfly die set, I hand-cut the images and edged the fussy cuts with my Copic black Multi-liner. I used black foam dimensionals (cut in half) to pop up each butterfly atop it's counterpart on the tag for a 3D effect. Very cool!

I also used the same inks to colour my seam binding. Swiping the pads on the craft sheet, I spritzed with water and scrunched the ribbon up into it, using my embossing heat tool to dry it.

The addition of three gears and a game spinner and Viola! Done!

I LOVE the way the butterfly wings come off the tag.

The watercolour effect is lovely too...

Yep. I really like this month's tag. Easy and simply beautiful!

Special Occasions

April, May and June were all filled with many special occasions and my crafting supplies were being put to good use. Birthdays, Mother's Day and Father's Day... but I didn't share with you three other cards I made in the past few weeks.

For our 34th anniversary (!), I wanted to make hubby a masculine "time-themed" card. So I got out my Tim Holtz clock stencil, some gesso, inks, rub-ons and metal hardware.

This was my first attempt at using gesso, and I am very pleased at how it turned out! It was a lot of fun to add texture to the inked cardstock I had created in Tim's Creative Chemistry class a few months back.

No bows or flowers for this one! Just clocks, gears, metals and twine.

This next card was created for a co-worker's son who graduated this week. The tie is actually a white ribbon (I didn't have black!), dyed with black alcohol ink and covered with Claudine Hellmuth's Multi-Matte. I love the way it turned out! The cap is simply a piece of cardboard covered with black cardstock and popped up with black foam dimensionals. The tassel I found at the Dollar Store (a pack of six for a buck!) and was attached with a gold brad.

I was also called upon to provide for a not-so-special occasion... a co-worker tragically lost both her mother (expected) and a few days later, her husband (totally unexpected and sudden). Spellbinder's dies make it simple to create a distinguished card in black and white.

It seems like there is always a need for a card... the next one up on my "To Do" list will be for a niece's wedding in two weeks!