Yesterday was The Big Crafty in downtown Asheville, NC. I had a table selling my art and I had so much fun meeting people! Being a birder and selling bird art is really fun, people will talk birding with me and I got a few tips for the area.

The Big Crafty was a huge event with 150 booths!  As you can imagine there was a lot of talent and some great arts and crafts. I was pretty busy with my own table, during the last half hour it was slowing down so I darted around and took a few photos real quick, sorry I didn’t get any better ones…

Thanks for the great day Asheville!

I had accumulated a number of rocks so yesterday I got out acrylic craft paint and quickly painted little creatures on them, or made them into doors. I ended up with about 20 and then took them into the woods on a walk. I had fun placing them, like deciding on which tree trunks, roots, or stumps would make good fairy houses.

Where I put them they are not likely to ever be seen, but I think this might be fun to do again and put in public parks and places that might make people smile!

On my second day up in North Carolina we went to the beautiful Grove Park Inn:

A historic hotel built in the 1910′s, built with giant stones and two huge fireplaces inside, little touches of art nouveau on lamps and wallpaper, and gorgeous views. Very cool!

They host the National Gingerbread Competition every Christmas so we went to check it out. Some amazing work.

The Gingerbread Competition inspired some cookie decorating later in the week…

Not as amazing after all those houses, but I got my fix!

I made a little paper doll during yesterday’s thunderstorm. A cute bird couple! It’s hard because birds are so not set up to wear clothing! It was a fun project though. I’ve put it up as a download (click here) for those that would like to play with it (for personal use only):

The results:

One of the Christmas gifts I gave this year were shirts that I had decorated. I made freezer paper stencils from my designs. My designs are pretty complex as stencils go, but they do not take long to cut out using a small swivel knife. You just have to keep the iron ready to get the designs on the t-shirt, or you risk losing those little cut outs! But I think the freezer paper stencil technique makes such a good result, much like a screenprint. (Here is a tutorial at Cut Out and Keep.)

Here is a dandy little bird:

And a pygmy marmoset, one of those ugly-but-cute animals:

I also made one with a shiny silver barn owl, and another with a red panda (so cute!!) but of course I forgot to take photos!!

I used Tulip brand soft fabric paint, I got a bunch of the paint pot sets on clearance so I have a stockpile of colors. They are nice paints.

I did this yarn wrapped branch project from leethal.net. Put the finished branch in a pot with my other potted plants. I like it…

I felt like I needed some more dimensional things on my wall, so I made a little birdhouse.

I made the pieces out of cardboard, covered it in scraps from an old book and painted it with a light wash of blue paint (watercolor). It was very thick after this so I drilled holes in it with my handy Fiskers hand drill, so I could then lace the pieces together with cotton twine.

I used a twig for the perch. The bird I made out of paperclay and painted with acrylics. Isn’t it cute?

I also filled the inside with some leftover scraps of shredded paper and twine, so it’s got a little nest in there.

When I first started making rubber stamps I was using a regular old x-acto knife, I was doubtful the rubber stamp carving tools were actually worth the money.

Well, at this point I made enough stamps to make the investment so I got the carving tools from Speedball (sold at Michaels) and wow, what a difference in makes! I was telling all my friends how easy it was to make stamps, but these tools make it REALLY easy.

I made this duck stamp in 20 minutes.

And then made a couple more…

(Now that I’m looking at them, they all need a bit of cleaning up still.)

So, to confirm: the tools are definitely worth getting.

I tried out embossing several weeks ago and I finally got around to taking photos of the results!

With this type of embossing you:
1) use a rubber stamp and make a stamp with a watermark ink pad
2) sprinkle the watermark stamp with embossing powder and blow off any extra powder
3) set the embossing powder with a heat gun

This is the result:

It creates nice, raised, dimensional lines. I used the rubber stamps I carved and posted about a while back.

One of my favorite parts with embossing is the little powder particles that get left behind get heat set too and they are these little tiny dots… it may be an imperfection (they actually sell a tool to prevent this) but it’s my favorite part!

I borrowed the embossing tools from a friend, and in the end, I’m not convinced on investing in my own tools quite yet… but it is pretty cool. I think I need to practice rubber stamp carving more to get my desired results. I might first invest in stamp carving knives as right now I am just using a simple craft knife.

Over the weekend I did some beading with my Mom. I NEVER do beading, but my Mom had started making these peyote stitch bracelets and she showed me how to do it. Once you start going it’s kind of addictive, they take several hours to make but I didn’t even notice the time passing.

My bracelet turned out pretty crazy. I looked up the peyote stitch on the internet and most of the bracelets are pretty organized. The ones my Mom made have little sections of one type of bead, and they look very elegant.

The next bracelet I made is a favorite style of mine that I have made before, but it had been several years. It’s a little easier and faster to make than the other style.

Bonus, while I was at my parents for beading I saw a gorgeous Leopard Moth that has been hanging out by their front door.