Altered Book with mixed media

Let me introduce you to my friend Wanda McCullough. She is a fantastic artist and has actually been published in an international crafts magazine for one of her books similar to these. We met for lunch at Olive Garden yesterday and she had brought her 2 newest creations with her for me to see. Let me just tell you that several folks stopped and had to ooh & ahh over them. She does wonderful work. I asked her if I could take pics and post them and she gave her permission for me to do so. She creates the gorgeous pieces just for herself . Wanda is a wonderful, fun, beautiful, creative, and compassionate person. She also graduated with me from nursing school, but was a semester ahead. Anyway here is one of her altered books. There are several pics to show all the pages and the detail.  Hope you enjoy seeing it as much as I did~

Click on the pictures to see them larger- it's worth the extra time to see the details!

She hand cut these figures out of an art book she bought at one of those fundraising book sales for like 50 cents. Several pictures she uses she got from that book but she also has lots of found objects in here. I told one lady at the restaurant that she could find something in auto zone to use in her art. She just amazes me!

Sorry for the bad pics- we were in Olive Garden so it's the best I could do. Wish you could hold it and feel it. It's an altered Golden Book- you know the kids books- she just did this right over it. She displays them in her home- which is amazing too, BTW. She has such great style.

She'd lifted this up to show the building was printed on acetate and laid over the throw away packaging of a "seven gypsies" scrapbooking product. The beaded around the picture of the lady- she just glued each of those tiny beads around the pic to frame it. She has used clothing tags, fabric remnants, buttons, clips, repurposed jewelry, a  restaurant coaster, various tassles, beads, stamps- you name it- it's proabably in here!

Many of her pages have pull out tags and mini books and trinkets and "journaling" on the back. When she is with you, she explains the story behind the piece of work and why she included this or that and it is so interesting to hear her tell how she comes up with ideas for her art.

that X is actually a rubber stamp taken off the wood block mount and painted, with tiny beads sprinkled over it & I tried to take this next pic from a different angle to show the texture with the beads on it but it didn't show up well. I wish you could actually just hold the book and feel it because I can assure you- these photos do NOT do it justice!

Sorry about the glare on several of the pics. We were inside and I couldn't get a good pic without the flash going off. I tried to darken them a little with photoshop but I am not very good with photoshop yet. I have pics of the other book she brought also but I'll post them a bit later, maybe today or tomorrrow.

Oh, here's Wanda~

 Isn't she pretty!? She was hesitant about taking a picture because she didn't think she looked good. (Crazy woman!) I told her she should make a blog of her own because she would have a ton of followers if she did. But she says she doesn't have time right now. I am going to try to get to her home and take more photos of some of her wonderful creations. She has bodyforms and dollhouses and decorating tricks and all kinds of great ideas! She has won lots of amateur art shows too. I know you can see why I had to share some of her beautiful artwork with you.

Thanks for looking Y'all & as always- be blessed,

Karyl

I am linking to this party at Frou Frou Decor

My first decoupage- the table B&A

Well, yesterday was my middle daughter's 12th Bday so I am late in posting this. I had it done Fri night but she wanted to go to Carowinds yesterday so anyway...  This little table was given to me from a friend probably about 15 years ago. I always kept a cloth on it to cover it up cuz it was just so ugly. Then I found all of you here on blogland and I thot I could make this ugly table pretty.  Here is the before:

My 4 toddlers had done there own bit of damage to the top as well over the years.

And here is the after:

There are a few wrinkles in it but they're not too noticeable. I was afraid to rub them out cuz this is the second piece of paper I used cuz when I rubbed the wrinkles out the first time, it rubbed the top layer of the paper off so I had to take that off and redo it. I am happy enought with it to leave it alone.

I am just excited to have made it look better. Even my son said it was an improvement.

Thanks for looking! have a blessed day,
Karyl

I am linking to a party at  http://makingtheworldcuter.blogspot.com/2010/10/making-world-cuter-monday-oct-11.html 

I am gonna try to post the button too y'all so here goes...


And on Tuesday I am linking to this party at sassysites.blogspot.com~




I am also linking to My Dear Trash's first linky lasting from
Oct 14-Oct 21 @

Linky...& stray puppy visitors

I am trying to link to a "Thrifty Thursday" Party @ http://lbratina.blogspot.com/2010/10/thrifty-thursday-and-tablescape.html. I don't know how to grab buttons or anything else. I am still learning. & thanks for all y'alls' help in trying to figure it out. But I think I am supposed to attach this somehow to the end of one of my posts but...I am a goober! So I just made a post about it by itself so I can give linky love to this AWESOMELY creative gal at Bloggeritaville- don'tcha just love that blog name???   =0)


Anyway, I am off to lunch with Hubby (his day off) and then hopefully when I get back I will finish at least ONE of my modpodge projects. I was gonna do it this morning but God sent a couple of puppies and their hungry & thirsty mama into my garage and , well, I just HAD to play with them. And feed & water mama doggie, of course. Gosh I wish I had money & land to take all the stray & neglected animals in. Then also, the thought of playful puppies hanging around is bringing my college age daughter, Kimi, & her beau Zach over to visit.

Be blessed,
Karyl

Thought I'd post pics of my visitors since they are so cute~

Stray puppies...and stray daughter...    =0)

A deal from hobby lobby

I'd gotten a candlestick and another piece from HL in their clearance section. The candle holder was originally $29.97 but it was marked down to $2.50 for a crack in the base. The other thing (I don't know what to call it) was metal & had scratches on it. It was $1.99 from $14.99.  I don't have before pics but you can see the crack & where I filled it in with wood filler in the pic. After that I took a little gel wood stain and covered it. I know you can still see the repair but not really when you turn it around- I mean, who looks at the back of a candle???? The whatchamacallit piece was black so I just colored over the scratches with a black sharpie.

I don't have any before shots but these are the deals after I "fixed" them:

The hardest part was that there was this divot-y part in the wood so I had to wait till the filler was almost dry, but not hardened and I took the cotton off of a Qtip and it fit well, so I scooped out the filler in that spot. The I used the gel stain after it all dried & like I said, it does show up but not if you turn it to the back.

I should have "polished" my candle before I took this picture...Did you know you can use old pantyhose to do that?!?!? A friend told me you just kind of wad them up into a ball (well, cut them first so the ball will be a hand size) and rub it vertically on the candle. It gets rid of fingerprints that are noticable on some colored candles. Also if there are minor nicks or scratches, you can run a hair dryer over the candle just enough to make the surface a little bit warm & you rub the stockings over it and it will rub out/in some of those.



I did a real quick rub just to show you-

Anyway, I am working on my first decoupage now. I have sanded the pieces and am about to prime, then paint them & after that dries, I hope I'll get to start adding my pretty paper and Mod Podge!!!

GW find before & after

I had found these 3 shadow box doo-hickies at GW last year for $2.50 a piece. (I think the GW here where I live is kinda pricey after seeing some of the GW deals here in Blogland) I saved the flowers JIC I wanna use them on a card or something. I learned this easy techniques to change the color if I need to and I'll post that if I do it one day, for anyone who might not know how to. But, back to my doo- hickies~

Before:

I had already started to take the one apart before I took the pic. I had to pry the vases off  with a flat head screwdriver cuz they must have used Gorilla glue. I actually ripped some of my frame off of a couple of the little shelves but I filled it in with wood filler before I painted it. Oh, and I learned that the putty kind takes 24-48 hours to dry but the gritty pastey kind only takes 2-4 hours to dry. Next time I'm using the faster one.

So I had to sand the excess glue off & use the wood filler & let it dry overnight (dangit!) before I could paint it black.

My plan was to print some B&W pics from the beach and put them on the back and glue some shells from the beach that my kids had actually picked up over the past few trips, onto the shelves. I just printed the pics out on cardstock and actually laid the frames on the paper to trace an outline so they'd fit just right. I only used pics of Cassie on this one cuz I had saved my pics to facebook and they were easy to find. I want to get more pics over the last 16 years but I'll have to look for them. I just wanted to see how it'd go, but I'll prolly change some of these out in the next few weeks as I get the rest done.

I started this on Saturday, thinking it was only gonna take a while. I was feeling pretty hopeful & excited at this point, but of course, it started raining so I had to wait to finish. I am one of those weird folks who, if I get an idea of something, I wanna do it NOW! Anyway - on Monday evening- this is how it turned out:

Before on the Left & After on the Right:

I had to take the glass out to take the photo, because of the glare. I also put it beside a before one so you can really see the difference. I took another pic cuz of the shadows:

Before on the Left & After on the Right:

And another to show the depth:
Before on the Left & After on the Right:

 The cream one with the flowers is the BEFORE & the black one with the pics is the AFTER . I'll take seperate photos nest time cuz my friend said it was confusing to have them both in the same picture.

I really love how it came out. I did try to sand some of the paint to give it a "distressed" look, but it didn't work very well & so I sprayed another cover coat on it. Maybe the paint wasn't dry enough since it was so humid still. I don't think you can see in the pics but I also took a stamp pad and went around the edges of the photos  and tried to get a better look on it cuz when I first looked at just plain from the paper trimmer- I wanted to add that touch. I should've taken a b&a shot of that so you could've seen the difference.

I put the pictures on the back with sticky dots instead of modpodge incase I wanna trade them out. I had thought it'd be cute to put different photos and doodads on the shelves for different seasons. You know, Christmas photos with little candy canes or some Jolee's dimensional sticker things something like that.

Thanks for looking and be blessed,

Karyl

This wasn't a garage sale find but a thrifty find nonetheless so I am linking to Debbie Doos Party on Fri Oct 15, 2010~

SO inspired

I have been adding blogs to follow like crazy. I am just so excited and inspired by all the creativity and talent I am finding here in blogland. Maybe someone can answer a question for me though (I know I don't have any followers but I saw where I've had some views so, you viewers are the ones I am asking)  but WTHeck is a "Linky"?

Anyway, I have some things I am going to work on and some ideas I will be using and I will post them. I wish now, that I had taken before & after pics of some of the furniture I have redone and some of my own GW finds that I thought were really cool. Oh well, now I know.

The other day I bought my first Mod Podge! My husband didn't seem too keen on the idea I have for a table that was a freebie a few years ago. I love the idea of painting it and decoupaging some scrapbook paper to the drawer. But he's never been one to "imagine the possibilities". I also have an old china cabinet & hutch that I intend to repair and fix up. I really believe that with a little TLC and paint- it could be very charming!

I am just so grateful to all the bloggers who have posted pics and tutorials so that a creative nitwit like me can be inspired and think, "Hey, maybe I can do that!"

My candles...

The pics are not very good but you get the jist. I just wrapped a wide brown ribbon and put the individual 4 flowers together. The flocked brad in the center was grey & I had to airbrush with a copic marker to turn it brown. I discovered you can't just color the marker on the flocking cuz the pen solvent screws up your flocking on the brad so Evelyn at Scrapnesia- showed me how to fix it! She is a crafting genius!!!  I put these in my girls' bathroom. they want to decorate it brown & blue so I thought these would look good. I took 2 pics cuz one is too dark & the other too bright.

I have found so many wonderful blogs I am inspired by that I will be doing lots of projects! I am really excited to have such great folks to borrow ideas from.

Okay, my husband just asked why I had "one crooked" ... I had to explain that I turned it to show the ribbon. Men! =)

My layout inspired by a pagemaps.com sketch

I usually add more photos to sketches because I take so many pictures. I am not the greatest scrapbooker on the planet, but I love it!  So now I am working on another sketch and more photos from the same trip. I'll post them when I get done. I also need to find a better way to take pictures of my layouts but for now this will have to do. I hope I can get a good scanner one day that can scan 12X12.