Altered By Me

I'm not sure what is going on with blogger today but I have been getting comments telling me that there is no text in my blog posts. If you see a post that you want to read and there is no text just click on the title and it will take you directly to that post and the text will be there. Thanks!! Arlene

Each week Angie posts a new challenge on the PID Yahoo group. This week the challenge is to create an atc using the scraps you have laying around. I made this Marie ATC using scraps that were on my work table. I also made this house shaped atc using one of the Charlotta doll images from PID. If your a regular reader you know I love these types of images along with cemetery angels. They show up in my art a lot. Thanks for stopping by! You can also find some of my art work on the Paper Imagery Designs blog and newsletter. Arlene

Lemon Balm Dye Experiment Over the weekend I cut back a pot of lemon balm I have growing on my porch. My intention had been to bundle it up and hang it to dry. After two days of watching it dry in a big unruly clump on my kitchen table I decided to see what kind of dye I might be able to get from the bunch. I'm not having much luck getting a good picture. This is what happens if I don't pull my camera out and snap those pics first thing in the morning. The above picture is as close to the true colors as I could get today. Back to the dye..So I filled a medium pot about half way and threw the lemon balm leaves and stems in. I let it come to a boil and then I turned it down to simmer. My house smelled beautiful, nice and lemony. My husband complained about the smell. I have cooked down lemon grass in the past so I could use the fibers to make handmade paper and the smell was truely horrible. So even though the lemon balm just had a nice lemony smell

Wow two posts in one day. This is what happens when I don't get around to posting weekly on my blog. Even though I sometimes don't get around to posting here on my own blog you can also find me posting on the Paper Imagery Designs blog. This week I posted a background technique tutorial. Take a look. A couple of days ago I decided I felt like sewing. This happens to me once in awhile. You see before I started doing mixed media art I did alot of sewing crafts like quilting, tote bags, christmas ornaments......those kind of things. I never got into sewing clothes though and doubt I ever will. Hey I bought my first sewing machine when I was 12 from Finger Hut with babysitting money. Do any of you remember Finger Hut LOL.  I have decided since sewing keeps calling to me every time I get stuck and can't seem to  find inspiration I am going to sew something. I've never made any fabric atc's so that is what I will probably make. So I had a specific PID image that

Dyeing with natural dyes are very easy. In my last post I showed you how you can use onion skins to dye fabric. Today I am going to show you the color dye you can get from using grapevine stems. Grapevine grows wild here where I live and I know it grows in a lot of places in the US. If you don't have any wild grapevine handy I am sure you could cut apart one of those grapevine wreaths everyone had hanging in their house years ago. They are still very popular and can be found in most craft stores. Below is a picture of two pieces of fabric. The white fabric is what I used in the dye bath. I am using the solar dyeing method which means I place my dye material in a glass jar and place it out into the sun. I happen to live in Florida and the sun is still very strong. If it is cold where you live you can try boiling the stems to release the dye. It will depend on the natural dye material used when you will start to see the water turn color. It took about three days for me to se