Altered By Me

  I made this altered mini book for the February jackpot on the PID yahoo group. It is 3 x 3 and the base for the pages came from an kit I bought from my local Dollar Tree store last year. At the time I figure how can I go wrong for a buck and bought a few of the kits.   The pages were already decorated with the checkerboard pattern. I colored the pages with distress ink after randomly gluing piece of dictionary pages and music sheets to them . The theme for this month was purple, green and gold. I used a gold gel pen to highlight the edges of some of the checkerboard. I also used it to highlight some of the areas on the Paper Imagery Designs images that I used. Thanks for stopping by! Arlene

The reality of life. Four little words that can carry such a heavy load for so many people today. I have made it a point over the years to only write about art related things on my blog. I am a private person. Only my closest friends and family know my personal business. And to be honest holding back has made me feel like a fraud some of the time. Because even though I am a private person if you know me and I think of you as a close friend I do not hold anything back. I am one of those people who is straight to the point and tell it like it is. My art or as I used to call it my crafting was what has kept me out of the insane asylum. It didn't start out that way. I was just crafty and whatever craft I was interested in I did. I taught myself just by reading books and magazines because back when I started there was no internet. I would go to the library and check books out and learn that way. Four or five years ago when I found mixed media things started to go bad for my family. I ...

  Here is an art quilt I made for Paper Imagery Designs January Newsletter. I figured after all of my dyed fabric posts I should probably share what I do with the fabric I dye. The size of the quilt is 8 X 8.  All of the fabric I used had been dyed or distressed with coffee or tea. The PID image was transfered onto a piece of tea dyed muslin. If you would like to see instructions on how I made this art quilt visit the PID Blog   Thanks for stopping by! Arlene

I love this little kewpie image from Paper Imagery Designs . The kewpie images can be used for almost any theme.  I have some new PID images to play with and I managed to find some time to create a couple of small pieces of art. My arty time is very limited these days. I am helping with my two young granddaughters during the day. One is 7 months old so all of you mothers out there know how hard it is to do anything when babies are this young. Here is a 4 x 4 I made   And here is an atc to I made for the PID weekly challenge And for all of my readers that are enjoying my natural dye experiments I am dying some fabric using an herbal tea. This first batch of fabric has not been treated with a mordant. After it soaks for a couple of days I am going to dye another batch of fabric with the same jar of liquid using material that has been treated with alum as the mordant.    I am hoping to get a real dingy vintage looking maroon but the fun part of these experime...

If you saw my last blog post and didn't pay attention to the title you probably looked at the picture and thought what the heck? Here is the picture again. From this recycled spaghetti sauce jar, some water and a handful of brown and dry oak leaves I got that pretty bundle of naturally dyed fabrics you see above. I don't know about you but that makes me want to jump up and down and yell woo hoo. I do have to restrain myself a lot around the family. They already think I am an odd duck as it is. If you are interested in experimenting with natural dyes yourself I will tell you the simple method that I used. You don't need any special equipment or supplies. You probably have everything you need on hand. One thing I want to point out is that my fabric has been treated with a mordant. I am not going to go into a long explanation about mordanting your dye fabrics today. Here are a couple of links on mordants The Joy of Hand Spinning and Fibercrafts you can read abo...

So I missed wordless Wednesday yesterday. I have been having some computer issues this week. I am not sure if I have the problem fixed or the computer gods are playing a cruel trick on me. After many hours of trying to figure the problem out I started uninstalling some new programs. I'm not sure if that fixed the problem or not but my computer is running at the moment and since I don't want to jinx myself I will move on to another subject. The picture above is what the corner of my kitchen table looks like at the moment. I am working with fabric as you can see. Many moons before I started playing with paper and mixed media I did fabric crafts. I've made quilts and cute little sachets and cute little fabric ornaments. I made whatever I felt like in other words. I have always collected fabric and sewing things.  I have boxes and boxes of lace trims, seam bindings, thread, and sewing notions. Most of the time I can't find half of it because it is put away. So I am wo...