Who Do That Voodoo That You Do Soooooo Well Part I

Here is Voodoo Mama!

I started working on her awhile back and my ideas kept building on themselves.

I started out by making an armature out of heavy gauge wire that would stand up by itself. I coated it thinly in clay, then went back and added the face, hands, feet and boobies! BIG boobies!

A little paint and she is starting to look like somebody so now I need to get her dressed!

Her underwear

A skirt and a little trim around her top make her decent but I don't think there is enough definition around her waist so she definetly needs a corset.

Once I get her clothes just right it's time for my favorite part! Embellishment!!

She gets hair, of course! And jewelry! A chunky stone and bone necklace, shells and ribbons in her hair and a belt with pouches for all her little goodies.

Resin Casting

Okay, seriously. This stuff is no joke! I am not the kind of person who wants to suit up like a Storm Trooper to do battle with my crafts. I'm talking respirator, goggles and gloves! Who can work with all that stuff on? Not me! So this might be the craft that kills me! :-) (And I always thought it would be the blow torch or something much more dramatic) Anyway, I left the gloves on but could not deal with the rest of the getup so I ventillated as best I could and got down to it.... carefully!

First I collected a bunch of different things that I thought would look cool embedded in the resin. Paper, stickers, string, paint, glitter...

Gemstone patterned scrapbook paper

The orange ones are glitter paper and the others are loose glitter.

More paper punches

Stickers

The red and black ones are feathers. Top middle is copper mesh and copper paper pieces. Next to that one on the left is silver beads. The moons are rhinestones.

Acrylic paint swirled around. The next batch I'm going to try some glass paint to get a more translucent effect.

Gold metallic thread and red thread.

Metal Embossing

I got metal embossing tools for Christmas and I am having a blast with this! I played around with all the textures that came with it and got a feel for the different effects that they create on the metal.

Then I printed out a stencil and embossed the design onto my scrap piece. The first thing I realized is BIGGER is BETTER! Too small and the metal wants to bend back into itself in all the wrong places.

I cut it out and hit the raised edges with a sharpie. Not real pretty, but not too bad for my first try either!

I'm still trying to figure out how to get a good tarnished look to stick to the metal. Acrylic paint seemed to do okay but I'm not completely loving it.

Getting Organized - The Room!

Since I'm in the process of organizing things I thought I would post a few pictures of my room at it's worst. I'm a binge artist. I go for a few weeks with so many ideas and projects happening all around me I can't think straight. Then the chaos of the room starts to overwhelm me and I have to put everything away again.

We moved into this house in April of 2006 and I have redone my room several times. Obviously I should have planned it out better to begin with but with everything else going on in the move I couldn't devote myself to my craftroom. The first time I sponge painted the walls dark blue. I added a lot of bright orange accents and curtains and I loved the colors but the sponge paint was too busy with everything else hanging on my walls in there. A few months later I repainted the walls my favorite color, a calming green. I made new curtains, hung a shelf in my closet and tried to reorganize things so they were more accessible. I haven't repainted again but I have arranged and rearranged my supplies a number of times and I am finally beginning to get a handle on this situation.

Earlier this year a great friend of mine gave me some old metal storage cubes he didn't want anymore and I hung several pegboard on the wall above my work surface for tools. Huge improvement!

Getting Organized - Ribbon!

I was so inspired by seeing all my beads organized that I decided to move on to another one of my supplies that has outgrown every storage solution I've had for it. I have ribbon on big spools, on little spools and on no spools at all. I have wide trim, thin trim and tasseled trim. And I finally came up with something that will work for all of it! Way back in the way back, when I used to buy CD's, I bought several matching CD racks. I moved all the CD's into crates years ago once I got them all digitized and those old CD racks are my new ribbon racks. I even have two more so my ribbon collection has plenty of room to grow!

I put the pegs in the back lower than the pegs in the front so that all the shelves slope backwards and my ribbon won't roll off.

I seperated all the smaller loose pieces of ribbon by color and organized them into storage boxes.

Getting Organized - Beads!

It's not as easy as it sounds! I am not an organized kind of person but sometimes I can certainly see the benifits in trying to be! So I decided to tackle one of my biggest headaches and work on getting my beads in order. I have thousands of beads in all shapes, sizes and colors so it was no easy task.

I started with my seed beads. I moved them all into these containers that screw together and seperated them by color. They were the most difficult to organize and once I finished with them I knew the really hard part was over. The rest of the beads got seperated by type and organized into flip top containers.

Stone chips and beads

More stone and hematite beads

Metal beads

Acrylic beads

Shell beads

Bells

Findings

After several hours I am very pleased with the results and I'm glad I did it! Now I'm actually motivated to move on to some of my other supplies and maybe eventually I'll get the whole room to the point where I'm not embarrassed to let people peek their heads in there.

Kitty Condo

Like most people who own cats Allan and I went looking around for a scratching post and I was appalled at the high prices and shoddy construction so we decided we could do much better.

We bought some wood, carpet and sisel rope after Allan sketched up what he wanted to build.

We have some really large cats so he gave it a large base with a two story cubby hole and two more shelves above that.

We brought it inside to finish it up and we had more help than we needed. We wrapped the bottom part in carpet and then wrapped the supports in sisel rope. I cut up some old bathmats for extra padding and hung a few toys from the bottom of the shelves.

(The little one next to it is one that my mom bought for $50 and her cat wouldn't even look at it)

We spent less than $50 on supplies and this will last a lot longer than that little one!

Pincushion

When I began sewing more I realized that those little tomato pincushions that you can buy in the store are useless. It is too small and it rolls away from me everytime I try to stick a pin in it! Not that I blame it, but I needed one that could take my kind of abuse! So I saw an idea on how to make a better one and I had to give it a try.

It all started with recycling a container and that is my absolute favorite way to start any project! I removed the lid and filled the bottom with rocks to make it heavy. This one is not getting away from me!

I gathered the rest of my materials together and got to work. I chalked an outline of my design onto green ultra suede and used dots of glue to hold my purple chenille yarn in place. I love knotwork and if you're careful and get it right it always looks fabulous.

I added a few beads and starting couching with gold thread.

After the couching I went back and added seed beads in the spaces.

Once I was finished with all the embellishing on the bottom I glued it onto the container. I was too busy with the sewing machine to take any pictures of the rest of the process. I really wish I had more arms.. or maybe just more control of my toes would work! Anyway, finished photo is at the top of the post, as always.