Class: Bunny Boudoir Lamp with Colleen Moody

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by kryztyne2012 in Art and Crafting, DIY & Crafting, Lovebug Creations, Mixed Media, Sewing, Textiles, Vintage

Tags

Alameda Point Antique Market, antique collar, artful gathering, artist colleen moody, Ballerina cupcake topper, bunny, Bunny Boudoir Lamp, Colleen Moody, danville CA, gold bullions, kim caldwell, lace tablecloth, LOveBug Creations, mariasela vallejo, Panther Pink, paper clay, paperclay, paperclay bunny, pearl tiara, rabbit, Rumple Ribbon, Swan Lake, Sylvia Estrada, Terry Frias, velvet ribbon, vintage flowers, William

I feel like one of the luckiest girls in the whole world. Just over a week ago I was being spoiled at the lovely home of artist Colleen Moody creating this beautiful bunny out of paper clay. I drove up to Danville, CA with Kim Caldwell, Terry Frias, and Mariasela Vallejo and let me tell you, it was an adventure to remember! We were joined in some of our adventures by Sylvia Estrada and her mom. From being surrounded by bee’s, to a wonderful two days of class with Colleen, to a very wet ending at the Alameda Point Antique Flea Market (it wasn’t supposed to rain until later in the afternoon!), we were going non-stop with unexpected shenanigans the whole weekend. We laughed so much my cheeks hurt! I have pictures of the treasure we found and the stops we made, but that’s another post for another day.

Today I want to share my bunny lamp with you in all of her lovely finery. She carries a bouquet of vintage flowers tied up with some beautiful Lovebug Creations Rumple Ribbon in Panther Pink. Her lace dress is edged in the vintage-inspired color, William.

She’s a great fan of Swan Lake so she carries a swan seated on a satin pillow and a ballet princess in her basket, surrounded by vintage velvet leaves and flowers. I created a pearl cuff for her to wear.

A vintage earring embellishes her velvet ribbon belt and a pearl tiara graces her head. Covering her shoulders is a vintage collar adorned with antique french gold bullions. I made an attempt to give her feather wings but one can’t be perfect at everything! I need to go back to the drawing board and learn how to apply glue and glass glitter to feathers without sticking all of them together.

If you’d like to learn more about Colleen, please visit her blog. She will be teaching an online class through Artful Gathering beginning in June but sign ups are going on now! Although this bunny looks complicated, Colleen makes learning to use paper clay easy and fun. She was so good about giving us great tips and info on how to use the clay and as a beginner to the medium, I was so thankful for all of the time she spent explaining her shortcuts and secret techniques! I highly recommend her to anyone who is able to take a class!

Thank you so much for stopping by! Have a lovely and creative week!

xo,

Christine Barker

Swap: Queen of Hearts Valentine Swap

13 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by kryztyne2012 in Art and Crafting, Christmas and Holidays, DIY & Crafting, Lovebug Creations, Mixed Media, Sewing, Soft Sculpture, Swap, Textiles, Vintage

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

candice carpenter, heart, Jeanine Stowe Weiss, Julie Weller, kathie lepage, lori dams, LOveBug Creations, margie rowles, Mary Hansen, michelle duke, mixed medium, mixed-media, mr darcy, Panther Pink, practice art, pride and prejudice, queen of hearts swap, Rumple Ribbon, swap packaging, Tanya Peacock, tashia jacques, teah barrow, teresa cook, valentine, valentine craft, valentine swap

“Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.” -Hippocrates

This can be translated into: “Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgement difficult.”

I’m further going to translate this into my new personal motto of: “Life is short, practice art.”

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you know how much i love to join swaps and practice making art. This Valentine’s season was no different. I joined 3 different swaps. One, hosted by my friend, Julie Weller, one was hosted by me, and the third was hosted by my friend, Andrea Villareal. I’ll be posting pics of my swap and Andrea’s swap later this week.

Today I want to show you the beautiful Valentine’s I received from Julie’s “Queen of Hearts Swap”. The rules were to create thirteen 4″ hearts out of any medium and we could pick the colors. We then mailed them to Julie and she then mailed them back out. For some of us, we are lucky to live near each other so we took a field trip to Downtown Fullerton, CA to spend a day shopping together and exchange our hearts with each other.

I experimented with some new techniques, second, third and fourth guessed myself and came up with this heart and I’m so happy with the way it turned out. I’m not giving away any secrets about how I created this but I will say that I experimented quite a bit before I was excited with the end result.

The beautiful ribbon is from Lovebug Creations. The color used on this heart is “Panther Pink“.

The quote “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you”, was said by Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice and is from one of my favorite romantic scenes ever!

Packaging up our swaps is always part of the fun and this is the lovely variety of homemade packaging that I received. I love all of it so much that I’m going to be putting it into an art journal.

The key to swap packaging is to make it pretty but to also keep in mind that it needs to be small since it’s going to be put into a box and shipped to the girls who live far away. I always struggle with this, since I want to make a big, grandiose presentation!

Here’s how the Valentine’s all look together. The ones near the top are from this year and the ones near the bottom are from the swap that Julie hosted last year. I love how they are all so different but really show the heart and soul of each artist who made them.

These are the sweet girls who made these beautiful hearts:

Julie Weller (Hostess with the Mostess)

Jeanine Stowe Weiss

Tanya Peacock

Lori Dams

Michelle Duke

Tashia Jacques

Teah Barrow

Candice Carpenter

Mary Hansen

Teresa Cook

Kathie LePage

Margie Rowles

Taffi Graham

Thank you, ladies, from the bottom of my heart for these beautiful Valentines. I adore each and every one of these and appreciate the time you took to create these gorgeous little works of art!

Thank you so much for stopping by! I’ll be posting pictures from my “Soldered Vintage Valentine Swap” and Andrea’s “Precious Heart Swap” later this week.

xo,

Christine Barker

Paper Crafting: Happy Birthday Card for Zeni!

20 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by kryztyne2012 in Art and Crafting, Cardmaking, DIY & Crafting, Lovebug Creations, Mixed Media, Papercrafting, Scrapbooking, Vintage

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

birthday card, birthday greeting, bottle caps, card making, chalk board, DCWV, DCWV Vintage Collector, doily, Eyes of Blue, fabric covered button, gingham button, greeting card, Happy Birthday, happy birthday card, LOveBug Creations, Lovebug Creations Creative Team, Lovebug Creations Rumple Ribbon, Panther Pink, paper craft, paper rose, papercrafting, pearl sequin, pink, seam binding, seam binding ribbon, sequin, turquoise, vintage camera, Vintage Collector, vintage typewriter, wood button, Write On, zeni pradel

Hi everyone!

Today is a very special day for the Lovebug Creations Creative Team.

It’s Zeni’s birthday! Write on!

To wish her a happy day we created birthday cards for her and I’m so excited to share mine with you! First, I have to tell you about the Lovebug Creations Rumple Ribbon. I used Princess Party Pink and Eyes of Blue.

I picked up a DCWV Stack at the craft store a while back and I’ve been waiting to use it. Zeni’s card seemed like the perfect opportunity! The Stack is called Vintage Collector and I am really fond of it because not only does it have images of vintage typewriters, which I collect (really, what don’t I collect?), but it also has pics of vintage cameras. And bottle caps, and inspirational sayings on chalk board and hot air balloons! It’s so cute and I adore the colors.

I tied the Lovebug Creations Rumple Ribbon into a sweet double bow and surrounded it with some girly accents from my stash. It needed just a little bit of fancy sparkle so I added some pearl-colored sequins. The paper stack came with a nice sentiment coming out of the typewriter but it wasn’t just right so I typed up my own and printed it out on vellum. I know I’m older than some of you but do you remember typing up letters back in the day on a typewriter and using paper so thin it was almost like tissue paper? I think they did that to save on postage when mailing letters overseas. Anyways, I’m such a stickler for random details so I just had to create what I had in my mind.

I’m crazy about how the pink and turquoise ribbon really create a burst of color for this card. I hope Zeni likes it!

Happy Birthday, Zeni, and I hope you celebrate all month long. Please leave a Happy Birthday greeting for Zeni to read and brighten her day! If you want to see the other amazing cards made for her you can see them on the Lovebug Creations Blog.

Thank you so much for stopping by!

XO,

Christine Barler

PS: It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Did you find out if you were the winner of the Something Wicked This Way Comes Blog Hop? The winner was announced on the Lovebug Creations Blog. Find out if you’ve won!