Paint Swatch Magic

       I decided to make some paint swatch book marks when I saw this tutorial here (hers look much cuter than mine)! I got these paint swatches from a somewhat local Lowe's.. I found a ton of woodland critter rubber stamps I used when I was little. I tried this with ink pad ink, special printing ink (which took forever .. like several days to dry!) and finally I tried it with acrylic paints that I happened to have left over from other projects... these dried quickly and I could use a range of colours! I also laminated both sides and stuck the paint swatch book marks back to back with double sided tape (so each one is double sided, with prints on both sides)! 

hopefully i can get a better picture soon..

   Does anyone else know of other upcycled projects that would be cool to do involving paint swatches... or anything else??

I think I will try this one next... !

Beauties!

These are some of my favourites on Etsy. They also happened to have some beautiful photos, so I thought Id make a treasury! ... Next step: getting my photos to look that good!

... click here to see the treasury in all its glory!

New stuff!

I have been so busy creating new stuff! Thought I'd update all of my readers (yes, all SEVEN of you! ) on what I've been doing since my posts so far have been few and far between...

Ok, so since I have this art fair coming up on the 24th and i am REALLY excited/nervous about it and I have been trying to make stuff every day for it! My original goal was to make 4 new things a day but that changed to three and then two when I realized I was spending like 12 hours a day on sewing projects!

So the whole reason for this (maybe) ridiculous daily quota nonsense was because at the  last fair I did in June, (which was the first one ever for me!) it was raining, hardly any customers showed up and less than half of the vendors showed up.. (-->so I had much less competition for customers... although many fewer overall potential customers.) I did pretty well sales wise... (at least I think so, since I didn't really know what to expect!)  and lots of my sales were from people who I already sort of kind of knew... so they didn't really count!!

ANYWAY, I felt really underprepared last time (with a small inventory - less than 50 items! and even smaller display area) and so I am trying to put a lot more thought into how my items will be displayed... which has of course become another source of art fair related anxiety for me!

Ok, so getting to the point... I thought I might post some pictures of what I've been working on lately so you know I haven't just been sitting around picking my nose or something. heh. AND if you can think of any display ideas, please let me know in the comments below!

The pictures in these glass pendants are all actual stamps from all over the world: Rhodesia, Vietnam, Russia, Australia, Mozambique, New Zealand, Brazil and many other countries! The other sides are collages of ephemera from vintage books including an elementary science text book, a children's story book, and an nature encyclopedia (among others..)

I have been working on these glass pendants the most recently, some of them are already on Etsy here.
There are also a few felt pendants in this picture, and a few felt things are also on Etsy here.
All of these pendants are double sided, and are/will be sold with silver-toned chains, so they're like two necklaces in one!
All pendants that I don't sell at the fair ont he 24th will be listed on Etsy. 

These bracelets take me about 3 hours each to make! I have made all but two of them in the last week or so. None of them are on Etsy yet but I plan on listing all of the ones that don't sell at the fair... and making several (hopefully at least 5) more before the then! 

All bracelets are double sided, with one painstakingly embroidered side and one side with patterned cotton fabric.
 They can all be comfortably worn with either side facing out.  

Thanks for looking!

♥ Please comment below!