crafty mcgee

spring, part 2

Here's the other project I was alluding to in my last post - my "Spring" ATCs for Amy's swap. I used my gocco background, drew the animals, put a fancy little floral stitch around the edge with my sewing machine, and added a few flowers from dimensional origami paper. This will be another great one - as you can see from the examples here and here.

Here's the page from my sketchbook that I scanned the animals from. A lot of folks mentioned in the comments that my "Illustration Friday" picture looked like fabric. Which, like most things do, got me thinking. I could make some "Barnyard Fowl" fabric with the chicks and the ducks, or maybe a "Woodland Spring"  with the deer. What do you guys think?

self portrait tuesday: time to carve stamps

I have to send some stickers this week for Moki's tiny carved stamp swap, so I thought I'd combine the process with SPT. In the relatively short amount of time it takes to carve a stamp, I (from top left) gather the tools and make the drawing, trace it, cover the back of the tracing paper with carbon, transfer the drawing back to the carving block, carve it, and viola! In this case, an itty bitty picture of me. Here are the other stamps I'm sending along (they'll be in color in the package):

On 1" by 3/4" stickers!

fabric friday: made by me!

 

Here's my first foray into fabric printing. I used my gocco fabric stamper and made some fabric for my pony quilt. I'm pretty happy with it. The colors are not exactly what I wanted, but it was tough with only five colors of fabric ink in the palette. I got all overzealous and cut the strips for my quilt before I had photographed it. D'oh!  But that helps me present an object lesson in what can go wrong if you don't think out your printing pattern ahead of time. As you can see, there are a couple of strips where there is almost nothing. Very wasteful! I got about a quarter of a yard printed before I ran out of ink, for those of you thinking of trying this yourself. I've already got some more fabric ideas floating around in my head, with a few lessons learned under my belt.

FREE STUFF! I made about a dozen patches from the test fabric and the other odd bits. I'm giving them away on a first come, first serve basis. If you'd like one, send me an email  (there's a link on the top left sidebar) with  your snail mail address and I'll pop one in the post to you! Be sure to put "pony patch" in the subject line so I can spot it!  The patches are all spoken for and off to good homes. Thanks everyone!!

Happy Chinese New Year!

More dogs! I made the card for Myra's postcard swap. It was printed with my Gocco, with some hand coloring that's hard to see in the photo. The little stuffed pup is from a pattern in this book, and the little guys with the umbrella are just from my collection of stuff. Here's a place to read more about Chinese New Year  - one unusual thing I learned is that in leap years, the lunar calendar adds a whole month!

hurrah for gocco

I've had my little Print Gocco B6 printer for a lot of years. I go through phases where I use it a lot, then stop for a while. This last while must have been longer than I thought because when I brought it down off its shelf, the batteries had blown and one of the aluminum leads was completely corroded. Oh no! Especially since all indications point to Riso discontinuing production of the Gocco line at the end of the year. But wait - are they? I can't keep up with the flying rumors, but this site, and the Yahoo group has info. I know they've stopped making the fabric printers, I was lucky enough to nab one of those this summer. Back to the tale of the corroded lead. A Google search found the suggestion to use superfine sandpaper and mineral spirits, which I had on hand. Tried it, didn't work. Not only that, the leads now looked really scratched. Eeek! So I dashed madly about town looking for aluminum cleaner, only to find it at my local hardware store. (I will remember this in the future. This was not something I needed to be doing this weekend.) After "multiple applications" of the nasty stuff, I washed it off, let it dry, held my breath and tried again. Huzzah! It worked, and the Christmas card you see above was printed! From now on I will treat my Gocco with a lot more respect.

Staying in the correspondence vein, here are the postage stamps I had made:

The image is a little (4x4) tile my grandma made a long time ago. "Gram's Santa" was one of the first things I ever learned to draw.