Dwelf the Elf

Nothing like a little stone carving to brighten the week! This little fellow is carved out of AMACO's Crea-Stone. He's sort of a cross between the house elves in Harry Potter and our household elf (moi). It is not my life's goal to have my head mounted on a wall, just in case you were wondering. Crea-Stone is interesting stuff. It is soft at first then gets harder so the carving tools change during the drying times. I keep wondering if I could use it to make a nice rockmonster fellow riding a bike. maybe square wheels? Hmmm...

Michelle's Easter project for JoAnn

Last year Michelle designed this too cool Easter project for AMACO and JoAnn.

Today I opened my Easter email from JoAnn and - guess what? - there was a photo of the chicks there and a link to the how to project on JoAnn.com.

I'm not sure what the female chick will say to carrying last year's handbag - she was really a very high fashion gal and that bag is so - well - yesterday ;)

So, when you make your chick, please give her an up to date look - she will thank you!

More Friendly Plastic Ornaments!

I just couldn't stop making Friendly Plastic ornaments. These are nice and round. No edges for the cat to whack her paw on as she helps Helen decorate the tree. These were made using a marbling comb. There's almost no wrong color combination though I plan on testing out black against black.

Have a safe and peaceful holiday season. Look for more Ornament Thursday posts in the new year. - mz

Recycled trees

My final ornament for Ornament Thursday is made from some recycled rub-on sticks of the kind that you get when you purchase alphabet rub-ons. These are from Making Memories so they’ve got Making Memories actually stamped into the surface of the wood which is why I chose them. The sticks have been painted with turquoise pearl paint and cut to size. I punched holes in them using a Crop-O-Dile and affixed large brads through the pieces to make the tree shapes.

The bottom of the Christmas tree is a cut piece of one of the sticks attached with Glossy Accents. You really have to love Glossy Accents because it really sticks anything to anything. The design is finished off with some artistic wire which has been wrapped around a knitting needle. I threaded small beads onto the wire and then incorporated them into the twisted design as I made the coil. Remove the strip from the knitting needle and all you have to do is wind it around one of the brads and then through and around the Christmas tree shape and finish it off by winding the other end around the topmost brad. The tree hangs from another piece of coiled wire. -hb

To check out what the rest of the ornament Thursday team has been doing this week, visit: http://www.ornamentthursday.blogspot.com/

Friendly Plastic Ornament Recipe

Melt Friendly Plastic, swirl it around and cut out the pretty design with your favorite ornament cookie cutter. Pop an eyelet in and hang. Tada! A simple recipe for hours of fun. - mz

So, I'm Sewing again?
Continuing in my sewing theme for Ornament Thursday, I have a cute pair of felt mittens. I made my own pattern for the mittens, cut them out of felt and then sewed around all but the top edge and filled with fiber fill. I used some off-white wool roving to needle felt the cuffs.

The mittens are tacked together so that they’ll sit neatly and I used a metal snowflake brad on each to decorate them. An additional snowflake brad is attached to the felted cuff of the front mitten. The mittens hang from a piece of light cord. I really think that even though my first two ornaments this Christmas have been sewn it’s time to look for another medium next week - hb.

Now, it's time to surf over to check out what everyone else has been up to this week.

Cindy Gimbrone Puts Up Her Xmas Tree!
Fused Glass Xmas tree ornament sparkles from Cindy's real Xmas tree.

Gingham and beads and buttons, oh my
Counterchanges smocked gingham forms the foundation for this homespun ornament

HHH Enterprises
We are pleased to have this special guest join us this month!


My Favorite Things in an Ornament!
Lisa shares a special gift ornament

New Beaded Ornament
See our special guest's beautiful creation!

Secret Garden Christmas Tree Ornament
Michelle's got a special tree from the Botanicabella collection!

Strands of Beads
Melissa shows off a simple winter rose bracelet project this week.

Christmas Past

These lovely holiday skulls are all the rage and just the ticket for decorating ye olde cell phones. They're made from polymer clay and shaped using an AMACO bead roller. Just change the color combo and they make a nifty Hanukkah present as well. -MZ

Felt Ornament
I’m not quite sure what happened this Christmas but I ended up sewing some of my ornaments. Sewing is way from being my strong point but I guess there is just something very tactile about felt that drew me to it this year.

This first ornament is two simple circles of olive green felt which have been sewed together and filled with some fiberfill. I tacked some gold and white trim around the edge of the circles and used a flower brad which I think is from K & Company as a decoration. One simple bow at the bottom of the ornament and a loop of matching ribbon at the top and — well — I have something that’s not only very simple to make but which I also think is kind of cute. HB

Check out the work of the rest of the Ornament Thursday team here.

Friendly Plastic Open Challenge

AMACO just announced that they're having a Friendly Plastic open challenge. Check out the challenge details here.

It's an open challenge for general crafters as well as designers. Feel free to post this information on your own blog or any other appropriate forum. We can use the help getting the word out.

They'll put all entries up on their website and the items themselves, depending on what they are, will be either auctioned off to raise money or donated. The more people that participate the better.

Among others, there's a Bottle of Hope category with donations going to the Hasbro Children's Hospital, and a Butterfly category with the butterflies going to the Holocaust Museum Houston.

The butterfly exhibit is scheduled for 2012. Can you imagine 1.5 million butterflies? Check here for more information about the Butterfly Project.

The Butterfly Project—Only a million more needed!

In an effort to remember the 1.5 million children that were killed in the Holocaust, the Holocaust Museum Houston is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies. The Butterfly Project is special to me because my father is a survivor of the Holocaust and is part of Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Project http://college.usc.edu/vhi/.

Nicholas Stargardt wrote--"Children were neither just the mute and traumatized witnesses to this war, nor merely its innocent victims; the war invaded their imaginations and the war raged inside them." The war still rages inside many survivors and their children.

I made these butterflies using Kato Polyclay and they are now part of the Butterfly Project. “Joseph’s Butterfly” (the one of many colours.. get it?) was made using a Kraft Lady Art Mould, colored with Jacquard alcohol inks mixed into liquid polymer medium, topped with a gentle layer of AMACO’s Rub ‘n Buff and sealed with Lisa Pavelka’s Magic-Glos. We hope to make many more over the next few months. The blue one is my favorite with its subtle ikat style colouring and a hamsa made of Swarovski crystals.

Please take a few minutes, read up on the project at www.hmh.org/minisite/butterfly/index.html I encourage everyone to read the poem “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” by Pavel Friedman, and help the museum reach their goal.

mz

Clay and CHA

We've all just returned from CHA where we not only had a wonderful time but also lots of success.

Michelle and I, together with Frank were chosen as finalists in the Amoco Bottles of Hope challenge and I won the Most Original award!

We got to hang out with lots of clay people and, at our hotel, we were next door to Gail Richie, Leslie Blackford, Kim Cavender and just two doors away from Donna Kato. Since we were all on the ground floor by the pool we got to hang together which was great fun.

Here are some of Donna's photos too. Check out the right hand side (5th image down), left hand side (6th image down - it was Australia Day after all!) and (right hand side second to last photo)

You can read about some of our discussions with Donna Kato on her blog, including that we seem to have talked her into a competition for CHA next winter - Yeah!

I also met Claudine Hellmuth who had done a commission piece for Michelle and me so that was fun too.

Took a class with Tim Holtz on inks which was great fun as his classes always are.

The show really was wonderful and Anaheim sure beats Las Vegas!