Dollhouse Deco

"Where oh where did November go,
oh wherrrre oh where can it beeee?"

Welcome to "the Season", I guess. sigh. This will probably end up my only post for December, so ... anyway! On to whatcha came for:

Here's the most recent deco booklet I had the great fortune to work in - made by the wonderfully talented Arrow for Pequad, and currently making the rounds over at Nervousness.org ... It's a beautifully crafted dollhouse themed deco and while I usually shy away from posting other people's work, I really wanted you to see the front cover of this deco (I did ask the maker for permission first, of course!):

It's got great layers of textured and patterned paper, and there's real eyelet curtains in the windows! How cool is that?! The front doors open to reveal two sets of blank pages, for the artists to work on, which are also house shaped. The recipient for this deco, Pequad, uses a Kewpie doll image alot in her work, and it's also her icon/mascot on the Nness site, so that was my starting point for my page idea: I was going to make a Victorian inspired house and somehow incorporate little "pequad" dolls (sidenote: I remember once she told a story about how she got her user name and it involved Kewpies and how her family calls them pequads - for some reason that I forget now. Anyway that always stuck with me and so whenever I see a Kewp I automatically think "pequad") I took a sheet of patterened scrapbook cardstock weight paper that I thought looked wallpaper-y, and aged it a bit with an acrylic paint wash, then did the same thing with some scraps to make floor dividers:

I printed some vintage images of household furniture and items in greyscale - and in an effort to be unique I decided I was going to make my page interactive, so! I made little pockets on some of the furniture pieces: The chaise, chair, cushion, bathtub and even the hatbox in the attic all have little pockets to tuck the dolls into. Actually the seat area of the chair was too small for a full usable pocket so it has a strip across the front that will hold the doll in place. I made the pockets by printing a double quantity of images and once I had cut the item out I then used the second matching image to cut the pocket section from, and glued it down to the full piece, making sure to leave space for my dollies to fit into! And that brings us to:

I wanted this deco page to be very personal to the recipient, so - I actually have in my possession an old vinyl Kewpie doll that I took pics of (I got it awhile back cause I planned to make something out of it, came in extra handy for some printed projects ... ) and I used those as my dolls. What you don't see here, because like a dolt I forGOT to take pictures of this! GRRR. - is that I made a backside image to the dolls as well, mmnhmmm, with their lil beehinds showin' - then I sandwiched them together with a length of ribbon in the middle that would later be attached to the page so you could put the dollies in the various pieces of furniture, but not lose the dolls. Cute, right?! I added wings that I painted with iridecent paint (yep, those have backs too), and then as a final touch I made each dolly a crown and a party hat - one to wear, one to keep up in the hat trunk in the attic.

Once I had all the pieces done, I glued the other end of the ribbons to the backside of the room page and added a top layer of text weight paper just to cover the ribbon ends - then glued the whole thing down to the blank page in the deco booklet. (Waiting in between steps for all the glues to dry & cure, of course!) I wanted this to be a special page and I feel really lucky that I got to start the deco off, so now all i hope is that she likes it and that all the little interactive bits hold up and work as I intended ... and I know it looks a little weird with the doll's feet disappearing into the chaise, but it was the best I could do! :D

Oh yeah! And after all that, know what's my favorite part of the deco? The last-minute addition of the framed family photo in the "Parlor" - it was originally going to be an old cross stitch sampler but luckily a more creative idea surfaced before I glued it down ...

Later, I got another project I gotta get back to, so maybe I'll have something new to post in a few days after all! Seeeeeeyuh!

~ gem ~

Bucket O' Fun

Wanted to quickly share a few deals I got in the Dollar Store section of my local SuperTarget - they've had scrapbooking supplies stocked recently and while I don't actually scrapbook, we all know they are great for a wide variety of other altered art projects like ATCs, decos, journals, etc, so I tend to snap stuff up when it's a decent price. Here's today's haul (each item was $1):

The cute yellow bucket ~ will be used to hold markers
100pc container of felt flower stickers ~ 3 shapes in hotpink, purple and moss green
Mini alphabet rubberstamp set ~ woodmounted, about 1/4" ... the PERFECT size for ATCs and decos
2pk of embellishments in fun test tube containers ~ one set has multicolored jewel brads and flower shaped jewels in blue & green - the other has the same flower embellishments in pink & green and a tube of regular flatbacked jewels. I like that you get the embellishments, plus cool tubes to use in another project later! BONUS!

~ gem ~

Alice and Sara

This turned into a knock-it-out-this-afternoon project for two reasons: One, I was waiting to find out if I am required to show up for jury duty tomorrow (and possibly longer) so I wasn't sure I'd have any spare time later in the week to work it - and 2 - it started storming pretty bad which meant shutting down and unplugging all the electronics (including computer and TV) so I figured I may as well sit down and do this! even though I kinda wasn't in the mood ...

Another mailart project for Nervousness: a pair of ATC pocket decos that are traveling together, you make an ATC and slip it in the pocket, in the end the recip's would get back an adorable booklet with 4 ATC's inside. Mine was the last spot, so these will be heading home when I'm done, and I didn't want to keep them any longer than I really had to.

First off, the decos themselves were so neat! Really delicious pale colored & patterned cardstock that was sewn into a little 4 pocket booklet that tied shut with thin ribbon. The ATC blanks were already included (matched the deco paper!) and while I originally planned to do something completely different, once I saw the blank and the previous artists' cards (that were all very pretty and vintage-y and matched the colors of the deco) I knew I was gonna go ahead and keep to the same theme so it had a nice cohesive look.

I started off by stamping a decorative design onto the front of my blanks (I chose to use the harlequin printed side) with a foam stamp and sand colored ink. Then I added texture by lightly spattering with two colors (antique white and victorian green) of acrylic paint. I chose two ladies from a page of printed vintage images in my stash and tore a random page out of an old paperback for some text. Turned out it had two different girls' names -score!- so I tore off thin strips and painted over all the text but the names, then arranged them onto the cardback and glued them down. Looking at them afterward I feel I should have anchored the girls' images somehow, but ... didn't! and can't now. Added a row of paint dots down the side and edged the cards with the sand ink - signed the backs (which were striped and perfect as text lines) and they are enveloped and addressed and as soon as I stamp them they'll be set to head out in tomorrow's mail ... which is a good thing ...


'cause I DID end up pulling jury duty. GRR.

Judicially yours,
~ gem ~

Pink & Brown Deco, Redux

This poor, poor little deco. So here's the 3rd remake of this themed deco that's currently going around Nervousness and is TRYing to get home to her owner! - The original was accidentally ruined (involved a toddler and a shower - never a good combo, yeah?) so that artist replaced it with a realllly nicely done design and was the one I worked my "Garden Party" page in. I then mailed it off to next player 'round the end of May and it still has not arrived. (Florida to Pennsylvania. Not exactly a haul.) Since it was lost on my watch I offered to make a NEW replacement, and this is what I came up with:

I'm not super thrilled with my deco-making of late, which is why I am on a self-imposed break from making & decorating - other than the ones I already have lined up. This one however was an emergency makeup deco, so therefore doesn't count. :D It's made with scrapbooking paper covers, 2 shades of pink cardstock for interior pages, sorta "postbound" style with brads, and a rubberstamped image on the front (which, is upside down.) for the title text which is P & B in letter stickers.

~ gem ~

Mermen, Merfolk!

Recently I was in the process of making a little Mermen themed deco for an Nness friend when I came across a want in the Deco PIF (Pay-It-Forward) thread for a Merfolk themed deco ... since I was already doing one, I thought - why not another?
The original idea came about when I was making some new handpainted background papers one day and really liked the aqua-y blue green pages I turned out, they seemed just right for a mystical sea creature project ... didn't wanna make yet another Mermaid themed booklet, so I decided to make a Mermen one instead!

Mermen deco ~ handpainted cover papers with metallic watercolor paints, collaged merman -vintage cartoon image of a king or some royal type figure, with real life fish bodyparts from a magazine, coating of hologram glitter paint for shimmery scales effect- Art Deco style letter stickers for cover text

Merfolk deco ~ this scan is of the interior cover page and front of artists blank pages ... Same metallic watercolor painted background papers for the covers, same method of collage for the "merfolk" as above ... I added divider pages made from discarded map papers (tried to go with ones that had mostly water area showing) in between the blank artists pages, and added a different merfolk figure onto each of the map pages ... The front "Artists Welcome" map page I made by typing text onto a transparency sheet, overlaid on a scrap of the cover paper and attached with small brads, then that whole piece was glued down. In my desire to add an artistic element to the dedication page inside the front cover, I glued down small transparent & iridescent star confetti all around the edge - I used jewel glue and weighted it down to press flat & adhere while it dried, but I noticed after scanning that a couple had popped off anyway. I reattached them and covered the whole page with acrylic sealer (which made the gel pen bleed some, dargghh.) and I don't know if that will be enough to keep them on but lets XfingersX that it does! would really be disappointed to find out it arrived all ... de-starred.

I liked that they were both a bit different take on the typical "mermaid" theme, and I hope the recips like the decos they got from me and they come home filled with really fun, unique bits of art ... I think this is going to be it for me for deco making just now ... I have a few more to work some pages in as soon as they come in, and a BUNCH that need to be sent back off into the world to be worked in by others as soon as I figure out who I should send them to ... but me, myself - I'm really deco'd out these days and think I'm gonna be doing more ATCs and getting into that sewing machine ...

Seeya!
~ gem ~

Deco Diatribe

This is my page in a housewarming deco for a Nness'r who moved recently (or - recently when it was started, anyway) It's about 4x4 and super cute - I love the artwork done for the covers! When I signed up I immediately came up with an idea to make a mini piece of art to hang on a wall and include the text "Home is where the Heart Is" with an emphasis on the "ART" part of heart ... So when it arrived here's what I did:

I made a tiny piece of abstract art on watercolor paper -gel pens this time -> hah! NOT Sharpies like ya thought!- and cut out a little frame ... The background image is actually a photo of the recip's own home, I snagged it from her blog ...hope that doesn't come off as really weird once she see's it!... the "string" on the art is from a wallhanging that was already on the wall there in the photo.

Okay, now theres two things I'm ticked about with this one (what?! only two?! harhar.): I wish I'd NOT added the white colored in areas to the lettering - at the time it seemed like ti needed something cause it just wasn't standing out - but afterwards it just looked ... messy. And while originally I thought I was balancing the text better by laying it out that way - NOW I know I should have left the "ART" part standalone on that section of wall above the artwork. Hold your finger over the word 'where' in the pic and you'll see what I mean. I HATE when the better ideas come AFTER the work is done - RAAAR! **And yes, I did consider reprinting a new BG picture and removing the art and redoing it, but it was 2AM and the glue was holding (for once, of course) and I was afraid of ruining the entire thing. So OH Well.