Stuff for Friends

Oh, before I get to the stuff I made to send to a couple friends, here's the first successful stencil I've ever done.  I have these glittery watercolour paints that I forgot I bought years ago so I tested them out with a large metal stencil.  First time the medium didn't bleed under the holes.  

My dear friend and sister, Lady Axe, has been identifying more and more with Native American spirituality, especially the power of Mother Bear.  I found this commercially-produced arrowhead in my craft stuff and recycled the bear charm off of an old necklace of mine and made her this necklace.

I made her a medicine wheel with ribbon, beads and a feather.  It's quite small, probably 4" from top of wheel to bottom of feather.

This dreamcatcher surfaced in my supplies as well, as did the carved stone bear bead, so I added waxed linen cord with metal, glass, wood & ceramic beads, and a rawhide lace hanger.

My freshman year college roomie, Angie, is wonderfully creative and we had so much fun making stuff in our dorm room after our homework was done.  She continues to inspire me with her photos and artwork so I made this project I saw on Pinterest.  This is a small box I covered with paper, ribbon, real wood and an old key.

Inside the cover on the left and the project on the right.

She loves architecture and doors, so I used some door ephemera and made a fold out picture book, which is adhered to the bottom of the inside of the box.  Then I decorated the pages by crudely drawing doodles.

And the back side of the pages.

Threesome

Get your dirty little minds out of the gutter!  I didn't mean it that way!  ;-D

Here is the last of the beaded embroidery designs.  I started the first one at the end of April so it took just over a month to stitch all 7 designs.  Now I am working on the altered book into which they are going.

I noticed that my dear friend Marsha's birthday was coming up in June so I whipped up this beaded cross stitch and made a fridge magnet for her.  

Finally, my mom gave me an old wooden tray that saw a lot of cheese & crackers in its day, along with 4 pretty, patterned tiles.  She was going to send them to the thrift shop but asked if I wanted dibs on them first.  I painted the tray blue and envisioned stenciled designs on it.  I have always sucked at stenciling but I decided to give it another try.  

Stencil fail.

I was frustrated and posted the picture on Facebook, in the hope that someone could tell me what I was doing wrong.  Fortunately, few people commented that the trick to stenciling was to use an almost-dry brush, and dab at it, up and down, with the brush, applying more than one coat if need be.  It was a time consuming process, which took a couple of days to do.  I ended up taking over the kitchen table to get it done.

Stencil win!

As of the preparation of this blog post, I have not yet sealed the paint with Mod Podge.  After that's done, I will adhere the tiles to the center of the tray.