There Are No Failures, Not Even This One

Yesterday, I had the sudden urge to carve myself a new shop stamp.

I love all things handmade, and enjoy the thought of doing it myself.

I took my old stamp and inked it onto the new stamp carving material. You see, you have to do the carving in reverse in order to make it work out right when you stamp on paper.

Did any of you catch my mistake?

Oh yeah.

I out clevered myself. Using the old stamp as my outline, I had reversed the reverse and thus when I stamped, it was all wrong.

Unless of course, you hold the paper up to the sun and look through it. Ah. There's my nice stamp.

I really like the hand carved, hand written quality of it. It's what I do, make things by hand, right?

Pardon my issues with things like left and right, reversals, and negatives and positives. It shows up with arithmetic and numbers and even letters sometimes.  It actually turns out that I have a learning disability that I never knew about until I was a grown up. It's called dyscalculia and is like dyslexia with numbers. I can usually logic my way through things, but every so often, my problems come out. Sometimes I wonder if my life would have been different if I'd known about this learning disability. I did pretty well in school, mostly by trying to stay as far away as possible from math, but what if I'd had learning strategies? What if I knew why I could never remember how to figure out the math problems at home, even if I'd understood them in school. Who knows what I would have been doing now if I hadn't spent my formative years avoiding math?

Oh, don't worry, I turned my mistake around, literally, and used the backwards stamp to stamp a NEW block of carving material, and this time, when I carved it, it was in the CORRECT direction.

I used it to stamp some cute new little bookmarks for my shop.

This brings me to my lesson for the day.

There are no failures.

There are just steps we take on our journey.

It could all be falling down around your ears, but if you keep going, if you fight your way through, and come out the other side, everything that fell down before becomes something to help you climb higher. Every mistake you make, every flaw you possess leads you to the positive outcomes of your life. Every struggle you fight through, even if you lose, makes you stronger for your next endeavor... which might not be a fight at all, which might be made easier, which might even be a pleasure, because of all the hard lessons you learned in your failures.

The stamp carving went smoothly. I already knew it would work. And I solved the problems of the previous attempt, and I was confident in my abilities, so the tension of tiny work was not there. It went faster and more smoothly.

And voila. I have my stamp. It took a little longer than I wanted, but sometimes that's just the way life is. There are bumps and detours on our life journey.

Maybe it just makes us ready when we get to our destination.

The Evolution of a Doll, Creating Yourself

 Every day, I feel like I am creating myself. Who I am as a mother, as an artist, as a friend and partner and sister and daughter. Who I am as a thinker and a doer.

It's an evolution not unlike creating... art, crafts, food, novels, business plans, outfits, papers... whatever.

Dolls.

Like this here doll I made my daughter for Christmas.

Here she is, nothing but a sketched out pattern and some upcycled t-shirt material.  I took my scissors to it and cut away everything that she was not.

Leaving her with a basic, disassembled, empty shape.

 In this scene, my doll has been sewn up and filled with stuffing. I've begun to MAKE her, to take the ideas of her and put her into reality, give her form and shape. She's a doll now. Anyone could look at her and say, that's a doll. (Here she's sitting next to another gift, unformed, which turned out to be a pink kitty.)

You see the thing is, nothing we create will ever get to BE anything until we actually start, until we put it through that sewing machine, and take it all the way, see what happens with all that machinery and sharp pointy things and fears of what might go wrong or how the machine might break down (mine did) or how we might forget how to use the mighty machinery (I didn't) or maybe my doll might not look like what I wanted her to look like (she didn't really look like what I imagined at all, she became her own thing.) You just have to do it. Put yourself out there and say, YES, I will do this thing.

Once you have the basic shape of your doll, that's when you can start putting your personality into her. That's when you can start giving her the colors, trying out different ways of making her look. Here, I'm giving a go to see how the different colored felt pieces might make her look, trying out some placements for her cheeks and eyes and lips and hair. This was not the first combination I tried. I held up different colors, cut out many little circles, tried different shapes and sizes. And this was not the first time I'd made this kind of doll face, either, she is just another variation on work that I've already done.

 Here I have committed to my choices. I've gone and pinned them down. Made them real and permanent. There's no more changing my mind on the color of eyes or lips. Again, did she turn out like I thought she would? Not quite. But in the sewing, in the doing, she became her own thing, not just an idea, but a doll. This doll.

 Then I tried some of the stuff I'd never tried before. Always in the past, I'd made hair with yarn or embroidery floss, but this time I knew I wanted to try felt. How would it work? I didn't know. It was an experiment, something new to try, a risk. And I gave it a shot.

 Here she is with face and hair, after all my giving it a go and planning and making my ideas come real and trying out different variations and committing to my choices and stitching it all down and making it real.

She's a doll.

 I like her.

Originally, she was inspired by two things... the scrap fabric I had, aka brown t-shirt, and the vintage doll dress. I made the original pattern so that she would fit into this dress. After that, I allowed myself to be inspired by the various dolls I have seen and loved and by what I had already done with doll making. I mean, this is why you have a daughter, right? To make girly stuff for them?

It doesn't matter that she didn't like the yellow dress on this doll and made me make her a pink dress out of scrap fabric, right?  Or that she'll probably change the scrap pink dress, even though she designed it, and put her in a different vintage doll dress.

What matters is I went all the way in and trusted my abilities and my judgment and gave it a go. What matters is I took it to the end of the journey and didn't give up. What matters is I made it. I thought of it, dreamed it, planned it, trouble shot it, detailed it, put it all together and then put it out into the world, I mean, gave it to a five year old.

Make a doll. Make a craft. Make a painting. Make a novel. Make a home. Make a business. Make a life. Create yourself. Those things are not you, and yet, the making of them makes you.

What are you making?

Getting My Houses in Order, 61-66/100

Little Houses
paper clay, acrylic paint and ink
3/4"-1 1/4" tall

These took awhile to make. And my daughter instructed me in how to paint many of them. The gold paint was her idea, although I decided to use it also on the windows, to represent all the light and merry making going on inside of the little houses.

Yellow House

61/100

I have not decided what I will be doing with these little houses. My daughter says I should make teeny tiny people to go with them, but that would make them millimeters tall, since the largest house is only an inch and a quarter. 

Gold Roof house
62/100

 This one. One inch and a quarter.

And the gold roof. My daughter's idea. These are things that I am adding to my total of 100 works in 100 days, although they are not paintings. A lot of things go into being me, me as an artist. And a slight obsession with houses and miniatures are some of those things. And sometimes miniature houses.

I was thinking I should make some little set, a little diorama or something with them, putting them into tiny boxes. I don't know. It's an idea.

Gray House
63/100

Sorry about the photography. I am not quite set up for a photo studio. That's one of the things I want to set up in my work space, and I'm not sure quite how I'm going to do that.

 Blue House
64/100

This one reminds me a tiny bit of the house where I'm living now. I think that's why I painted it the blue-gray.

Little White House with Red Roof
65/100

This little house sometimes finds its way into my paintings. I have no reason why. You'll have to figure it out yourself.

White House with Gray Roof
66/100

With these houses, I am still behind in my challenge. There are 14 days left. I have 34 pieces left to do. That's about three a day.

This is indeed a challenge. A tighter one than I gave myself to begin with.

Oh well. I guess the whole commitment is about the COMMITMENT. Am I committed?  Yes I am committed.

It turns out I was not as committed to nanwrimo this year. I gave that one up as soon as I sat down in my new studio and thought about all of the very many things that I really wanted/needed to do, various other commitments that I needed to take care of to get my house in order.

One of the things I am committed to is to get an agent for my novel. I don't talk about my fiction writing in my blog very often. For some reason, it doesn't invite as much show and tell as the artwork does. So much of it is still in process and not ready to be shown.

The art is though? I can't explain.

Well, today I also did some work on querying and synopsis. I can't say even that is complete, but it's the process that is important. And it is, indeed, getting my house in order.

Moving House

Moving House

I've kind of fallen down on my 100 paintings in 100 days. A few days in, I discovered that I'd have to move in two months, and as the days got nearer, the stress and time constraints kept me from painting and even more, from posting.

Now, the 100 days is not actually over yet, so who knows, maybe I will manage to put it all together. I mean, I did do these little houses and charms, and perhaps if I count some of the other things I did, not just paintings, I might not be as far behind as I thought... but my 100 days is not moving smoothly.

Speaking of moving, my move is upon me. Today is the day when we hit the road, so perhaps in a few days when the travel is over and the dust has settled and we are ensconced in our Florida home with the warmer weather, I will come back and show you the plethora of travel themed sketches, paintings, feltie and paperclay projects I have done while riding in the car and trying to keep my kids entertained. I packed a bag with all the things I might need to do so. Wish me luck.

I'm going to take this as a lesson not to take things so seriously, to lighten up and enjoy the ride, even if the ride is bumpy. Perhaps I could have kept up with my painting if I had just remembered to breathe, and to do the work I needed to in the time I had, and then to take a break and do my painting when I needed to.

Oh yeah, I'm also doing nanowrimo.org, even though the first week will be rough in the writing department. I can catch up, I know.  I have always hit my word count, every time I've done it, even if I haven't written a successful novel.

Ah ha. I will take the lessons of my 100 in 100 kerfuffle. Do what I need to do. Take some time to breathe and focus on what I WANT to do. The kids can't talk the ENTIRE trip, right? There will be some time to get some brain space to write, right?  Right?

Oh well, I'll just go with the flow. Let the road rise to meet my feet, er, pen. Ok, enough mixed metaphors. I have to pack the last of the bags in the car and take off.

See ya on the flip side.

DIY Chocolate Frogs and Honeydukes Sweetshop at the Harry Potter Party

It is a truth held to be universal that kids love candy.

What better for a Harry Potter party than to provide a sweet shop to indulge the delights of the kids?

So that's what I did. I would call it the biggest hit of the party, actually, and I encourage all hosts of wizarding parties to include a sweet shop or a Hogwarts Candy cart. 

Now, the thing about Wizard Candy is it's unusual to us muggles, but as muggles, what can we do to approximate the wonders of the candy of the wizarding world? There are, of course, Bertie Botts Every Flavour Bean, which even muggles can enjoy, and the kids certainly do, but outside of that, what do we do?

We use our imaginations. 

Peruse the candy aisle and keep your mind open for near approximations of wizarding candy.

All sorts of gummy treats can be used, some that they mention in the book, and sometimes you can just make up ooky sounding treats that MIGHT be wizarding treats. I found:

Jelly Slugs (aka gummy slugs)

Sour Caterpillars (aka sour gummy worms)

Wiggling Snakes (aka gummy worms)

Boneless Frogs  (aka gummy frogs) 

As you can see, much of the wizarding verve comes from the names you give the candy, so make sure to add labels.

And we don't need to stop there, with creative naming, we can turn all sorts of regular candy aisle stuff into wizarding treats.

Cockroach Clusters (chocolate covered nut clusters)

Chocolate Flies (raisinets)

Cobweb Crunch (white chocolate bark)

Drooble's Best Blowing Gum (gum balls)

Wizard Wands (twizzlers)

Candy Floss (cotton candy)

Lemon Drops (actual lemon drops... Dumbledore's favorite was a muggle treat)

And then there's another option. 

You can create your near magical candy with muggle recipes meant to recreate wizard ones. 

Acid Pops

Sugar Mice

 or todays recipe,

Chocolate Frogs

I've seen plenty of chocolate frogs around the internet where they got frog molds and then made chocolate shaped candies in the molds, but it was not in my plan to do so. I wanted something short cut-y-er.  Enter...

Crunchy Chocolate Frogs

I found the original recipe here and pretty much that's what I did but I'm going to pass on some of the things I learned along the way. You need Haribo Gummy Frogs, Dark Chocolate and Pop Rocks candy.

Start with Haribo Gummy frogs. They are yummy on their own and were a big hit, naked, at Honeydukes.

I used about two bags. I could have done with one bag, but I guess I forgot that I was serving other kinds of candy. I have plenty of these chocolate frogs sitting in my fridge right now, waiting for me to nibble as I watch tv or read books or what have you.

Melt your chocolate over a double boiler until it is smooth.

I used one extra large bar of Hersheys Special Dark. It is a tasty dark chocolate that works surprisingly well in recipes.  It melts smoothly and tastes great.

When the chocolate is melted, dump in two pouches of  Poprocks candy. They will pop on contact, but mix them into the chocolate and most of them will retain their crunch/pop.

 Dip your gummy frogs into the chocolate. Flip over until covered in chocolate and then remove, quickly. I found that the gummies started to melt if you left them in the chocolate too long, so don't attempt to dump all the gummies in and then take them out as you go along, as I was tempted to do... which would have been a gummy massacre. Don't do that.

Instead, dip them one at a time.

 They cover well. They look nice covered with the lumpy chocolate, too. The frog shape comes through but is not too bold. The crunchy poprocks look a little bit like warts. (Note the plain cookie sheet underneath these frogs. This was a mistake.)

Place your chocolate covered frogs on a silicone mat or parchment paper or waxed paper. Initially I just put them on a cookie sheet, but that was a BAD idea. The chocolate sticks like glue. I had to redip  my frogs because of this mistake.

Put the chocolate frogs in the refrigerator to harden.

Ideally, they should be in a covered container to avoid condensation issues, but I found that impossible until they were actually cool and hard. So I chilled them on the mat, and then transferred them (easily, thank you wonderful thing that is a silicone baking mat) into a tupperware container with foil between the layers. They store there very well, without condensation issues.

I'm really glad I remembered that I found that silicone mat on one of my safaris to the thrift store. And really glad I didn't leave it behind, thinking it was just some useless kitchen junk. How did I ever make anything in the kitchen with out a silicone mat?

Back to the story.

Once chilled, you may take out your chocolate frogs and present them to your wizarding guests.  Please remember, though, that these are chocolate covered and they do indeed melt in summer temperatures.

Leave them in the refrigerator until they are ready to be served. Also, they are small enough that you can eat them in one bite. Two bits makes for messy melted chocolate. I guess that's because  they are trying to get away. *wink wink*

As for presentation of my Honeydukes Sweetshop, I always keep my eyes open for interesting containers. I was strangely drawn to those cylindrical containers that you find brie and other cheeses wrapped in. I've been collecting them for a while.

When it came time to create my Honeydukes containers, I thought these would be the perfect thing. They were the right size and they looked as if they were packaging, but were not like our normal muggle type packaging of plastic and cardboard.

So I peeled off the paper labels, turned them upside down and filled the inside of the white or tan containers with... well, the paper plates from last year's birthday party, cut to size. Thus there was a bright pop inside the candy containers and also the plate kept grease spots from showing on the containers themselves.

I could place my candy labels inside the containers or tape the labels to a skewer and then tape the skewer to the container. (Please ignore the fact that I forgot to label some containers of candy. It is very hard to hold kids off of candy, once they see it, just so you can put up the fancy labels.)

(honeydukes sweetshop frenzy)


I put the round containers on a pretty tray and brought them out and before long, the containers were mostly empty and the kids were buzzing with sugar highs.

YAY CANDY!!! (Wizard and otherwise.)


P.S. Is it possible that silicone baking mats were created by wizards?

DIY Acid Pops for a Harry Potter Party

 This was one of my favorite Harry Potter handmade treats. It caused the least stress and delivered the most fun. I found the original recipe here and tweaked it a little. I found the original recipe through this post, and I have to give those girls credit for giving me some of my ideas.

 The original recipe used sour lollipops with honey to get them sticky and poprocks to add the sizzle.

I knew my kids and also knew that they do not always enjoy sour candies, and sometimes they can't even finish a fullsize lollipop. So here is my adaptation

KIDS ACID POPS

One bag of dum dum pops, assorted flavors (about 24)
1/4 cup honey
the juice of one lemon
4 packets of poprocks, assorted flavors (I used watermelon, grape, and blue razz)

Put the honey and lemon juice into a small bowl and stir until it is well mixed.

Unwrap the dum dum pops and dip them one by one into the honey mixture. Set them aside to dry until the lollipop is sticky and tacky, not wet. I left mine out to dry for about an hour. If they are too wet, they will cause all the poprocks to lose their sizzle. I used an upside down colander to dry my lollipops and was very pleased with how it worked, not only to dry the acid pops, but also as presentation.

As close to presentation as possible, open up the packages of pop rocks. pour them into piles of separate colors. Then dip your sticky dum dum pops into the pop rocks and roll them around a bit to pick up the little nuggets. Stick them back in the colander, or however you are presenting them, and serve. It is best to eat them as soon as possible, because these do not keep at all. The few that were left at the end of the party had no acid left at all. They were still sweet lollipops, but the magic was gone.

I picked one color for each dum dum pop, but near the end when the poprocks were getting low, I combined the colors and had multi-color poprocks. Either way, it makes for a pretty candy. The presentation on the colander showed off the colors. It's also important to label your wizard candy, because without the name, it's just regular muggle candies mixed together. WITH the name, it's a treat imported from the Hogwarts Train candy cart.

 By mixing colors of pop rocks and dum dums, you can get a whole delightful assortment of pretty candies. This one is green and blue pop rocks on a white dum dum.

This is the one I had. It is grape pop rocks on a butterscotch dum dum. It was pretty tasty. And fun.

Not only did the kids enjoy these, but all the adults had one and relived their child hood a little.

Now that's magic that even muggles can practice.

You can see the rest of the Harry Potter party here, with links to the other crafts.

Styrofoam Stamped "Cauldron" Gift Bags DIY

When I was trying to figure out a favor bag for my Harry Potter party, I knew I wanted to do some sort of cauldron. At first I was thinking I'd get beach pails and spray paint them black, but that seemed kind of an expense and time commitment considering all the other projects I was doing. Then I thought of using some recycled metal canisters... and that seemed even MORE labor intensive and borderline crazy.

When I went to the Dollar Store, I was looking for possible favor bags, thinking I'd find a set of black paper gift bags or something like that. In the end, all I found was lunch bags. I thought I could work with that. I imagined painting my cauldrons directly on each bag.

Then I stumbled upon this  idea of potato stamped Halloween Gift Bags from Martha Stewart, and I knew what I was going to do.

It's not a big leap to get from Halloween skulls to Harry Potter Cauldrons... in fact, I could see using this craft come October, but I also wasn't planning on using potatoes.

I had a  nice slab of pink styrofoam, left over from a grocery store meat tray, and after seeing things floating around pinterest about how to make stamps and prints out of those pieces of styrofoam, but never finding an image I wanted to try, I knew I had my answer.

I drew a basic shape of a cauldron in my flat styrofoam with a pencil, pressing to make an indentation, then I took my big scissors and cut out the shape. 

This is a rough shape and basically symmetrical, so was not a concern for me, but if you wanted to make something more detailed or something with writing on it, you have to make sure to carve it backwards, so that when it is printed it will be forward. (This cauldron, in particular, would be pretty cute for Halloween with "BOO!" written in it. That's good to note that I can customize it later if I want.)

 Rather than cutting out the inside of the stamp, I used a broken pencil point (the end of a paint brush would also work, I suppose) to depress the whole area I did not want to ink. The styrofoam doesn't really carve the way rubber or linoleum would, so I just kind of "drew" heavily with my blunt point, leaving the whole area indented so it doesn't show up when you print it on the paper.

Once you have your styrofoam stamp shape, it's a pretty easy process. I tried a stamp pad first, but it did not ink heavily enough and I just went straight to craft paint. I used my stamp, my craft paint, a paint brush and my paper bag.

 I put a dab of paint on the stamp and then painted it on with my brush, making sure to spread it thinly and evenly over the whole stamp and making sure to hit each part that I wanted to have on my image.  You'll notice that I only painted the handle, and not the negative space inside the cauldron, although some paint gets into that space, the depression keeps it from printing on the paper.

Then I placed my styrofoam stamp face down on my paper bag and pressed the back of the styrofoam down, evenly, all over, with my hand. Making sure that all the paint touched the paper firmly.

This is the stamped bag. Please note that there is a rumple in the middle where the bag folds over. I went with that rustic feel, it didn't bother me. I suppose if you wanted to get rid of that, you could slide a cardboard inside the bag before you did the stamping, so that you would have a smooth surface to print on.

When the bag opens, it is a cauldron ready to be filled with candy and other assorted goods that young Wizards and Witches require.

This was such an easy craft that I was really happy with the results and it really helped out at our Harry Potter party, keeping all the kids' goodies safe while they ran around like wild wizards and witches.

Here's the link to the Harry Potter party where you will find links to all the other craft projects I did for it.

Expecto Patronum and Dementor Stones: A Harry Potter Party Favor

 EXPECTO PATRONUM!!

Almost two months ago, I showed you a craft I made, with plastic animals and silver craft paint. I called them patronuses and had plans of making them a favor/activity for my son's Harry Potter birthday party, but I was stumped as to how I was going to present them.

It took me a while but I did finally figure out how to do it. I created a modified surprise ball from a tutorial I found here. These are more stone shapes than balls, but I thought that was appropriate because they're kind of dementors. The black shapes of darkness, fear and sadness.

I filled the bowl (found at a thrift store in a lucky coincidence... always keep your eyes and mind open when on the look out for creative project ideas) with my dementor stones.

And then I drew out a sign for the spell the kids needed to defeat the dementors. I had a whole sheet of blank labels that I made, using a tea stained paper, so any time I needed a label or sign, I just wrote out another. I used many of the labels for my potion bottles, and others for candy labels. I taped the label to a skewer that I cut in half, and the tapes the end of the skewer to the patronus bowl.

The party was planned out with different levels of activities. After they'd run around a bit I set them down with the Expecto Patronum/Dementor Stones, and asked them what they knew about dementors. Enough of the party goers were Harry Potter fans that they explained the story to the others.

Then I told them about the Expecto Patronum spell, and when they said the spell, they had to think very hard about good and happy things. so that while they were opening up the dementor stones, they could bring their patronus into being.

They unwound their dementor stones and ended up with their silvery patronus charm.

Each kid found one of these inside of their dementor stone and I told them that their patronus spirit would help chase away bad thoughts and feelings.

"Like bad dreams?" one of the kids asked.

"Exactly," I said.

These were the stones that were left, and the dementor shrouds that dried up and blew away.

Dementor Stone Tutorial

This is how I made the dementor stones. I bought black crepe paper streamers and then I picked a relatively large patronus figure.

I started with one end on the figure and, holding it tightly and stretching the crepe paper out slightly as I did it, started wrapping up my figure. I tried to wrap it evenly, sort of like wrapping a ball of yarn. The tighter you pull it, the more the paper will conform to the shape of your figurine.

You want to wrap it in opposite directions, pulling snugly so that the crepe paper almost stretches around it.

When the stone is wrapped completely and the shape of the patronus is concealed in the streamer, cut the streamer and glue or tape the end to the outside. It does not have to be round like a surprise ball. This is only one gift and I do like the stone shapes. I was thinking that it would be a cool surprise, though, to add glittery confetti inside of the stones, so as they unwrap, the wizard or witch would be releasing magic. But I thought of that after my shopping trip was already done.

If the patronus figure is smaller, like this little turtle, you actually need a thinner streamer. So I pulled off a good deal of the streamer, folded it several times so that it was layered, and then cut it in half lengthwise, so when unfolded I ended with two long narrow streamers.

At this point, you wrap up the figure the same way you wrapped up the bigger one, snugly and firmly, wrapping in different directions as you go to cover the whole figure. If the streamer snaps, it's no big deal. Just hold onto the end that has already been wrapped, and keep wrapping it with the rest of the streamer. You can add more glue if you want, but it's not necessary. You don't want it to be too hard to unwrap.

Finish wrapping and glue. Let the glue dry. I like how the black crepe paper, pulled tight, is almost shiny and seemingly solid.

Present to your favorite Harry Potter fan, and watch the magic happen.