
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Library Loving

Saturday, March 29, 2008
aqua necklace
My newest creation over at etsy. This felted necklace has been treated so that all those hard edges will remain nice and sharp. The glass beads that I used as spacers are absolutely delicious, and I have to admit that I was tempted to keep them for myself. I also used some cute cute cute green polka dot glass beads around the back of the necklace, so that it would feel nice and smooth against your neck.
There you go. It is for sale in my etsy shop. Go get it.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
living room shelves: eye spy game and contest
Can you spot all the hand made items on this page?
If it is an Etsy item, can you find the shop it came from?
If you click on the photo, it will take you to the original flickr file, where you can add your comments and notes.
I think that I shall make it a contest. Every one who leaves a comment on the Flikr photo, trying to ID an item is eligible.
The prize will be a set of hand felted hairpins, just like the one's I sell in my Etsy shop, ...as well as some possible goody destash items waiting to go in my other shop, toomuchmary.etsy.com
The EYE SPY contest will run until March 8th, 2008.
Good Luck!
I will choose the winner totally at random.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
A Dark Confession
I have a confession to make.
My husband hates nutmeg. Or at least he thinks that he hates nutmeg. Every time that I make a quiche or an egg dish he complains that I put nutmeg in it. Now I know that I do NOT over season my food, be it with nutmeg, or salt, or anything else. I also know that if you DO NOT put nutmeg in a baked egg dish the flavour falls flat.
So I have started putting nutmeg in everything I cook.
EVERYTHING.
It is only a little bit. But it is going everywhere....all the time.
He has been complimenting me on my cooking more than ever.
What does this say about his sense of taste? What does this say about our relationship? What does this say about his fear of nutmeg?
More importantly, I wonder if he actually reads my blog?
What do you have to confess? Feel free to do it here. I am pretty confident that YOUR significant other doesn't read this blog.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Felting Tutorial Part 2: Curly-que
This portion of the tutorial covers the actual process of wet felting around the wire form. Part 1 covered how to wind the felt around the wire form and prepare it for wet felting. (If you haven't seen Part 1, it is in yesterday's post!)
Enjoy!
Link to part 1 of the tutorial here: Take me to it!
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Felting Tutorial Part 1: Curly-que

So here is the first in that series: How to wet felt a curly-que, just like the one you see here!
These little curls are really useful as embellishments or as fun elements in larger pieces, I use them all the time. Besides, they are a great place to start because they work up quick, don't take much roving, and they are just as whimsical as all get out. They can take something that is kind of ho-hum and elevate it. They can also be just the thing to add a touch of the organic to a piece that is feeling a little staid or static.
I hope you enjoy part 1 of this tutorial, parts two and three will follow shortly!
Part 1: Taming the wool (The wind up)
Part 2: Prepare to get wet (Felting it up)
Part 3: Taking shape (Forming the curl)
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Wearing your heart outside your chest: Featured Etsy seller: EHMEGLASS



Tuesday, February 19, 2008
ON pins and Pins

I had these left over felt beads that had already been hardened with the acrylic so I had to figure out what to do with them. I am kind of over seeing buttons stuck on the end of bobbie pins...but I thought that my felt disks were quite different!

Monday, February 18, 2008
Too Much Mary
So...while I did not get much made, I have gotten some organizing done. In the course of going through my studio I decided that I have too much stuff. Plain and simple: there is Too Much Mary.
I have too much of Mary Jane in me. She was my grandmother who ran an antique shop called "The Elephant's Foot" and never threw anything away. It is a dangerous and delicate rope to walk, and I acknowledge that.
Hence, me opening up a second shop purely for destash. And when I say destash, I mean it. I am getting rid of the dusty, the old, and that which I must finally admit to myself that I shall never use. Maybe these things will inspire someone else.
Come check it out, I will be listing things fairly constantly, until the point is reached where my studio space no longer tests the boundaries of physics.
So the new destash shop is: http://toomuchmary.etsy.com
I will ALWAYS be found making art at my regular address: http://marysusan.etsy.com
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Abandoned

abandon
Originally uploaded by Marysusan
Where is my muse?
I am waiting for inspiration to strike. Now that the play is over and I can finally get into the studio and make some things for myself alone, I find that I am at an impase as to how to do so.
Perhaps I just need to get in there and make something, anything, to get the juices flowing. I know I NEED to do it....or else I will just stay in this grey limbo of doing nothing, which is a kind of artistic metastasis.
It has got to break.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Dress without a face

The dress has almost 20 yards of fabric in it...BTW.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Exquisite Corpse
The core of the text makes the basic assumption that the murderer of Elizabeth Short, a.k.a. The Black Dahlia,was George Hodel. This information is relied upon as if it were fact in this book, which unfortunately, it is not. There is one major source that proposes Hodel is the Black Dahlia killer, and that is his own son, Steve Hodel. Exquisite Corpse fully hangs its hat on this idea of Hodel being the killer. If this were not the case, their hypothesis would crumble like the walls of Jericho. Once one buys the idea of Hodel as the killer (largely based on the presence of two pictures of a pretty, young unidentified woman in a Hodel family photo album, which Steve Hodel identifies as Elizabeth Short, frankly, I don't see the resemblance), then the connections to the surrealist movement can be made.....
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Superhero
I have generated two alterego's for myself:

- Prepare lessons at lightning speeds
- Implant info in students' brains telepathically
- Blast the occasional jerk with a "Behaviour Modification Ray"
- Fold time for grading purposes
- Look fabulous Doing it
- Repel stains and evildoers with her Lab Coat of Majesty
- Whip onery felt into shape
- Get others to shop Handmade
- Blast the Big Box Stores (metaphorically speaking or course)
- See the good in everything
- Alter space and time to pack more matter than possible by mere physics into a small space
- Blow away creative blocks
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
What have I been doing with myself lately?


Sunday, December 2, 2007
Felt Heirloom Roses




Saturday, November 24, 2007
Winter White Majesty Necklace





Sunday, November 18, 2007
Wet Felting Flower Seminar with Carol Cypher




Then it was time to bead and assemble. Carol was insanely generous in sharing her impressive bead stash with us. I was immediately drawn to some lavender fringe beads that seemed to be just the thing for my lariat. I didn't want to overdo the beadwork, but I still wanted it to have some pop. I also added a little pekoe stitch beading around the edge of one of the petals for some textural interest.

Saturday, November 17, 2007
Parting with Art...



Sunday, September 30, 2007
As per suggestions
Ok...I took many of your suggestions into account, and here is my once change purse, masquerading as:




Saturday, September 22, 2007
Jelly, jelly, jelly for my belly

All I have managed to make this week is JELLY...lots and lots of grape jelly. But, it is the best darned concord grape jelly to ever pass the lips of man or beast. No Welch's for us here. All our jelly is made from the fruit of our 75 year old vines that grow on the arbor at our Long Island home.
Since I describe the process for everything else, why not this?

We picked over 30 pounds of washed and sorted grapes (so the actual picked amount before culling was probably more like 70 lbs). We have to sort them and pick over them carefully, because we find little guys like this:
Isn't he cute? We named him and all his tiny snail brethren George and set them free in the compost pile.

We then squashed them and boiled them into juice. The boiled mash gets filtered twice. The juice then has to sit in a tall container for at least 12-24 hours so that the sediment and the tartaric acid crystals settle out of the liquid and fall to the bottom, otherwise you get crunchy and cloudy jelly.
We then made two batches (with one more to follow today) of jelly by pulling 8 cups of juice (per batch) and mixing it with 6 cups of sugar, boiling it, boiling it and boiling it some more while carefully monitoring the temperature and constantly testing it for reaching the "jelly point".

My husband claims that I have Jelly Performance Anxiety, as I am always convinced at some point in the process that our grapes didn't have enough natural pectin and that they will NEVER become jelly. This is in fact a VERY good gauge of when the jelly will happen, because about 3 minutes after my declaration that the batch is HOPELESS AND WILL NEVER SET UP....it does. Every time.
SO now we have jelly...for us, for our neighbors' children, for my friends at work, for family. We also still have about 200 lbs of grapes on the vine, which would probably be enough to do 40 more half pints of jelly, but there is only so much jelly one woman can make. Any winemakers out there? Wanna come pick some grapes? Please?
Cause next week we make Fig Jam....