aqua necklace

aqua necklace, originally uploaded by Marysusan.

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.

Felting Tutorial Part 2: Curly-que

Here is part 2 of my Video Felting Tutorial: Felting a 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!

Felting Tutorial Part 1: Curly-que

I thought that it would be fun for me to start filming a series of tutorials on some basic felting techniques.

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)

Wearing your heart outside your chest: Featured Etsy seller: EHMEGLASS

FEATURED ETSY SELLER: EHMEGLASS.ETSY.COM

My husband has great taste. Let me just start off by saying that. He also has the good sense to shop for me from my Etsy favourites list.

Good Man....

So for Valentine's day I received the most perfect peice of jewellry you could imagine for a romantic biology teacher. Isn't it great? I can't wait to wear it to school, and for the kids to see it. Nothing like wearing your heart on the outside of your chest for all to see...

I think one of the best things about it must be in the nature of the glass itself. As you wear it, it gets warm. And while I am certain that it only acheives body temperature, you could almost imagine that it feels a bit warmer than that...giving it the illusion of having a tiny life of it's own. The detail in this coronary cadeaux is just amazing, and the biologist in me delights in it. The artist in me wonders at the process, but honestly, doesn't want the mystery spoiled.

All of the work coming out of Amy Johnson's Toronto TANK studio has this amazing organic quality that just draws you in. It makes you want to touch it, and caress it. Because while all her product is glass, it does not appear precious or weak. This stuff is strong. At least in appearance and intent if not in reality.

You owe it to yourself to see what she can do...I can attest that as fantastic as her work appears in photos, her efforts are even better when you hold them in the palm of your hand.

ON pins and Pins

Hair Pins...something new to do with my hardened felt:

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!

Now I think that I shall whip out a few of these whenever I have some left over bits at the end of a necklace making session...

Too Much Mary

Too Much Mary Banner copy, originally uploaded by Marysusan.

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

Raw Bones: Felted necklace

This is the "Raw Bones" felted necklace. When I finished the snake, treated it with the acrylic, and cut it, I thought that it looked like uncooked bones....which is kind of creepy to me, being a vegetarian. However, with the little rose quartz spacers and the touch of red coral, it turned out to be quite the engaging necklace. The upward facing side of the cut beads really does frame the face.

Even if it is a little...morbid?

Felt Heirloom Roses

So...I am off the Peonies for a little bit and on to Heirloom Roses. I consider this little guy to be an heirloom rose, cause he is so open. Aren't those the roses we always remember as smelling the best and lasting the longest, even if they were not the most showy in the garden?

This 4 inch wet felted and hand beaded beauty with needle felted details would dress up any ensemble, from a simple black turtleneck, to a blushing pink evening gown. It also looks spectacular in a chignon, and that is why it is convertible from a hair fork mounting to a traditional corsage pin.

I love making these, and I made the flat felt for this over the summer, and had it sitting about for a while waiting for it tell me what it wanted to be. Last night it whispered to me...so I helped it along.

Winter White Majesty Necklace

This is the Winter Majesty Necklace. It is a blend of cream and white merino and corriedale rovings that were wet felted and then sculpted. It is embellished with freshwater pearls and some very tiny sweet pearly seed beads. I simply adore the sculptural nature of this piece, and think that it is one of the most visually interesting and inspired things I have made in some time.

I can imagine the White Witch of you-know-where wearing this to a garden party before she drinks some sweet pale wine. It would look amazing with a simply cut evening dress....or a black V-neck T-shirt. It would be divine for a winter wedding! It weighs hardly a thing for being so substantial.

The process of building it was really organic, in that I started with the curly-cues and then went out from there, adding elements and sculpting parts as the necklace called for them. The part that is slightly redolent of a marriage between an open egg and a bird's nest dusted with spun sugar was actually felted around a small stone from my garden, which I then freed from it's woolly captivity. The tiny felt and pearl "cameo" on the opposite side is the doorway through which the stone made it's exit.

I'm almost too much in love with it to let it go....almost, but not quite. It could be yours...just go to Etsy.

Wet Felting Flower Seminar with Carol Cypher

So, I said that it would be coming and here it is. The complete rundown on the Carol Huber Cypher workshop that I went to last weekend. If you can imagine that lovely wooley smell that is slightly redolent of wet dog, then you can feel like you were actually there.

We arrived and were greeted with a long table covered in luscious wool. It was full of little bags filled with roving in stunning color combinations. We each chose our seats and our bags, fully geared up for a full day of felting and fulling. ( Could I use the word "full" there a few more times?)

Then it was time to design our flowers for our lariats. Mine started out looking like the love child of Cousin It and Man Ray. They were puffy and lovely and tempting to pet, but always remember and never forget: Don't pet the felt!

The water came out and it was time to start felting....and rubbing and felting and rubbing some more...with intermittent peeks to check on the progress of the flowers.

Next we moved on to the fulling and shaping of the flowers. Folks went wild here, some ended up with multi-petaled rose/violet hybrids that exist no where but in the imagination. My flower called out to be a trumpet shape, like the Angel Trumpet Flower, so I did my best to give it what it wanted.

Next we made our lariats. This involved essentially laying wisps of roving down over a long length of roving, building up thicknesses where we wanted to cut leaves later, and adding in colors for interest. We then felted these as a rope, and tried not to entangle each other's fibers at the same time.

Below is some great video of Carol explaining how to cut the rope part of the lariat to sculpt it!

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.

Here are some photos of the finished product. I really love how it turned out. The image on the left is before it was quite done (hence the hanging thread)...the one on the right is pretty much fully realized. One thing that I did that I love is that I split open the "bump" that I had sculpted into the "pod" end of the lariat and sewed in a lava bead. It looks like a primeval seed.

My husband says that they whole thing looks like it is about to assimilate me , like a Triffid. He couldn't be right....could he?

Parting with Art...

So I just sent off two of my little paintings and an acrylic felt flower to new homes today. I decided that the flower needed a special little send off, so I made this gift box for my customer to find it in.

Hopefully, it will be a bit of cheer in this week of dreary weather. (And a bit of an added surprise for her, unless she reads my blog of course!)

The paintings were a long awaited commission for a lovely customer who already owned one of my "Angry Flower" encaustic paintings. These two will turn her previously lonely singlet into a fulfilled trio.

It has been a while since I have done any encaustics and it felt good to get back in the studio and get some paint on my hands and wax on the palette.

Etsy Blogger: Project Felt

I want you to check her out: http://projectfelt.blogspot.com/ . She felts, writes about felt, ecology, the need to reduce and recycle both in art and in life, and lists some pretty darn cool stuff on Etsy. I feel a kindred spirit coming on....I am totally adding her to my blog roll.

Last week: Met a new artist Sharon Henson

Well, she is not so new, but I did meet her at a festival last weekend. She does daily paintings and puts them up on her blog so they can meet the world. I really like her tiny paintings of food, but that might be because I like to eat all the time.

I talked to Sharon for a while and tried to convince her to come and check out Etsy as a platform for selling her work. She had never really looked at it before. Check out her blog and tell her how groovy she is! http://dailypetitepaintings.blogspot.com/

As per suggestions

Wow...a week since I posted, I think that I am going through blog withdrawl, but the grading and teaching has to come first!


Ok...I took many of your suggestions into account, and here is my once change purse, masquerading as:

An apple cosy

A vase cosy

A junk receptical

What do you think?

Tooting someones horn: Artistic Detour

This chica is relatively new on Etsy, and I just wanted to give her a little love. She is Artistic Detour. She is currently holed up in her island lair off the coast of California, making incredible stuff for you to peruse! She mainly works in fused glass, but also is selling some pretty prosh kimono fabrics from her shop. Her glass pendants are generously sized and feel great on the skin (trust me, I know). She has an amazing eye for color and creates pieces that just make me want to eat them up. Check her out!

All Apologies

I want to give sincere apologies to all my loyal readers who were unable to load my blog due to the craptacular gymnastics going on at Etsy yesterday. I don't know what is going on over there in Brooklyn, but for the time being, I have {sob} taken down my Etsy minis from the side bar so that this blog will once again load smoothly. When they have gotten their collective merde together, I will return my Etsy links to their rightful places.

Read on my handsome and beautiful friends....read on.

No one will notice...

"Orange, I wouldn't have noticed if you didn't point it out"

Big Orange has something on his face. Little orange has some slight words of encouragement...even if they are somewhat backhanded. Little orange isn't used to this whole being nice thing. This is a 3 inch x 4 inch minature encaustic painting with acrylic underpainting. Just another in my series of "Mean Flower Paintings" that I offer on Etsy.

Green Flowers

I'm sure she will be Ok, Green.

This little flower isn't so mean, he is a little more concerned than angry and that makes a change for these tiny guys. They tend to be a bit more bitchy than this. It is pretty unusual for them to be this nice to each other.

This little encaustic is 3 inches x 4 inches. I had primed and painted the background for this and another piece this size over two months ago, but just got around to doing the encaustic layers. It was cool enough yesterday for me to fire up the hot plate and melt the encaustics. I consider this a little warm up for a commission that I want to finish this week. I firmly believe that you have to warm up your artistic muscles just as much as you need to stretch your athletic ones.

I hope someone buys this soon...cause I have the perfect Moo stickers to put on the package!

Heart Shrine

I completed my "Heart 35" shrine and decided to put it up on Etsy. I feel that it did its job for me, and that I would put it out in the world for someone else. There are plenty of folks out there who could use artistic protection for their hearts, in one form or another, maybe it has been broken physically or metaphorically. Maybe everyone needs a protective heart shrine...

Some details:

Yes, that is a real suture needle

and real suturing silk.

I figured that I might as well

go to total realism in at

least some regard, and I

did have all that old medical

equipment laying around.

Don't Ask...

Please note the heart diagram on the right...

This is a stamp pulled from an old anatomy text

Love it.

Then there is the spool of surgical tape

and the wooden spool/game peice

Interpret it as you will.

Buttons...I just love buttons.

These were decayed and falling apart,

which I see as a distinct bonus.

They hold things together....

until they don't.

What do you have to protect your heart?

Just your Sternum?

A wish, hope and a prayer?
Lame.

Get Serious.

Teeny Weeny

Teeny weeny watercolors make me happy.

This is an attempt to appease my Sister-In-Law who wants a version of one of my pastorals but with a sunset. I don't usually paint sunsets, I usually paint pale blue skies...but anything for family you know. So I consider this one a study, as it is in a 2.5 x 3.5 inch size and she wants something bigger. I just wanted to see if I could get the gradients to happen. Not bad. I'm putting this one up on Etsy and then I'll kick out a larger one for her this week.