HandPainted Art Collage Tote

My latest bags included some thread painting and utilization of old scraps that I had painted for some previous work. I had no use for them and had been holding on to them for the perfect project and this turned out to be the one! I created 2 bucket totes using a large piece scrap of upholstery that I painted with random artist acrylics. (you can see the fabric being painted in my profile pic) Then I continued using some random bits of leather and other scraps to create a collage of interest. I also used some cotton fabric from a recycled skirt that I altered. It was fun to add some thread painted accents as a design element on the handle and also within the bag design itself, something I had a lot of fun with!

New Fabric Collage Bags

What a fun way to use up fabric scraps! I love the bright colors in this one. This is only my second piece using this technique but I don't think that I will be stopping there. I think I will keep on experimenting with fabric collage and applique in this style.
Would love to hear what you think about them if you'd like to leave a comment.

Making Art Purses with Recycled Plastic Bags

The perfect night to take a breather and do a fun project. I have been wanting to try making some handbag clutches out of recycled and melted fused plastic grocery bags forever now.
I just picked up the latest Cloth Paper Scissors magazine and found Alisa Burke's method of making bags, so it is the perfect opportunity for me to do some experimenting. I just love her work. I really have the urge to do something creative again and she is so inspiring. I want to get messy with paints and pull something from my crazy energy lately. I have done bags in recycled dryer sheets before so I cant imagine that this is too much different and I love the different textures and colorful stitching. This might be a great addition to add to my show coming up on March 9th.

Creative Energy

Feeling the need to be creative and do some art related projects. Here is something I am working on tonight- a fabric wall hanging. I just love this one so much and is very close to my heart- the words and the way the man is embracing her. I love it~!
I will be down at LaBussola tomorrow working on the letters that go with it; cutting them out and gluing them on before sewing them down permanently.

Custom Bag for La Bussola

Today I am finishing up a bag for Meredith, the owner of La Bussola. She is so awesome and I want to make sure she knows how much I appreciate all she has done for me. She is going to love this bag. It is made with my special layering and fusing of recycled dryer sheets and I am now personalizing it with the shop name among other things.

Mixed Fabric and Leather Collage Tote

The new fabric collage tote is up in my shop.

Click on the image to the left for larger view or visit my uniquehandbags.etsy.com shop on Etsy

Fall Leaves IPod Case

Here is the fall case I mentioned that I was working on last night. I finished it up and its now listed for sale in my shop. I used my favorite technique on this one with recycled fused dyed dryer sheets. Its fun to use this style because it is not a rigid or structured type of art and allows me to just have a little more fun than I usually do. Then the fun part is putting down the free motion stitches adding texture.

Halloween Spirit

I am so easily distracted. And I just love Halloween! It's not even October yet, I know. I was going to work on some new cases but I keep staring at this shirt, saying that I want to make something from it. I bought this cute tshirt at target last year when they were on sale and never wore it and don't want it to go to waste so I thought it has the best graphic to play with, so I am going to start with cutting the tree completely out and will be fusing and sewing it to a background, possibly a orange microfiber material. I am not sure what I will do yet for accents but this is a good start for now.

PROGRESS ON THE SHIRT
Instead of creating a whole new post I am just posting my progress here so far. I have fused it to its background and now its time to add some color. No real ideas in mind so far. I am just kind of playing and going with my feelings on this one.

Fabric Photo Album

I am just about finished with my moms birthday gift. I made this fabric album with about 8 of my favorite images that I took into photoshop and then printed them onto fabric transfer paper. Each page has its own special fabric and the outside is decorated with beads with a window cutout for the front. This is a photo of the first page and you can see that I used grommets and secured the pages with a ribbon.

I think it would be fun to custom make these for special events like weddings etc. I hope that she likes it. She doesn't read my blog regular so I am glad that I am able to share it here without ruining the surprise.

Fabric Album

Wow! I have 2 days to finish this and get it into the mail for my moms bday. I decided to make a small album of old photos of her as a little girl from fabric. I chose around 8 photos to work with and transfered them to fabric. This is what I have done so far. I think she will like it:)

New Projects

I had a great time last night at my quilting group meeting! It was nice to share my recent projects, get feedback, see others work and also hang out with friends. I got some advise to "not" to try the new fall pumpkin quilt I was going to attempt. Apparently the flying geese are a real challenge to get perfect and precise and may not be the best first timer project, so I may be doing a revised version or at least just one patch, just to see what its all about.

The pet portrait I am working on is coming out nice. Here is a photo of my progress so far. I got a little side tracked from the direction in Quilting Arts mag and decided to attempt my own version. I took some black cotton fabric and used a bleach pen to lift the color on the lighter areas of the dog. Then I fused her to the background and thread painted it giving it texture. I added some acrylics to the mouth for color and used a fabric marker for more details. I will be finishing it up and mailing it to my mother in law as a gift.

My moms birthday is coming up quickly and I decided to take some old photographs and do some fabric collage with them. I will post my progress on that when I start on it.

Is it Friday Already?

Wow! Its seems like I have been in another world that last few days. It went by so fast. Now that my studio space is clean and organized, it's time to work on some new projects. Today I am planning on completing the black leather flower accented bag; I finished the flowers a while ago but never completed the bag. Its time to get it done. I started on my quilting group challenge project last night and I chose my "in laws" cute little dog for the focal point in this one.(see photo) and yesterday I gathered lots of tomatoes and some squash from the garden and topped all my plants and new blossoms so that the energy is directed to the fruit that has already been producing. It will be getting cold soon and green tomatoes aren't very appealing to me. Even with the late season we had this year I am still happy with what the garden has produced so far, but I will still be making changes to the garden for next year. I am always learning something new. I just don't have as much time for gardening as I use to.

The balloon Races are here! I will be getting up at 4am tomorrow and leaving for the field to watch them all take off with the kids. That means I should get to bed earlier, ouch I have been staying up till 1am the last 2 nights cleaning and organizing. I received some of my brochures last night so I was folding some of those last night and packaged them up for shipping off to family today. I am ready for a nap right now:)

More Progress on Collage

Another progress photo. I still have lots more to do, in fact I can't find a single needle anywhere.. strange, so off to Joann's I go. I used photographs of my children for these, they fought me the entire time and hated every minute of it. Oh well, they are over it by now. It's nice to be able to get resource so close to home without having to search and search for the right photo. I will be doing some embroidery work and some hand sewing now and adding little details. I still need to stitch and paint the boys hair. So far I just have fused dryer sheets down. Everything in this collage is fused to the background and will be stitched as well so that everything is nice and secure. The edges are going to naturally fray, I like that look. It is part of the quality I like in collage. Its still coming along nicely. I used variegated thread for the leaves on the tree and love how it looks. To be honest I thought that I was going to give it all up the minute I realized I could not draw the faces. So I learned something new from it. It's hard to imagine what this will look like as a bag, but I did do something similar to it here with fused fabrics and stitching.

More Fabric Collage Progress

This is where I am at right now on the fabric collage. I had so much going on that I barely got anything done, or at least it feels that way.
I ran into a problem with the faces because I cant draw that well. so I am going to experiment with my children for this project. I took their pictures and turned the photo into a stamp or a line art drawing and will see if I can use them on this. I am hoping that it works out because I really don't want to have to draw them.

Fabric Collage

I thought I'd post some progress on the collage. Its probably the most interesting thing I have been working on for awhile. I love when I have the chance to really be creative. I have always admired fabric collage but haven't really gotten into it so here is my opportunity. I have my pencil sketch of what I want to do in front of me while I am working and I have just applied fusing to the back of this upholstery fabric which I thought was perfect, it has a lot of similarities of tree bark. I cut out the trunk and the branches and ironed it onto my painted background and will continue with more of it tomorrow. Everything will be machine and hand sewn to the background as it progreses.

I am filming little by little the sequence to this project and hope that if all goes well I will be posting a video of it as well. Wish me luck on that! Its a little more difficult than I thought it would be originally.

Fabric Collage for "Child's Voice"

Had another nice hike this morning and did a little trail running before it got too hot and picked some strawflowers in the garden. I am building up a collection of them so I can make some nice wreaths out of them for gifts this fall and winter.

On a creative note, I started the bag that I am donating for "The Child's Voice" auction/benefit. I had this idea to make a collage handbag with a specific theme in mind as you will begin to see later. First thing that I am doing is creating the background which consists of a piece of cotton fabric that I soaked in water and applied liquid acrylics and fabric paints. I realized that I needed to go really dark and saturate the color because once it dries it is fairly pale. I used metallic gold fabric paint and watered it down to add some nice shimmer. You can see in the 2nd photo that is is sparkling. This is when I took it outside to dry and continued painting it as it dried. You can see how much the paint color faded already. Next thing I am going to do it decide on which fabrics I want to use in the collage and start fusing them to the background and get ready for sewing. More progress pictures coming soon.

Hurry Up and Grow

The first bloom appeared on my sugar snap peas today and that means only one thing:) ....Peas will be arriving real soon. Everything is starting to take off and things in the garden are looking good. This has been the easiest thing to grow so far. I am having a problem right now with something eating my sunflower tops and making all my zinnia flowers leaves look skeletonized. What a waste! I am not too happy about this. That is the very reason I started growing and planting excessively. I don't use pesticides so not everything survives and to avoid too much disappointment I grow more than I need and it has been working out so far. Once the plants get a good size, the pests usually don't bother them anymore. Its this in between stage when everything is tender that they get chomped and I wish they would hurry up and grow!

Whats happening with my latest project? Well, I applied stitching around the bird and I am beginning to sew around each leaf now. It is progressing slowly but I am hoping to get much more done tonight.

Progress

I am starting to think about a border now and thought it would be nice to add multiple colors in random sequence around the picture. I will start to stitch everything shortly and will add details to the bird, like his legs,wings and eyes.

Random Project

Not sure where this idea came from. I visited a friend this afternoon who is a big inspiration to me! She gave me some great advise on the girl in the garden fabric collage I was working on last week so I will be attempting to quilt it soon. I don't consider myself a quilter but I do like the art quilting and love to experiement with fabric collage. I was thinking about a butterfly project today and suddenly I thought of this image. I am making the tree out of some scrap leather I just used on another bag in progress and I am finally using the pinking sheers I bought to create some flowers and leaves. The leaves in the tree are a combination of leather, ultrasuede, denim and upholstery. I painted the background in a golden yellow adding texture and was thinking of applying some copy in some bright colors. This is a combination of a couple sketches I had drawn up a long time ago so I am glad I am playing some more. I didn't really plan on doing a project like this and it is completely random, I have to say that even without thinking the paints ended up in my hands and I had to just go with it.
This will more than likely become a wall hanging. It is amazing at where a little inspiration will take you.

I added some more flowers and added eyebrows and a little more detail in hair and face. I am not sure how far I want to go with this. When do you know when you are done?
Maybe someone would like to do a little critiquing. If anyone wants to help me out here with some feedback please send it.