Hand Painted Mixed Media Wallet

I added a new mixed media and handpainted wallet to my shop today.
See more photos here at uniquehandbags.etsy.com

Hand Painted Bucket Tote With Decorative Stitching

I love the color in this new tote! I have been preparing the surfaces of some scrap upholstery for a few days now and have just completed my first bucket tote. The plan is to make a large series of these; some in other styles and also some wallets as well. I am excited about them, since I get to paint! I love to paint, it really lifts my spirits.

You can see more photos of this tote up in my shop here

Painting

I am painting this afternoon. This is going to be a bag when I am finished.. So much to do today and I am not suppose to be doing this, but it is a last minute gift.

Love the colors!

Progress coming soon

Fun With Paint

With my art reception only a few days away, I wanted to make a clutch to raffle off during the event. I am having so much fun painting these new bags. Great practice! I am so timid when picking up the brush because I don't do it on a regular basis. I think with more practice and continued effort I will be able to produce some really fun and different pieces.

Painting at La Bussola - Day 3

I spent all afternoon at the gallery finishing up with my painting. Tomorrow I will be bringing in my merchandise and getting set up. I had a little time tonight to work on a new wristlet.

Recycled Fused Plastic Bag Art Clutch Wristlet

I finished up this new clutch/wristlet last night and just posted it in my shop. This one is so colorful. It makes me happy when I look at it. You can find it in my main shop at
uniquehandbags.etsy.com

Tilly's Painted Clutch

The beginnings of another painted clutch made with recycled plastic shopping bags. This one has some of the Tilly's logo showing through. Next I will begin some decorative stitching before applying the liner. These are beginning to be quite fun to create.

I am designing business cards for a friend, so I was up late and looks like its going to be another busy day - I will be working on a custom leather cuff and running some errands. Getting ready for a party and working on goods to sell during that. Focusing on hearts and lots of leather. Progress photos coming soon

Recycled Plastic Bag Progress

Here are some progress pictures of what I have done tonight. First I fused about 6 plastic bags together and used acrylics to paint the background in a base color of green and dark teal.
I used a garden pad to draw a pattern on and cut out with an xacto knife leaving the positive part of the design. Using different colors of acrylics, I stamped the surface. Next , comes the fun part, making decorative stitches and completing the bag:) I am surprised that I painted the entire bag the whole time I was on the phone tonight with Ashley. It allowed me to not think too hard about what I was doing and just layed things down naturally. I like the end result. More progress coming tomorrow.

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.

Stamping a Design

Applying paint to the carved stamp. This is a huge stamp(approx 6x 6 inches) I made out of a garden pad. I used an xacto knife and carved out a design and pulled away any unwanted pieces.









Here I have applied paint to my background. The idea was to create grass that I will later be thread painting and also applying more stamps to for a layered effect.

New Hand Painted Bag

I am making a new mess. I have been invited to show my work at ArtSource gallery on December 12, and have only a couple weeks to get ready for it so I will be working on many newly painted bags. The painted bags were also a request form the boutique since many of the shoppers tend to like this style I have created. You can see here I am creating the painted foundation background. I also used a garden knee pad and carved out some new handmade stamps to use for this piece once the paint dries. I am heading out right now for a much needed massage. Its been almost a year. I had a nice Thanksgiving with family out of town and a nice break away from work and now its time to get busy again. I will be posting some progress pictures soon.


I also did a little shopping on Etsy this morning and this is what I found. A beautiful tree ornament made from sea urchins. I love this! I bought it as a gift for a very dear friend and her family. This was created by etsy seller Gifts&Stars. They have some very beautiful pieces made in Turkey. They have another etsy shop with some very unique and original jewelry pieces.
http://staroftheeast.etsy.com
I am so happy I found them.

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.

Having fun now

Ok, now I am starting to have fun!!! I took all the fused printed flowers off of the painting and now I am making flowers out of fused fabric,paper towels,organza and recycled dyed dryer sheets and cutting each petal out individually. I am finally happy with how it is looking. I am not sure now that I will need to use the sewing machine.

Playing with Paint

Change in plans. I guess the fabrics weren't really exciting me too much so I thought I would have a little fun today and play with paint and try a little fabric painting. We'll see how that goes. I will share some photographs later if they are worth posting here. Well, off to the post office I go and then time to have some fun!

Well I can say that this takes a lot of practice. I never let myself paint like this and its a challenge especially doing faces. I end up doing too much and it comes out looking funny. But I am here to have fun today right. My inspiration for attempting this painting comes from Paulette Insall who is obviously an amazing artist. Maybe someday with practice I will become as good as she is. I don't know her techniques or how she does what she does but she does offer classes and I am tempted to try them out sometime. Right now I am winging it and just experimenting with what I have. I bought a brayer and have been scared to use it and saw Paulette using one and it didn't look so bad so I thought I'd give it a try today. I don't own any stamps so everything I do is freehand. I used a sheet of flowers I pressed for reference and I thought that I would go over this piece and thread paint with the sewing machine. I hope that I don't mess it up too bad but I am not happy with it right now as it is so here I go.....

Change In Weather

Here is another progress shot of the 2 crows together for the custom bag I am making. And a photo of a misc. project I thought I would work on later this afternoon.
Here is a piece of fabric that I decide to paint and use some handmade stamps and my logo from a paper stencil I made. I am now doing some stitching around the flower to outline a bit. I will be adding more decorative stitches and possibly a red zipper to the front in a vertical format. With all the custom orders I am working on I need to find time to play, so this is the project for this afternoon. Hope to have a completed bag by tomorrow?

Yesterday I spent 4 hrs working on a project with a friend. I volunteered to help her on a project getting it ready for production for the sign shop.(since I am an ex graphic designer)
I have been downloading fonts and searching for languages in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew,Russian, German and many others and formatting it in Illustrator for her. She will be getting stencils made in the words "Holy Spirit" and creating a banner illustrating Pentecost for her church in all the languages. She is an unbelievable art quilter and is a great inspiration to me. I believe it was going to cost her a high hourly production rate so I am glad I could help her out. So that was my day yesterday. It was nice to actually have an excuse to take some time off.

The change in the weather has made me want to work a little less. Yesterday I took a 1hr hike up on Peavine Mountain after working for 4 hours on my friends project and I am just about to go on another one. Its so nice out, its hard to work inside on projects. Some other news. I just added some more memory to my computer so its super fast now. It will make uploading pictures and working so much nicer.