Wow, I’ve been a terrible blogger lately, sorry! Right before Thanksgiving my 93 year old Grandfather passed away and then I’ve been all caught up getting ready for the holidays, it’s been a hectic (and sad) time.

Right before all this happened though I spent a lot of time getting new jewelry pieces made and am just now getting them on-line. I made a bunch of single soldered pendants and also many charm necklaces too.

Here’s a few new Alice in Wonderland themed necklaces, all currently available in my Etsy shop (along with many more new items as well).

Thanks for stopping by!
-Heather

I’m listing some new domino charm jewelry in my Etsy shop this week. And right now I’m working on lots of great new collage art Halloween soldered glass pendants. There are already some in the shop but I’ll listing a lot more in the next week or so, so be sure to check back

I love this Poe charm, great for Halloween or anyone who loves to read.

And of course Alice is always one of my faves. In addition to the domino charm there are also wooden game tiles  with vintage text.

This one is nice and creepy for Halloween, the headless horseman. “Ichabod………..”

And this cute one has scrabble tiles that spell out “BOO” and a cute ghost shaped jingle bell.

Click here to visit my shop.

For while I’ve been admiring an art style that I can only describe as “primitive mixed media girls”. It’s a mixture of paint, paper, embellishments, etc. hand draw and cut into the shapes of girls with a very “prim” look. I’ve decided even though I don’t think I’m very proficient at drawing (or even painting) that I’d like to give this style a go. This is my first attempt at it, so please don’t be too harsh I’m pretty happy with the results for a first try, I need to work on my painting techniques for sure!

Since I love Alice in Wonderland so much I thought she’d be a good place to start. On watercolor paper I drew the basic shape of the girl with a pencil then painted her in with acrylic paints and highlighted with Gelato sticks. I then cut out her clothes, glued them down and traced over all the edges with a fine tip black micron pen. Then I cut her out adding a bow and vintage button. Next I glued her to a painted canvas, adding the definition for “curious” cut from a vintage dictionary.

Over at my blogging job as stamp editor at Craft Gossip I got the opportunity to review (and keep!!:)) a Silhouette die cutting machine. I am in love with this machine, it’s amazing! The generous people at Silhouette not only gave one to me but are also giving one away over at Craft Gossip. I wanted to give my readers a heads up, so follow this link and read my review and then leave a comment (at Craft Gossip not here) to be entered.

Here is my first project made with my new Silhouette, no surprise it’s an Alice and Wonderland theme! I made an accordion card and cut out all the fun Wonderland characters with card stock and patterned paper with the Silhouette.

Here’s a couple of new charm necklaces I’ve made recently. I’m enjoying mixing altered and soldered game pieces and charms together.

The first one is sort of a pun, it’s a skeleton key necklace. A large metal key with a skull charm and a soldered domino charm with dancing skeletons.

This one is all Alice, a tiny glass bottle filled with blue beads and three soldered game charms, a domino with Alice on a blue background, an “A” scrabble tile with vintage “Alice” text and a vintage bingo tile with vintage “drink me” text.

These are both currently available in my Etsy shop, click here to visit.

Ok, I also can’t seem to stop making things with Alice in Wonderland either I’ve been making Alice jewelry and collages for years now and am happy to see a big jump in popularity because of the new Burton movie. Somerset Studio even did another issue with lots of  wonderful Alice art, the first Alice issue some years back is still one of my favorites and I still have my dog-eared copy.

Here’s a picture of all of the Wonderland character soldered domino charms I posted about recently:

 and here’s a domino ring I made with Alice:

and here’s my favorite, a charm bracelet. It has charms made with shrink plastic, soldered wooden game pieces, a tiny glass bottle, soldered dominoes, vintage King and Queen puzzle pieces, vintage text and silver charms.

All these items are currently for sale in my Etsy shop, click here.

I recently got some adorable stamps from The Greeting Tree, they are really cute versions of characters from Alice in Wonderland and I thought they were the perfect size for art cards (2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″). Each character was stamped on white cardstock with black staz-on ink and colored using colored pencils and orderless mineral spirits for blending. I cut each out and added them to layers of vintage book paper and cardstocks. Plus I added a stamped embellishment to each, Alice got glittery mushrooms, the Mad Hatter got a glossy tea cup and the White Rabbit got a clock with movable clock hands (from Tim Holtz). I also ran a very thin strip of white core cardstock (from Close To My Heart) through my label maker and sanded them to make each card a name label.

Here’s a fun collage with an image of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland that I cut from a really cool old children’s pop up book I found. She’s surrounded by roses, tiny playing cards and real scrabble tiles. The background is a vintage bingo card, I added small metal eyelets to each corner that have different playing card suits. I attached red wire to the top to hang it from.

Several years ago before I taught myself how to solder I used to make alot of jewelry with dominos, so I thought I’d try them again. Dominos are fun to work with but it’s important to remember that not all mediums will “stick” to the slick surface of a domino, some people soak them in bleach and/or sand them to give them a “tooth” to help mediums stick better but I guess I’m too lazy for that and have never found a need to do it. I try to use permanent inks and markers such as Staz-On ink pads and Sharpie markers. Chalk ink pads work well too but need to be heat set (with a heat gun) to be more permanent. Dominos are inexpensive so it’s nice to play and experiment with them to find out what works well and what doesn’t. I also like to seal mine just to make sure all my hard work will stay for a long time since it’s something that will be used and worn. A clear spray sealant works well or any type of clear dimensional liquid (like Liquid Glass, Dimensional Magic, Crystal Lacquer, etc) works nicely too, they will give a nice shiny look over your artwork. Using permanent mediums also helps when you go to seal your domino because they will not react and possibly bleed when you apply the sealant.

Here are a few pins made with Alice in Wonderland characters, I added alphabet beads along the domino edges and large pin backs on the back of each.

Also here’s a few more art cards using small bingo cards and those same fun black alphabet beads. This time I made them with Alice, the White Rabbit and Alice dressed as the Red Queen.

I’ve made a few more Alice in Wonderland themed Art Cards (cards measuring 3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″).

This first one is an image of Alice peering over the edge of the mushroom to talk to the Caterpillar while he smokes his hookah. The image is colored with colored pencils and I added “grass” at the base of the mushroom and ran a thin strip of cardstock through my label maker for the words “Who Are You” floating above them.

For this next card I put the image of Alice looking at her reflection in the looking glass directly on a piece of glass and colored on the backside with markers. I also rimmed the edge of the glass with a gold pen.