Carved Eraser Stamp Tutorial :: Love One Another

For this carved eraser, I drew a little design onto a pink eraser using an ordinary pencil.

And used my carving tool to carve out the outline and a bit on the inside of the leaves.

Then I inked it and stamped it onto cold press watercolor paper.

Took a black fine-tip marker to add details and part of my all-time favorite verses:

Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love, does not know God for God is love. Beloved, let us love one another.

Carved Rubber Stamp Tutorial :: 1 Stamp = Endless Designs

Check out my very first carved rubber stamp. It's a flower petal. And with this lovely shade of coral, it makes the perfect flower grow.

And with this perfect shade of blue, it makes the perfect raindrops.

And when stamped twice, closely together, it makes the perfect little heart.

And when doodled with stems, they become the coolest plant life.

How did I do it? I took a regular pink eraser, sketched the shape directly onto the rubber with pencil and carved it with this tool.

Happy stamping. :)

Styrofoam Block Printing Tutorial :: Love is Patient

Step 1: Make a mark or doodle onto a piece of styrofoam. There's lots of styrofoam found in packaging so keep your eyes open for it. Make sure to cut the edges so that it is nice and flat. Next, use a sharp object like a knitting needle to make your doodle.

Step 2: Squeeze some blockprinting paint onto a piece of glass or tile. Load it onto a brayer and then apply the paint onto the sketched styrofoam.

Step 3: Place the styrofoam onto the substrate that you want to print on. In this case, I printed directly onto a page in my sketchbook. Lift the styrofoam and ... tada! (I added some details with a red Sharpie.) How awesome is that?

Off I go to make a ton more.
Happy printmaking. :)

Free Motion Quilted Memory Game Tutorial

You remember playing the memory card game, right? Here's a set that I made using free motion quilting and watercolors.

First you free motion quilt a bunch of circles with a sandwich of muslin, batting, muslin, cut them out, and color them with watercolors. You want to make sure that you use one color to paint a pair of circles so that you have two blues, two reds, two yellows, etc.

Here's how the circles look before they are cut and colored.

Let them dry and then flip them so that the colors are facing the table and start playing the memory game. Hmmm ... I wonder where that other blue circle was ...

Put them in a little pouchy pouchy or embellished box to store or give away as a gift.

Happy creating. :)

Funny Free Motion Doodle Art Quilt Tutorial

Isn't she adorable?

I started by free motion doodle quilting onto a layer of muslin, batting, muslin. I used my pen-to-paper doodles as inspiration. Check out JENNI. So funny, right? Every time someone asks me, "Are you Jenny with a Y or Jenni with an I?" I have this vision of this girl with an EYE named Jenni.

The thing about free motion doodling is that it just comes with practice. I didn't sketch anything out before I started. I just started with the eyes, then the nose, then the mouth, then the rest of the face and hair and body ... much like a regular doodle. Just lower the feed dogs on your sewing machine, put your darning foot on and go for it. Remember that practice is the key.

Next, I took my watercolors and colored certain parts of the art quilt.

Then I cut the stitched and colored character, and backed it with another layer of fabric, batting, fabric, and free motion quilted a frame with black thread. Then I free motion quilted the circles with white thread.

Wee Knitting Love Stamped Moleskine & Tag Tutorial

I love rubber stamps. I love their simplicity and the many different directions you can take just one image. And lately, I've been having lots of fun with the Wee Knitting Love stamps.

Onto this small Moleskine, I stamped the knit pattern with black ink. For the knit row stamp, I inked it with black ink and then hit the heart with the corner of my favorite red inkpad (Adirondack Earthtones Dye in Currant by Ranger) before stamping onto the Moleskine. Then I used my favorite white gel pen to add embellishments.

For this tag, I inked the single row of knit with black and red ink as described above onto a piece of watercolor paper. I tore that and adhered it to a shipping tag and then added stitches with perle cotton and needle. I typed the text on ledger paper, tore, and adhered at the bottom.

Stocking stuffers, gift tags. Easy peasy.

Happy creating. :)

Doodled Gift Bag Tutorial with Brown Paper Bags DIY

Wrapping gifts does not mean you need to buy new gift paper or gift bags. Making do with what you have is in my opinion what will give you the most stunning results ... like these easy peasy doodled brown paper gift bags.

I used three of my favorite pens:

• Uni-ball Signo Broad UM-153 white gel pen
• Hybrid Technica .3 black gel pen by Pentel
• Sign pen with brush tip by Pentel

I used the Sign brush pen to make doodled twigs/trees with leaves.

Then I used the Technica Hybrid to doodle over that.

Then I used the white gel pen to color and decorate the leaves and twigs.

Same concept for the words at the bottom. Start with the sign pen, then the hybrid, then the white gel pen. Easy peasy.

Happy creating.

Macrame Skinny Scarf with Hemp Yarn Tutorial

Remember the basic square knot macrame tutorial I shared here? So for this skinny scarf, you want to take eight long strands of yarn and knot them together at the center. (For this project, I used my worsted weight 12-ply hemp yarn.)

Then create one square knot with the first four strands of yarn, and then a second square knot with the last four strands.

Then take the four inner strands and create a square knot. That's basically the pattern. Just repeat this again and again until you come to the end.

To work the opposite side, just untie the knot at the center and work the pattern on the opposite side.

You can leave the strands just long and flowy or you can add dangly beads, or you could add a needle-tatted flower. (I'll do a tutorial on needle tatting another day.)

So cute, right? With this basic motif, you can turn it into a skinny scarf, a headband, or a belt.

Happy macrame. :)

Collaborative Art Jouraling with Andrew & Monica

Remember the collaborative journaling I did with Belinda?
I couldn't wait to give it a whirl with my kids. Here's the first page I did with Andrew. We call it Smelly Perro.

Check out how you can see different things when you turn the page around.

Here's the second page we did together that we call Santa Comes.

Love the dude with the mole. Do you see him?

And here's a page I did with Monica that we call Lost & Found.

Here's a differnet angle.

This has been one of the most exciting things I've done in a long time. You get to learn so much about the person you are collaborating with. My kids were like I was with Belinda at first ... with questions like ... "what do I draw? what do I do?" But the process is not about over-thinking or over-planning. It's just about letting go and letting things come out of you through the pen ... rotating the page once in a while to then reacting to the other person's marks. Not too much talking ... some good music ... and just observing and reacting and creating together. It's an intimate experience where you learn about the other person at a much deeper and almost unexplainable manner. I know I learned and influenced Andrew as he observed not only my marks but the way I was making my marks. And vice versa. I learned and was influenced by Andrew as I observed his work. Same goes for the process with Monica. It's the ultimate in the whole Observe and React process that I love.

You think you're not a journaler? You think you're not a doodler? I challenge you to get a piece of paper with some pens and grab someone in your life and just do it. Today. You'll be so pleasantly surprised. Be sure to have both collaborators sign and date the page once it's done.

Happy collaborating. :)

DIY Wee Gift Tags Tutorial with Wee Stamps

Cute, huh?

I made the tags using our newest line of stamps called Wee stamps. They're wittle and so cute.
Wee Knitting Love and Wee Mason Jar.The mason jar is the same design from our standard Little Miss Mason set but sized slightly smaller so that they fit perfectly on a tag. And a cluster of cute fireflies to go with.

To make the tiny heart, use a sharp craft knife to carve out a heart on the eraser of a pencil.

Ink, and stamp.

To add a pop of red to the small wand of knits, ink the stamp black and then hit the heart with the corner of a red inkpad.

Tags ready to use and give for this holiday season. Easy peasy.

Happy crafting. :)