Crafty Musings by Hagit

Yet another mixed media girl

Faux washi tape - a tutorial

I love washi tape. And I took a picture to prove it!

The thing is, that it costs quite a bit.
So I started thinking about making some home-made washi, and wondered what would be the closest solution - what has that similar thin, scaly transparent texture, and came up with this super simple tutorial.

All you need is: 

Medical tape, some rub-ons, scissors, and a transparency, or clean mat, to stick the tape on.

Choose your rub-on, and cut it. I love using larger rub-ons, and cutting them into different shapes and sizes:

Cut some tape, tape it down on your smooth, clean surface, and rub the rub-ons down.
That's all! There you have it, thin, transparent, colorful washi tape!  

Now go tape something down! ;-)

There are many other ways to alter medical tape, including stamping:

you could print on it, use it to texturize a background, color it, paint it, and much more.

Here's a great roundup of washi tape on Mel Stampz.

Enjoy! :)

WIP Monday

Mixed media on canvas.

Not quite finished. 
Setting it aside until I decide how to continue :) 

WIP Monday

My Magic Place

Last week, I talked to a friend about that special place art leads us to.
A private place where I can disconnect from the outer world and enter my realm, full of magic (paint and color!).

I'm so thankful for having this magic place.
A place where I can dream
and experiment
cut, paint, sew, use my hands,
get dirty,
think things over and out,
be inspired 
and enjoy every minute of it all! 

That's what I had in mind when I made this canvas.
I transferred a picture of a door I took some time ago (one of many I have. I love doors!), and from there on, some more transfers, gesso, many layers of papers and medium, and a few lines from a song in Hebrew, translated to something along the lines of, "I'll give you the key (to the magic door), come in and be my guest".

I love the way that little heart turned out, all red and shiny and alive, as opposed to the muted transfers.

And I absolutely love all the texture:

 

 

 

 Doesn't it make you want to touch and feel all those bumps and curves? :-)

New painting

It started with this exercise, inspired by Cynthia Shaffer (I love her blog, and LOVE the energy in that last post :)).
I drew this tiny doll I once bought at a flea market:

This is what it looked like at the beginning:

And I'm thrilled with the result! I played and played with paper and glue and pencils and crayons and paints, and I'm so happy I plan to hang it! Very exciting for me, because I have absolutely nothing I made decorating my home.

Last, but not least - food for thought.
I made this canvas after a whole week in which I stayed away from the computer. Hmmm...

 

Accordion mini-album

I haven't scrapbooked in a long time, and this week I made two (double sided) accordion minis for my mom and my mother in law. Filled with photos of our son.

 It was lots of fun putting these small books together.

I thouhgt of them more as picture frames than memory keeping albums, and didn't do any journaling or add embellishments.

 Mainly paper and washi tape.

Oh and I love paper packs. I love how easy it is when everything fits together so nicely. Not everything needs to be hard, right? ;-) 

This is already the second album. The photos are the same, the layouts aren't. 

 

I thought it would be simple to make two identical albums.

 

 

Apparently, I can't do that. :)
So I played it a little more. Pages are similar, just not identical.

And here they are, ready to be gifted. 

 

 I enjoyed this so much!

Hello Instagram!

We took the day off today, and went to the flea market.
It was beautiful and sunny outside, and I had a chance to play around with my (new for me, but rather old) iPhone.

 I love the square photos and effects you get with the Instagram app, but I really don't want it to take over all my photos!

So... just one more? :)

This last photo I absolutely love, because I discovered it as I opened the phone to capture a completely different picture, and there it was on the sidewalk, my husband's shadow, drinking his Diet coke :)

A New Art Journal

Front cover - image transfer on canvas, which I colored with copic and gel pens:

(It's right-to-left, the Hebrew way.)

I love it when all the strings hang like that, so I used different color spools for the bobbin: red, yellow and white.
I love the rough look of this journal, with the transfer, the uneven way the canvas is cut, the strings. I think this image makes this point even better, as you can see the spine as well, and all the textures:

Inside, two signatures from papers in varying sizes, to which I added bits and scraps. This way i don't have to deal with blank pages! 

On the back cover, several image transfers, with gesso and paint. I reecntly noticed that I have a great collection of chair images. I guess that's part of my visual vocabulary. I wonder what it means!

And as I completed the journal itself, I just had to sit down and start working in it!
These are the two pages that I made:

This first one is just too green. I may have to continue working on it.

This next page I'm very happy with. It totally expresses how I felt as I was working on it!

I made this journal as part of a blog hop between Hebrew sewing blogs. If you read Hebrew, you can read all about it here.

The funny thing about inspiration and learning and process-oriented work is that when I sat down to make this journal, I had "sewn-fabric-journal" in my head. I had Teesha Moore's journals in my mind, and I watched all her fantastic videos of making fabric journals. I was 100% sure that i was going to make a Teesha Moore journal, and then this is what happened. Know what I mean?

Scrapbooking as therapy

Who knew scrapbooking could be this therapeutic?

I started this mini with Basic Grey Stella Ruby papers, because I've been hoarding them for so long, and I love them. It was time to use them. I decided to just start cutting and pasting, 

And then sewing came naturally, since these papers are made based on sewing patterns.

As I sat there, looking at my stitched papers, thinking what content to put on them, I remembered my (deceased) grandparents' pictures, and knew this album was made for them.

A place to hold stories, memories,

Birthday cards and letters and even CDs of family movies:

This small album holds so many pictures, stories and memories, and I'm happy to have them all saved in my personal way,

But what was even more special to me was the process. I started off just choosing pretty paper, and from there on I was swept by thoughts, reminiscing, sifting through old (dusty!) documents and letters and birthday cards (I had received from my grandparents), some from over 30 years ago.

DIY Postcard Swap WIP

I received my first postcard from the  iHanna's postcard swap yesterday, and it was a BEAUTIFUL postcard from Janet Briggs. You can see it here, it's the one that was sent to Israel. :-) Thanks, Janet!

I worked on my postcards last night, and enjoyed it so much! Actually, I enjoyed it so much that I stayed up till after 2:00 in the morning. Not a regular thing for an early sleeper like me.

I collaged cardstock backing with scraps

And then added on lots of gesso, paint, rub ons, ephemera, ink and stamps, and mainly had lots of fun and got my hands dirty with paint and glue!

I'm not done yet, but here's a peek.
This is one of the postcards right after collaging:

And this is what it looks like now, after more paint, an image transfer, some washi tape, ink, and ephemera:

I like it, but I'm not sure whether it's done yet. I think I'll let it "rest" and then come back and decide whether I want to continue working on it.

Here's another one:

I may add text on this one.
Back to work, then. :-)