Fabric Bowls!

I finally got a chance to really do something with the Paverpol I had ordered months ago. I've really been wanting to try making some fabric bowls with it. And we have the perfect bowl for the form. So these are my first two attempts. The yellow one was the first one.





I wanted it to be a bit misshapen. So this was made with squares of yellow fabric. I think it's very sweet. Available here.

Then the second one I made I used strips of black and white fabric.



And the bottom of the bowl just cause I love it.



Black and white bowl available here.

I need to get some more bowls for forms. This way I'll have different shapes and sizes and also I'll be able to have different bowls going at different stages. Because right now, with the drying time, it's kind of a slow process.
By the way, I hate the smell of Paverpol.

'Sup?

Well I figured a good "what's up?" post is in order.
I've been working on a few things for the shop this week. So I'll take pictures this weekend and get to listing. Super excited because they are all new items! No wood pieces this week.
I also went to the dentist on Tuesday and (no surprise here), I need braces. So am I a freak for being excited? Not so much excited about the discomfort obviously, but I've always been self conscious about my teeth. So now I'm finally getting them straightened! Woohoo!

Fab-u-lous!

I received this award from the sweetest blogger EVER, Natasha of Thursday Sweet Treat and Creative Nachos! She also has an etsy shop as well. I was lucky enough to come across one of her posts on the etsy forums. She's wonderfully talented and amazingly supportive! On her Thursday Sweet Treats blog, she comes up with a theme every Friday and you have a week to create something inspired by that theme. It's been so great! I've really been inspired by these themes and it's alot of fun to see all of the different things other artists create, as well as the different mediums being used.
So, I'm supposed to share my 5 addictions with you and choose 5 people to give the award to.
Here are my 5 addictions:
1. Pizza...I NEVER get tired of it....to Willie's dismay I'm sure. I especially love the broccoli pizza here in my neighborhood. Nummy!
2. Chocolate....yeah...typical I know...but it is!
3. Magazines....I LOVE going to Borders or Barnes and Noble to check if there are any new ones out. My faves...Quilting Arts, Cloth Paper Scissors, Cooks Country, Cooking Light and Marie Claire Idees....and trust me, that's only scraping the surface.
4. Rock Band.....I'm a drummer! :)
5. Jason Mraz....odd addiction?...yes...but I listen to him on a daily basis. The day isn't complete without at LEAST one Jason Mraz song.

And here's who I'm passing the award onto:

1. Unique Women In Business
2. Betty Ninja
3. Curious Bird
4. Delphine Ephemera
5. greetingarts

Thanks so much Natasha!!

Etsy Twitter Shop of the Week

The Etsy Twitter Shop for this week is Paw and Claw Designs. She makes absolutely beautiful one of a kind jewelry. The Die necklaces are so unique, and they come in lots of different colors.

I love her earrings too! I've got my eye on these.....



Be sure to check out her shop because there's alot of great jewelry to be seen there!

Your it!

I was tagged by Kim of Glitzy Events so I'm spreading the love!!!

Honorees please follow these instructions and share the LUV!
1. Put the logo on your blog or post. (You can highlight the photo and text of this post and copy/paste wherever you need to...start your highlight from the bottom up to get the photo)
2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show GREAT ATTITUDE and/or GRATITUDE
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to this post and to the person from whom you received the award.

And these are my picks:

1. Thursday's Sweet Treat
2. Paper Lady Invites
3. Rose Works Jewelry
4. Spotted Cow Soaps
5. Tulips Treasure Box
6. The Copper Cauldron
7. In My Head Studios
8. Cutthroat Designs
9. Soap Rehabilitation
10. Thyme 2 Dream

Slightly fixed

Ok, remember my sad little pendant?
Well I was able to salvage it.



I won't be selling it (prototype flaws), but I'm VERY happy with the results! The beading is a little wonky around the edges, but I think it works.
Although I'm thinking that it would look better as a brooch.

What do you think?

On the wall

So on Monday, I FINALLY got to take pictures of all of my wood pieces actually on the wall. I don't know why I didn't do this in the first place. It's a definite improvement I think. It took me a few hours between taking the photos, picking them and resizing them, and then loading them up....but all of the listings in my shop have been updated!
So now you know what they actually look like hanging up!

Etsy Twitter Shop of the Week

I just joined a new group called the etsy twitter team. One of the new things we're doing is having a shop of the week. This weeks shop is Flying Zoo Toys.



She handcrafts wood mobile toys that flap their wings when you pull a string. They are insanely cute! And I am in love with the colors! She has such a wonderful collection.

Weekend Wishlist

So since I can't buy what I really want on etsy, I figured having a weekend wishlist would be a good way to hopefully make myself feel better. :) Plus I can showcase some of my favorites.


The first time I saw recycledring's I instantly fell in love. They're gorgeous! The colors and textures.....love them!




Another shop I've been eyeing for awhile is bunnywithatoolbelt. The sculptures are so colorful and whimsical.




And because it's so cold and this looks SO comfy!!! I love EVERYTHING in fray's shop!

The knees of my bee's

Managed to grab a treasury tonight, all about the yellow and black. It'll be up for the next 2 days so please, take a look! There are quite a few things on there I wish I could buy right now.

I love me some color!

I decided to join in on Thursday's Sweet Treat, hosted by Natasha. Every Friday she posts a new theme and then you interpret that theme into your artwork and submit it by the following Thursday. It's a great idea and I'm excited to take part in it! I'm hoping this will keep me motivated and inspired. This week's theme is Explosive Celebration.
I've already started working on mine and will take some pictures and post them tomorrow. Let's just say, in typical Starla fashion, it will be very colorful. :)

Speaking of color....how about some of my favorites from flickr:


coolcatcookie


Ricardo Borowski


SneakyRaccoon

Week of Color - Friday Stripes & Plaid

I really did think I was going to have a tougher time with this one. But I actually found 2! Woohoo!
The first is my ATC binder. I've stopped trading and have moved on to ACEO's, but I still love flipping through and looking at the different ones I've collected.



And my second is my oh so favorite Coach bag the hubster bought for me for my birthday.

Week of Color - Pink Thursday

Pretty in pink!

A small bag I use to carry my embroidery around in.


Nail artwork found at a thrift store. Had the most hideous colors, so I re-painted.

Week of Color - Yellow Wednesday

I didn't have a hard time finding yellow, but because of the time of day that I am taking my pictures, there's no natural light so my pictures already have a yellow tint to them. But this was my favorite bit of yellow....

Week of Color - Purple Tuesday

Reminder....start doing yoga again.

Week of Color - Monday

Blue! I got a mini spirograph!

Color!

I'm so excited....a week of color starts tomorrow, hosted by Curious Bird! I've wanted to join in on this and I kept missing out.
Here's the schedule:

Monday: Blue
Tuesday: Purple
Wednesday: Yellow
Thursday: Pink
Friday: Stripes or Plaid -- in any color combination!

Woohoo! :)

Don't laugh

So my first venture into making something more useful for the shop, ended in failure. I'm trying to turn my flowers and stuff into fiber pendants. I have visions of embroidered oval pendants...almost cameo-like. And my first one...didn't turn out so great.



Soooo wonky. But it's a learning process! Can't expect it to turn out perfect on the first try. Next one I'll put timtex in the center. That should get rid of the wonkiness. Also, I'm not going to do the satin stitching on the sewing machine. It's too rough on the fabric! Doing it by hand is more time consuming but I feel like I have more control that way. But I'm happy with how the embroidery turned out! Such a cute little flower.

Cardinal Mosaic

Cardinals are just beautiful birds. I took for granted the fact that I could see them all the time when I lived in Missouri. I miss them now.



1. Northern Cardinal (male), 2. Cardinal, 3. The Red, Red Cardinal, 4. bundled, 5. This Bud's for You, 6. Red on Blue, 7. (#137) Missed Count, 8. R E D, 9. Caught in the Snow, 10. Bashful, 11. Reddy or Not??, 12. Birds Of A Feather, 13. image of light, adieu ..., 14. Northern Cardinal, 15. Two in the bush are worth...a picture, 16. Cardinal On The Fence #1

Jan. Blog Carnival: Shop goals

January's blog carnival is "What are your new year's goals for your blog and/or shop?". I have a few goals,

1. Get better organized tax wise and financially with my shop. Ideally, I would like to actually register Curious Mess as a business. Make it all official-like. :)
2. Expand what I sell to include items that are more practical and useful. With the way the economy is, I know that artwork is probably the last on the list when it comes to purchases for many people. I would love to somehow translate my funky florals and other designs maybe onto coasters...fabric bowls. Maybe do some fiber pendants.
3. Set up some sort of work schedule...i.e, 1 hour promoting, 2 hours working on artwork...etc. I bought a planner for the year that has the hours for each day, so I can actually keep track of how long I work on each item. I'm hoping that I will be able to price my work better this way if I know how long I spend working on them.
4. Start filling up my artfire shop. Right now, it's empty. Once I figure out what I would like to put in it, then I'll get to work on that. I'm still undecided on if I want to put similar items from my etsy shop, or do something different.

Whew! I don't really think that's too overly ambitious! Wish me luck! :)

January Featured Etsyblogger....

is RoseWorksJewelry! Ruthie has two shops on etsy...Roseworksjewelry where she sells very stunning jewelry.
I'm always impressed with anyone who can do bead weaving. And I HAVE to show off this piece....it's Link!!



You can never go wrong with a little bit of geekery.

She also has a second shop with her mother, kstreasures. They just opened this shop in December so they're still filling it up, but check out this intricately crocheted bookmark!



So go check out her shops! There are alot of wonderful items to be found!

2009 art sampler

So as I was browsing through my many favorite blogs on my reader, I got to Rebecca Sower's blog and she had such a marvelous idea I just had to get her permission to do my own thang with it.



This is her 2009 art sampler. Each dot will eventually hold a small piece of art or other object that means something to her. I really love this idea. I've been dying to try doing "something" a day. You know, how people will do a painting a day, or a drawing a day or a photo a day...etc. Well, this will keep it very manageable. I'm thinking of sticking to inchies. I have a little catching up to do since we're already on the 5th. But I'm very excited! And in the end, I will have a lovely piece of art for my wall! And how cool is it that her base is all that lovely ephemera! Rebecca, you truly are a genius! Thanks so much for letting me borrow your idea!

Papercut Flowers

Second piece I just finished, I decided to play around with papercutting. Of course, keeping it simple. I had these little doodles lounging around in my sketch book and figured they were simple enough. I painted some patterns on the origami paper before cutting out each petal. I love how nice and colorful this piece is. Happy happy!!

Button Seedling #1

If you can actually believe it, I have been working on some more pieces! And this one I'm very excited to show off. The end result is nowhere near what I envisioned, so this was definitely a happy accident.
I got this idea as I was trying to get to sleep one night, because of course isn't that how it always works out?


I'm playing with the idea of the button being a "seed" that is "planted" into the fabric and then based on the design and coloring of the button, I embellish it with embroidery, beads, wire wrapping, etc, which is the "seed" sprouting and growing. I'm really excited about this because the possibilities really are endless! Now, as far as the happy accident part...my original vision was for the button to be sewn onto the square of fabric, embellished and everything. Then I was going to stretch the fabric onto a piece of chipboard and then place THAT into an ornate frame. BUT, I wasn't thinking of the reality of mounting the very heavy fabric piece onto chipboard. With the botton, the wire and embellishments...it was fairly heavy and thick on the back. So, long story short, the chipboard warped and between many steps in trying to fix it, I only managed to make it worse. But I wasn't ready to throw in the towel just yet and as I stood there staring at this thing, I spied some square wood sitting off to the side of my workspace. The PERFECT size for this piece! And I had just bought a brand new staple gun. So after working the design out in my head...this is the finished piece.



Which, in my opinion, is actually better than the original idea. Plus, I won't have to worry about hunting down ornate frames and worrying about how pricey they are. Because that of course would have to be added into the final price of the piece. Yay!

Happy Scrappy New Year!

Hope you all had a happy and safe New Year!
Drinks, sweets.....




and lots of sleep....