Unusual Girl Studios

Shh! don't tell anyone I'm blogging! Classes start tomorrow and the last thing I should be doing is blogging! Here's my ever so quick version of events... These doors are from my parents house. It was a 1950's bungalow. That means small. When the house became mine I defied all disbelievers ( the auctioneers, husband and a slightly disbelieving but willing to give it a go- real estate agent) by remodeling it into a really cute contemporary little bungalow. These doors were to the front entry and two closets. "I want those" I told the builder. "You do?" He said before he could help himself. "Yep- all three." I had the yucky varnish and several layers of paint sandblasted off them. Hey, I don't fool around, I want no part of that nasty chemical stripper. Sandblasting them really made the grain of the wood pop out- kinda like driftwood. I knew someday I would do something really cool with these and Saturday was that day. I painted them tur...

Brooke was delighted to see a frog on top of our grill. "Get it off. I'm about to turn the grill on." said my husband. She tried to catch it but it hopped away and Kayla was able to capture it. Annoyed by the commotion my husband said "Enough! Put it in the grass!" Kayla is on a new medicine that I call the agreeable pill. She's much more agreeable. We love the agreeable pill. Kayla was happy to co-operate and proceeded to 'put the frog in the grass'. Unfortunately- the grill that the frog was on resides on our deck. The deck is approximately 12' above said grass. Kayla may be more agreeable but she's still Kayla. Perhaps the wording would have better served the frog if it had been- "Kayla, take the frog down to the grass and gently let it go. Yep, probably would have been better for the frog.

Just thought I'd take a minute to share the results with you..... I have just a couple of more that didn't make the photo shoot. One got dropped on the brick landscaping stone and she's in for a little repair. This lady was a swap submission for cloth paper scissors. I wonder where in the U.S. she'll end up? This saucy little brunette now lives with my friend since third grade- Rhonda. Happy be-lated birthday! Its weird but she picked it herself out of the line-up and that's the same one I would have chosen for her. This next little blonde went to Ireland and I hope she loves her new country! Hoping to open an Etsy store soon and these ladies are tagged to go in it! Do you have a favorite? Love to know....

Yep! Uh huh, can I get a.... ok, Hannah Montana I am not! But wow! Encaustic is fun and I want you all to run out and buy yourself all the supplies you need and get started on this! What are you still doing here? Go now! Attention folks: The following are the results of an encaustic play date and yes, you should try this at home. Friend Barb and I started with this one. We used a pre cut board with a small lip that I found at Michaels in the unfinished- pre cut -wood area. I also bought several plaques because they had a nice routered edge. This one, with the slight edge seemed a natural way to contain the wax and have a frame around the piece. First we laid down a layer of wax as a base. Next we laid in a sheer piece of fabric with a scroll design. Then we went over it with the heat gun which promptly melted the polyester. Lesson One. Lesson Two- do not point the heat gun at Barb or other co-hort as "I'm melting...I'm melting" is not something you want to hear being...

Hey- I've been missing in action for awhile! Stuff at work had me mentally bogged down. If I had to describe my boss's mood as a odor it would be some where between a fart and the smell of death and decay. Weekends have been taken up with family re-unions and quick little get-aways. But the good news is I had a playdate with friend Barb and we tried our hand at ENCAUSTIC painting and I fell in love like a teenager the first time a cute older boy showed her some attention. Wait- maybe that's too much of a visual for you...skip that...I just plain fell in love- it was like the seas parted and a great light shone down on me and angels sang in the back ground.....ok, so I get a little carried away. But wait till you see what we did...wait you will- till Barb e-mails me the pics! Just hate these! Maybe I am being oversensitive but I had such high hopes for these and they just didn't turn out as fabulous as I thought they would. I wanted to evoke that forever summer/hippie fe...

So I broke down and purchased this book. Man, is it ever cool! I had no clue there were so many ways you could get an image from one surface to another. A whole new world has opened up for me. Alas- still just me in this world, the portal didn't come equipped with a magical never-ending limit credit card or anything like that. So the official name for this kind of transfer is called a 'skin'. I typed a phrase on regular paper with my regular ink jet printer. I think it probably works better with heavier weight paper. I coated it with matte gel medium. If you use gloss you get a more 'sheer' skin. I'm out of gloss so thought I'd experiment with matte. It seems that there are no wrong results- only different results. my intention is to glue the skins on top of the previous transfer attempt. Really the way I was doing it was more of a cross between transferring and decoupage. Then I will embellish the feet further with three dimensional objects- shells and such...