Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Recent swap and stuff



How is that for a snappy title for a blog post? I promised I would show what I made for Beth for our recent fabric cuff swap, so I am, even though I did post this on Facebook. I think most of my friends that come to my blog are friends with me on Facebook, too, so my apologies to most of you that have already seen this, lol!! From the hit counter, though, there is the chance that a few visitors might not be, so here you go!



Shown above is the fabric cuff I made especially for Beth. I tried to go a different direction, vintage but with brighter colors than you might think of first off as vintage. The main body of the cuff was part of the waistband from a little girl's skirt I bought at the thrift store because I loved the bright colors. It has a cute playful paisley print on the body of the skirt, but the waistband is what came in handy for this project. I've tried to look at clothes as fabric when shopping at the Goodwill, etc. There are items that you can buy for a dollar or two with lovely fabric and/or trims that couldn't be bought if you could find them for that price! Fir example, found a precious dark red velvet little girl's dress with lovely rose ribbon trim. I've already made a heart-shaped Christmas ornament out of the velvet and still have more fabric left as well as the ribbon to use on something else. But I digress! To get back to Beth's cuff, I then collaged some various fabric scraps over the turquoise cuff and then the flower is from a vintage tablecloth. I embroidered around the outline to add a little "umph" to it and the pink leaves are cut from a crocheted thrifted doiley that was damaged with a green sheer fabric circled ironed on and a center of a vintage button. A vintage button was also used for the closure.







This piece was made from the cuff of a Ralph Lauren blouse that I saved because I loved the fabric so much! It has a piece of vintage trim embroidered on one side and then a scrap of linen, gold crocheted lace, pink felt and a bone heart bead and vintage buttons for the centerpiece.



I wanted to make extra surprises for Beth, as I've said before. I owed her some hostess gifts from a previous swap and she has always been so good to send me something for my birthday or "just because". She is that kind of friend and I am definitely not one of those, SO , I wanted to make up for all that. This was a main reason it took me so long to get this all done. I deliberated back and forth about what I was going to make, and ended up deciding to do an altered jewelry box. My first step was to sand lightly and apply coat of gesso. Then I painted off-white and white paint in several layers before adding torn pieces of real old letters and red/white handpainted striped book pages for the accents front and top.











Here and there various accent pieces were glued on, some because they reminded me of Beth. There is a antique horse charm on top to represent her present home in Tennessee, a shell for the beach, old buttons and stamps to love of vintage stuff, butterfly for the outdoors, etc.



I enjoyed making this and have some other vintage jewelry boxes that I want to redo. You know, one day. That day that is going to be so busy because I've so many things planned for it!

By the way, this post was started a while ago, but blogger was not cooperating with posting pictures. They had changed the format used and it was automatically turning my photos sideways. Well, some of them. Couldn't figure out why or get help from blogger to fix it. Found out you could revert back to the old blogger method for now(will go away eventually) so that is what I've done for now. Still this post looks a little funky because it was started with one method and finished with another, but I've spent so much time on it, it's just going to be that way. I've something else more personal I want to blog about so I want to get this one off the drawing board.

3 comments:

Holly said...

I love your art!!!! :) You are so very talented! Anyone would be lucky to receive a piece of your art. Love you and miss you bunches!

Holly

Jeanie said...

Jill, as always you art dazzles me. The cuffs are wonderful, but it's that jewelry box that grabs my heart. Our Beth is a lucky woman!

Annie Jeffries said...

Wow, Jill. This is spectacular. I have a couple of old jewelry boxes hanging around empty and have been stalled on inspiration. I feel like I just got dropped kicked into Idealand.

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