Blog - In A Tickle

Learning to Quilt One Block at a Time {February}

Posted on March 14, 2015 by JanMarch 14, 2015

Through a free online course offered through Craftsy called, 2015 Block of the Month, I am learning how to make a different quilt block every month. In January, I made a block pattern called “May Basket”. For February, two quilt block patterns were introduced. February was a crazy busy month for me with the kids visiting, so it was March before I got one of the blocks finished. Since they were similar in style, I decided to do only one of the February patterns for now.

Since I am not making a quilt at this time, I am just using random scraps of fabric I have to make each block, rather than a color coordinated set of fabric pieces– kind of like the way my grandmothers did it years ago. They just used what they had available.

Here is my “Basket of Fruit” quilt block for February.

So are you ready to learn to sew quilt blocks? You don’t even need a sewing machine– just a needle, scissors, thimble, thread, and fabric scraps. The class includes all the instructions and pdf printouts for you. Learn a new creative skill and set a goal to sew one quilt block a month this year. Sign up here.

(Disclaimer: We do not receive any compensation from Crafsty for sharing this with you. We just like to let you know of great opportunities to grow your creative skills!)

Cover Up Good Stuff

Posted on March 12, 2015 by JanMarch 12, 2015

It’s easy to transform something that doesn’t look that great into something that looks wonderful. It’s even easy to take something that is perfectly good and useable (to someone) and transform it into something else (like taking a bridesmaid dress in perfect condition and remaking it into Elsa dress-up clothes for the kids.) But when it comes to art work, it’s harder to cover up something good. If it’s good, then leave it alone, right?

The art challenge for week 7 in the Documented Life Project asked us to cover up good stuff. The journal prompt was “Going Undercover”.

Jan:
For this challenge I decided to cover up some seashells I had drawn with watercolor pencils. They were not really a picture, but I was pretty happy with how they turned out and was saving them to look at later to see if I had improved my seashell drawing skills.

I am not journaling on my art work, but I try to let the journal prompt influence how I do the challenge. I decided the best way for my shells to go undercover was to put them under the sea. I covered my page with mod-podge hoping I could use alcohol inks on top of the slick surface. I don’t know if I rushed it and did not let the mod-podge dry enough, but when I started adding alcohol inks on top, they did not spread well and the surface became a little sticky. But it still worked for my underwater background.

I cut out fish, coral and sea plants from glossy paper I had made with alcohol inks to add to my collage. My sister taught me this technique a couple years ago at our girls get-together. These papers were made by placing a sheet of waxed paper in an embossing folder and running that through an embossing machine. Then I placed the waxed paper on top of a piece of glossy paper with a piece of copy paper on top of that and ironed on the copy paper. The wax embossing transferred to the glossy paper and became a resist when the alcohol ink was added to the glossy paper. It makes an interesting design element for collage and paper crafts.

You can still see my undercover shells if you look closely.

Melinda:

I found an old book page that got pulled out of one of mom’s old books on her shelf. I have no idea what book it was from so mom let me use the page for art. I saw that the story was about dwarves, and I wanted to draw one. I always liked the drawings that are done over book pages. I think they look neat. I am not a huge fan of layers so I stuck to just a couple.

How Many Layers Does It Take?

Posted on March 9, 2015 by JanMarch 9, 2015

The theme for the month of February in the Documented Life Project challenges was Layers You Will Love! The art challenge for week 6 was “When Not to Stop” and the journal prompt was “Don’t stop, ’til you get enough!”

Jan:
This challenge took a while for me to get started. I like to have a visual in my head of the direction I’m going before I actually begin a project. That’s harder to do with multiple layers because each layer can change things a lot (positive or negative). When I came across a bird that I had drawn in my sketch book a couple years ago, I knew it wanted to be a “layer” for my page. The bird, along with some doodled flowers and butterfly, was drawn in black pen with no color. I cut them out and set them aside until their turn to join the challenge.

If I remembered them all correctly, here are my layers:
1. Covered the entire page with a chevron design scrapbook paper for background.
2. Scribbled lines and color onto background with gelatos, smearing some of it with my finger.
3. Glued torn pieces of dark and light colored music paper and random torn pieces of printed pink paper on background sheet.
4. Rubbed white gesso on parts of the page with my finger.
5. Cut and glued narrow long strips of chevron striped scrapbook paper.
6. Distressed those chevron stripes with pencil and Inktense blocks.
7. Tore various leaves and large flowers from a scrapbook paper and glued in place.
8. Stamped flower design in black ink across bottom of page.
9. Stamped flowers were too intense so added more scrapbook paper flowers and leaves on top of them.
10. Rubbed more white gesso on top of stamped flowers to tone them down.
11. Used pencil and bronze Sharpie to doodle around the flower petals and leaves.
12. Glued doodle bird, flowers, and butterfly to page.
13. Colored black and white doodles with Inktense blocks and smoothed with wet brush.
14. Stamped the letters for SING in black ink, then offset stamped the letters again and colored them with the bronze pen.
15. Added some highlights with a white pen to letters, bird, and flowers.
16. Added shadows around the bird.

Melinda:

I started reading Inkheart by Cornelia Funke right before I did this page. By the end of the first chapter I knew I would like the book. I used elements from the book for my page of layers. I started with writing out a section that I liked, then used mom’s gelatos to make some designs over that. Then using various papers and drawing, I added the rest of the layers. This kind of thing is not my favorite. It is a little more stressful way of doing art than I would normally choose. However, I know that I should stretch myself now and then to see if I find something new that I do like.

My Princess:

Ninja Boy:

Don’t Waste Your Under Paper

Posted on March 5, 2015 by JanMarch 5, 2015

What on earth is under paper, you ask? If you use any kind of messy creating materials, you probably first put something on your table, desk or other work surface to protect it from the mess. If paper is what you use to protect the work surface, then that is your under paper. Most of the time, I am using plain newsprint under my messy projects and toss them when I clean up. However, if you want to do mixed media, collage, or card making, those under papers just might have valuable art that you can use. Save the good scraps in a box and let them be a part of your next project.

The art challenge for week 5 of the Documented Life Project was to use “Under Paper” and the Journal Prompt was: “What lies beneath?”

Jan:
The only under paper I could find was papers that I had saved when geli printing. I always have scrap paper next to my geli plate to roll off excess paint from my brayer or to stamp off left over paint from stencils and texture tools. For this challenge, I cut several of those papers into small squares and glued them to my page as a quilt design. Then I machine stitched across the squares to give my quilt a finished look. I remembered a small pillow I have tucked away that one of my grandmas made for me when I was a little girl. I put a picture of the pillow on top of the quilt. The embroidery on the pillow says:

Bed Fellows

Her bed contains a rabbit
And a little panda bear,
A Favorite wind-up toy
And a doll with curly hair.
There’s a piggy bank for pennies
And a clownish puppet man,
Her bed contains so many things
There is hardly room for Jan.

Melinda: I had been working on water coloring for the Derwent Academy and I decided to use my paper towel from cleaning off the paints and my practice paintings as my underpaper. I am still in the early stages of learning water color, but I know that everything can just take time and practice to learn it.

My Princess:
The kids used the under paper from painting the circles for their Color Wheel pages and tried to make a picture from it using markers.

Ninja Boy:

Winter Cousins Camp

Posted on March 2, 2015 by JanMarch 2, 2015

In case you were wondering why our posting has slowed down in recent weeks, we really do have a wonderful excuse–we were busy making family memories. For the past month all six grandkids and our two daughters have been together at our house and joined part of the time by our son and two son-in-laws.

Remember our summer Grandkids (Cousins) Camp? It takes a little more creativity to spend a month together in the winter when you are confined more inside the house, but we did it and had a great time together. The weather for the month ranged from a few very warm spring-like days to lots of snowy cold days.

The three year old “twin” cousins picked up right where they left off last June and were inseparable.

The baby boy cousin “twins” were constantly in motion with one perfecting crawling and the other learning to walk and climb and move barricades. Hard to believe it’s already been a year since we were awaiting the arrival of Songbird’s little brother. (The babies will have blog names one of these days!)

They love their Pa

With so many mouths to feed it’s a good thing my girls love to cook, and we ate some amazing meals. Since our freezer was stocked with venison my husband brought home last fall, we came up with many meals using our free range, grass-fed meat. Actually, you can substitute venison in just about any recipe for beef. My favorite way to cook it is in a crockpot with chopped onions, chicken broth, and some herbs. It can be eaten like roast or chopped up for chili, stroganoff, soups, barbecue pizza, sandwiches, tacos, enchiladas and the list could go on. Those are just some of the ways we used it.

Kara brought her sourdough starter and taught us to make delicious sourdough bread. Now Melinda and I each have a starter to feed and make our own sourdough bread. If you want to make some, this is where Kara got started.

Melinda taught us how to make homemade tortillas. She uses this recipe. Of course, we also had homemade waffles a few times as well as biscuits with chocolate gravy. Homemade pizza has taken first place over store or restaurant pizza for our clan. This is an easy recipe for crust and you can freeze the dough for later use.

Kara also decided to tackle making Kringle. Kringle is a Danish pastry that has been a favorite of our family from years ago- only we bought it already made because it is a several day process to make. Hers turned out wonderfully tasty, and we have decided to add it to our list of items that we make for the family at least once a year.

So what did we do besides eat and wash lots of dishes?

Here’s some pictures to give you a hint.

Melinda and the girls– lots of cuddles!

Almost daily Frozen performances

Ninja Boy finally pulled his tooth after threats Auntie was going to do it for him!

Story time at the library

Many hours of painting, drawing, coloring, cutting, pasting…

Miss Tickles was excited to have Songbird join her dance classes

Kids loved helping in the yard on one beautiful day

Explorers at the Butterfly Palace

Snow much fun!

Happy Great Grandma Birthday Tea Party! The kids had so much fun making all of the decorations.

So long, Partner!

My First Mixed Media Canvases

Posted on February 21, 2015 by JanFebruary 21, 2015

I wanted to share with you my very first attempt at creating mixed media canvases. I did these two and a half years ago before we started inaTickle.com. I really did not know much about mixed media at that point, but I sure had fun. I’m still learning. I painted the canvases with acrylic paint, glued on a doily and then cut out letters for my words and some of the other embellishments from scrapbooking paper. I used marking pens to add a little more detail to the letters.

My Princess had just started taking ballet classes and loved it. I wanted to make something for her to hang on her bedroom wall. She was only two and loved watching ballet movies.

This first one with the phrase, “Dance like no one is watching” fit her so well. She danced all over the house completely oblivious to anyone else.

One morning she came to her mommy and said, “God wants to dance with me!” Melinda replied with tears, “Yes, He does.”

Words With Friends

Posted on February 12, 2015 by JanFebruary 12, 2015

The fourth week of the Documented Life Project issued the art challenge of using writing within the theme for the month of “The blank page and how to face it.” The journal prompt was “Words with Friends.” Here’s how we each interpreted that challenge:

Jan:
My first thoughts in this challenge immediately jumped to books. Books have been my friends all my life. I never left the library as a kid without a huge stack of books checked out. My little sister got frustrated with me when I decided to read rather than play with her (trust me, we did play a lot), and she would try to hide the book I was reading if I left the room. If I couldn’t find it right away when I came back, I’d start a new book. I blame her for my habits as an adult of having several books going at the same time! For this challenge, I drew a bookshelf with colored pencils and then in the grain lines of the wood, I wrote words. The books on the shelves were cut from book paper and colored with colored pencils. For the quotes, I tore paper and printed the words in ink with a quill pen. When that dried, I lightly rubbed over the top and edges of the paper with a brown watercolor pencil and then brushed water over it to give it a slightly aged look.

Melinda:

As I pondered this prompt, I thought of some good friends of mine and how I would want to communicate “words with friends.” I typed out a letter and printed it. I folded, opened, closed, smudged some chocolate, “spilled coffee,” and let it “accidentally” get drawn on by a kid to make it look well-read. I used a couple ads from a magazine to look like a living room for the background that the letter would be sitting in.

Ninja Boy:
I showed the kids the post about word doodles to give them some ideas for their journals. Ninja Boy wrote the word fruit with banana shapes and added the store setting.

My Princess:

Miss Tickles:
She found a package of letter stickers for her page.

Wooden Candles for Pretend Birthday Parties

Posted on February 10, 2015 by JanFebruary 10, 2015

Our daughter sent my husband a text last month asking, “Can you whittle a few birthday candles for Songbird? She loves playing birthday parties and I let her use candles but they break.”

So Pa found a piece of scrap dowel rod and sat down to carve some candles. Starting at the top, he cut a spiral groove the length of the dowel. Then he filled in the rest of the candle with two more spiral grooves to simulate a fancy candle design.

After carving the rod and a little sanding, he sawed off candle lengths and drilled a small hole in the top of each candle for the wick. Then it was my turn to paint.

I painted a base coat and then used a sponge to add paint to the raised edges of the spirals on each candle.

I coated a length of cotton string with mod podge, let it dry and then cut small sections for wicks. I glued the wicks into the small holes drilled in the top of the candles. To finish them off I hung the candles by their wicks with clothespins to a clothes hanger and painted a coat of polyurethane.

Now Songbird has candles that beg, “Let the birthday tea parties continue!” Thanks Pa!

The Color Wheel

Posted on February 6, 2015 by JanFebruary 6, 2015

Week 3 of the Documented Life Project challenge was” The Color Wheel” and the journal prompt was “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way…” by Georgia O’Keeffe.

Jan:
When my kids were young we did a project with the color wheel that involved cutting out pieces of magazine pictures to make a color wheel. I don’t remember what they thought of it, but I knew I had a good time. I decided to use that same process again for this challenge. I cut pie wedge shape pieces from magazine pictures in the colors I needed for my color wheel. In the process I also found a picture of some very colorful tiny umbrellas which I cut into circles. For the first layer on my page, I lightly drew several circles with pencil. Then I painted each circle one at a time with plain water and added two primary colors of watercolor to each circle for the colors to blend. When that dried, I glued my wedge shaped pieces into a color wheel pie and added the umbrella circles. I also cut and glued some text words from magazines and then added black and white doodle lines.

Melinda:
I cut out color from magazines and arranged them to represent my “color wheel.” Then I drew my letters on white card stock with colored pencils and cut and glued them to the page.

My Princess:
Grandma helped the kids learn how to mix the primary colors together to make a color wheel. They colored each circle separately with acrylics and after the circles were dry had to remember what they mixed together to put the color wheel in the correct order to glue in place.

Ninja Boy:

Lots of Freezing Going on Around Here

Posted on January 31, 2015 by JanJanuary 31, 2015

Before Christmas, I shared with you the Elsa and Anna Aprons and accessories I made for my granddaughters to play dress-up. In case you were wondering, they love them. My Princess and Miss Tickles got theirs at Christmas…

Songbird had to wait until she came to visit Grandma and Pa to receive hers.

And she can even be found sleeping and eating as Elsa…

Since she doesn’t have a little sister to trade outfits with, I made her an Anna Apron and Cloak dress-up as well. This time I used the bottom of a shirt for the skirt fabric.