Eileen Hull

Three dimensional art... with heart

Birthday Bash

On the night of March 6, the Woolies held their annual birthday celebration. This is a group of 18 amazingly creative women who meet twice a month in the local Wegman’s. Two of the members have moved- one to Hawaii and one to CO, but they keep in touch through email and FaceBook. Read here about how I came to be invited to this group by Pat Sloan.

Since most of the group are quilters (I don’t really quilt but I still love fabric!), each person brought a fat quarter and a $15 gift. The exchange of gifts was quite lively! Here’s what one of the gifts looked like. Are these little guys not adorable? They were made by the talented Lina LaMora.

 
A call went out to the group to help organize different parts of the celebration. Not wanting to look like a slacker, still being new to the group, I volunteered to handle the cake. I also volunteered my friend Lorine Mason so she wouldn’t feel left out 🙂 Plus she makes killer cakes…
We decided to bake cupcakes.  I cut 30 paper cupcake wrappers using my Sizzix ScoreBoard Cupcake Holder die. Did you know those dies also work great with paper? 

 

The Cupcake Stands (below) and pennants (above) are part of the Sweet Treats Collection and I was dying for the chance to actually use them. 
I cut 17 individual cupcake stands. The bases were decorated with sewing pattern tissue (we are mainly a sewing group) and spring colored toppers.

 A blurry picture of a cupcake sandwich. Still have to try this!

All the cupcakes on their stands- so pretty. Lorine did a great job decorating them and the taste was out of this world. They were lemon…mmmmmm.

 Here’s the group!

 These pennants were so much fun to make and really fast! I stamped the sentiment, added a line of double sided tape on the inside fold, tucked a toothpick in the crease and folded it over. 

 All in all, I can’t wait for the next birthday celebration. Thanks for the warm welcome into the group everyone! You are so inspiring…

Spring Frame

This year I am going to be ready for Mother’s Day! Here’s the front of a photo folder I am giving my mom.  
I used my new Sizzix Mailable Frame ScoreBoard die to make it. Inside I am going to add our family picture taken at Christmas.

I used one of my favorite Duetica fonts, Woodwynd, to create the text for the frame. The thing that I love about this font, and all of the other Duetica fonts, is that you can customize them. For each font family, there are 10-20 coordinating fonts that all work together. On this design, I used fairly flourished M’s and left the O in the middle plain so the word is still readable. I love how all of the little viney stems radiate out from the letters. 

  1. Cut Mailable Frame from matboard.  
  2. Emboss frame using Dot, Flowers and Rick-rack Textured Impression folder.
  3. Ink white over the raised areas and around the edges of the frame.
  4. Access Duetica Lettering Arts Studio and layout text on site. Size the text to your project. 
  5. Import into your design software and print. Accent letters with pearls.
  6. Glue trim around inside edges of frame and top and bottom.
  7. Add elements such as flowers, leaves, pearls and swirls. Flowers on this project were made using brown and white coffee filters, page from an antique atlas, off-white cardstock and chipboard. I colored the outer layer of the white flower by running a line of yellow Copic marker around the edge before I fanned the layers.
  8. The flowers are on the “Sweet Treats for You” Sizzlits that are coming out in June, but any flowers may be substituted. I also added in leaves, buttons and swirls to complete the arrangement.
  9. Add fluffy white yarn for a finishing touch and use it to secure any pages you want to include inside the frame!


Phewww…

Did you just hear a big sigh of relief? The dies for CHAW 13 have been sent! Designing the dies is the fun part- it’s the hours of drawing them in Illustrator that gets me crazy. The good news is my skills are definitely improving. The bad news is I feel like I am permanently attached to my computer chair. Now to catch up on everything else…

Remember the birds from a couple of weeks ago? They have appeared again, spotted on the blog of Madeline Arendt! Visit her blog to hear how she made it. She made the sweetest mobile for a baby shower gift using the birds and tree branches. Madeline has posted so many beautiful projects on our Sizzix blog hops and I am a huge fan of her work. She always uses interesting materials and finishes every project with just that special touch. Here are some pics I grabbed from her blog- hope she doesn’t mind me sharing…
Sadly I was not able to make a project this weekend because today is our Designer Crafts Connection Blog Hop. 🙁 You can follow that to see some cool spring projects.  Just click on the blue button on the sidebar for some great inspiration. I have a fun project to do for an event tomorrow night and promise to take pictures and post them.
In other news, I had a lovely email from a lady who I was chatting with on Karen Burniston‘s Facebook page 🙂 Her name is Leslie and here are a couple pictures of an adorable Halloween project she made using my Box with Scallop Flap ScoreBoard die.

This is what she said:
Here are a couple of pictures of my treat boxes made with your Box w/Scallop Flap Die.  I  made a belly band and fabric yo-yo with googly eyes to close the box.  They were filled with mini M&M peanut packages, my grandson’s favourite candy at the time. 🙂
Love this- thanks so much for sending that to me Leslie! I love the look on the little yoyo’s face- all nervous that the spider is going to get him 🙂
Now on to the stack of work… wish me luck! 

Almost done!

For the past few weeks, I have been working on designing my next set of dies for Sizzix scheduled to be released in January 2013.  Today I was taking a break and thought it would be interesting to see if there were any posts from Stitches, a trade show held in the UK for the craft industry similar to CHA. I looked on the Sizzix UK blog and found this picture of my Sweet Treats collection! Isn’t it cute? I need to write to Paula Pascual and thank her for designing such a cool display. 

It’s interesting to see how the US and UK Sizzix Art Departments have decorated the same basic dies for two completely differently looks. I love them both- but I might be biased…

Here are a couple of pictures taken by my buddy, Vicki O’Dell, the Creative Goddess. In addition to being a great photographer, Vicki is such an amazing all around crafter- she does it ALL- home decor, jewelry, paper, and her faux food is to die for! Plus she is a fun person to hang around with! Check out her blog post for more pictures from CHAW 2012.
I’ll be posting again when the artwork is delivered! 

The Birds go to CHA!

Maybe this could be a series- where oh where will the Birds appear next?

Here’s a project that I created for the ImpressArt booth at CHA. I used their cool metal alphabets to make a recycled soda can mobile. Once again the Bird die came in handy, as did the ScoreBoard Butterfly. Both are from my Sizzix Fresh Vintage collection.

First I cut the shapes from soda cans- two butterflies and birds for each hanging piece. I also cut one matboard shape as a base for each. I hammered the metal stamped words on the silver side of each soda can shape. Then I took alcohol inks and the foam blender and dabbed the color on. Each one is different- some I filled with color, some were sparsely inked and some were in between. What unified the project was the color palette- my favorite blues, greens, purples and yellows.
To finish, I hot glued the soda can shapes to the center of the matboard bases but allowed the sides and wings to bow out giving nice dimension. Then I punched a very fine hole in the top of the shape for hanging and threaded fishing line through each one. I thought I would go insane tying these on- fishing line is very annoying to work with! But it was worth it- the birds and butterflies look almost like they are floating in midair. I also added some beads to separate strands of fishing line to counterbalance the weight.
Another discovery- photographing a mobile is no easy task! I wanted good light so I carefully took the whole piece outside and suspended it from a tree branch. Every time I would go to take a picture, the wind would blow and everything moved! So I have about 30 horrible blurred pictures of this cool mobile. Finally I had to admit defeat, pack it up and send without getting a decent photo… Oh well…
The hardest part of this project was figuring out how to make the hanger part of it. I tried three embroidery hoops tied together with ribbon, and then wired frames in three varying sizes together, but they were too overwhelming for the delicate hanging pieces. I wound up finding a baby mobile at a thrift store for $5. After removing the A-B-C’s and 1-2-3’s, I added my own pieces. Recycling at its best!
Do you have a bird or butterfly project you’ve made with these dies that you’d like to share? Send it on over to me (EileenHull@aol.com) and I will feature it here!
Is spring really on the way? Seems like it in VA…

The Bird goes to school…

You never know where a Sizzix die will show up next! I had a call from my friend Lorine asking if she could borrow my Bird die. Her friend Connie was working on a special project with her class. Here’s what Connie says:

The Great Backyard Bird Count is done across North America and sponsored by Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Audubon Society, and others. We had to observe, identify, and count for 15 min birds visiting the feeders outside each classroom. For the young ones, birds are a great class room activity, bringing the outside “in”.

The children ranged in age from 3 to 6. The three year old class did cardinals (simple color-red with black mask around an orange beak). With the four year old class I added to the cardinals white die cut birds (black capped chickadees), and buff die cut birds (house sparrow). For the kindergarteners I added grey for the tufted titmouse. For our kindergarten enrichment class we focused on house sparrows and used a dark brown base for their birds.

Normally the children would cut, color, and make each bird, but with only 15-25 min there wasn’t time for the children to do each step. Since the goal was identification and counting, the pre-cut birds, combined with photos of each species, allowed the children to pick out the distinguishing characteristics of each species. They used crayons and markers to decorate them. I’m enclosing photos of some of their “birds”. One class used clothes pins to perch their cardinals in the window and other classes made mobiles with theirs. All in all a wonderful craft to our observations. Thank you! Once again, the die cut birds were fabulous!   Connie

P.S. They also fly very well. The kindergarten boys proved this!

How cool is that? Love the P.S.  🙂 Here are a few more pictures of the children’s finished artwork. ScoreBoard dies are specially designed to cut thick materials, like the chipboard used here, which is a great choice for kids because it’s so sturdy. And who knew that chipboard could fly?

What would you make with the Bird die? Come back for a look at another project using this little guy….