And the winners are...

Jenn F (from Facebook) will be giving the box a new home

and

the little fishy will be swimming its way to Kathy.

Congratulations!

Happy Monday to you all!



Happy Birthday Giveaway

I love my birthday.

I celebrate it in a big way every year.

Craig and I take a short vacation, this year we went to Grand Rapids, MI and visited breweries.

6 breweries in 3 days.

We have fun.

I also have a family picnic.

This is the official first day of "Sangria Season"

This was celebrated on Sunday

and although we picniced inside due to more rain, it was a great day.

I also like to give something away on my birthday.

I give to charity, and as gifts I ask for donations to my favorite charity, the Breast Cancer 3 Day.

I sometimes donate blood but I'm off schedule for that and can't this year.

This year I'm giving something away on my blog.

This box. 

 And maybe something else, but its still being finished.

**edited 11:37, yes, that something else is finished and pictured at the end of the post**

So, if you'd like to help me celebrate my birthday, leave me a comment here.

Or like Artbrat's Bits & Pieces on facebook and leave me a comment on my wall.

If you do both, I'll enter your name in the hat twice.

I'll draw a winner on Saturday at noon so you'll have til then to be entered.

(and if the something other turns out, I'll edit this page with the 2nd giveaway)

I hope you have a wonderful day!

This little fishy with the big bulging eyes serves no purpose other than making someone smile.  I love his big eyes!  This will be the other giveaway.  I think I'll draw 2 names so I can spread the joy and fun a bit further. 

Good luck!

One World, One Heart 2011

I am excited to again take part in the wonderful One World, One heart blog event. I think it is an incredible way to make new friends and also give away a little goodness and the same time.

For any new visitors to my blog, thank you for taking time to stop by. I wanted to tell you a little bit about me. I am a professional piano teacher and church organist. I love sharing my knowledge of music with others, and incorporating their developing skills as a method to help them express themselves. I have a degree in piano and harpsichord performance and also an advanced degree in music theory and literature. So I have a strong background to share with my students. I also play the harp and still have much to learn with that instrument.

I've lived in Michigan my entire life but I spent my college years in the northern part of the state compared to my southeastern home. I share my home with my hubby of a little over 14 years and our two dogs. I am new to eating a whole food diet and love the richer tastes that I get to enjoy by using fresh, clean food. I just signed up to participate in a CSA for the first time this year and can't wait for the growing season to get underway so I can receive my portion of the harvested crops.

I love playing with art. I find it soothing to spend time surrounded with paint, clay, beads, and many other mediums. I’ve taken a few community ed. classes in polymer clay, but mostly I am self taught in my art making. I love taking on the challenge of working in new mediums and seeing how my skills develop.

For this year’s giveaway, I have a beautiful box. I made this a few years ago and love it, I painted, collaged, included copies of some of my artwork and glittered the heck out of the box. Its not huge, maybe about 3.5” round. The perfect size to store precious trinkets inside.

To enter please you need to have a current blog, and leave me a comment on this post. I'll be selecting a winner on Feb. 17th. Please make sure your comment allows a link to your blog so I can follow up if your name is drawn. Make sure you check out all the amazing participants in the One World, One Heart event. There is an amazing amount of talent represented in the event.

Thank you so much for stopping by. I hope you’ll visit again soon.

Gratitude box

I’m participating in the Mystery Mentor program put on by Artella.  It has been lots of fun getting uplifting messages of comfort and support from my mentor, and equally fun to send encouragement out to the person I’m supporting for the month.  (Actually, I’m hoping to continue these buds of friendship way past January, but that’s because of how cool I think they both are!) 

My mentee chose the word Gratitude for 2011.  We were to do at least one thing through snail mail as part of our commitment to the project.  I decided to make a gratitude box where she could write down the many things in her life that she is thankful for.  I thought that on down days, she could open the box and be reminded of the plethora of good that surrounds her, and hopefully be uplifted by reading them. 

I haven’t heard that the box has arrived at its destination yet, but I sure hope she likes the small gift.

I’m off to run errands soon and then I’m spending the evening with my mom, sister and niece for a girls night.  I hope you have a lovely weekend.

My neice's mermaid

Here is the box I made for my neice. I gave it to her as her birthday gift and I think she likes it. I didn't woodburn the quote and words on this one like I did the first. Decided just to paint them on and I think it made for neater wording.

I was able to spend some time in the Art Palace this afternoon and feel refreshed and relaxed. Here's to being able to spend time doing what you love.

A love affair with boxes

I have always, for as long as I can remember, had a fascination with pretty boxes. Any shape, any size, any material. It's almost an obsession and it runs in my family as my grandmother and my sister are the same. One of the projects in SuziBlu's La Sirena class was to woodburn a box. Can you imagine my excitement to start this project?! It turned out just as I had pictured in my head. I love it when a project falls into place like that. I glued on sea glass, used lots of glass bead gel, and embelished away with glitter. It was so much fun, I made another for my niece. I was going to give her this one because when I found the quote I just really wanted to share it with her. But then I found my brain and realized that I had painted her topless-which I usually do for mermaids-and my brother would not approve. So anyways, I'll show you the other box on another day.

I still haven't figured out what to stow in my box, but she's sitting in a place of honor in the art palace and I smile everytime I see it!

The Return of my Muse...

August has been a whirlwind already! I just dont know what goodness to share first. After focusing primarily on the harp music, my muse wanted to play with mixed media again and she truly outdid herself. Earlier this year Kara at Mother Henna organized a personal healing and inspiration card deck. She did a marvelous job of coordinating between all the artists and we were rewarded with a gorgeous deck of cards. I've been wanting an appropriate place to keep my treasured deck, but just didn't know what I really wanted. My polymer clay was calling me so I went there to start. I love playing with UTEE overtop of my clay to give nice depth to pieces. I began to wonder if I could recreate one of my cards in clay. I started by sculpting out some fish in a pearly orange mix. I added some scales and fin detail then brushed over a layer of a yellow pearlx to make the little guys shimmer. OK, I decided that these were useable. Now I had to make a pond for the little swimmers. My first try, I painted a pond right on the box lid, surrounded it with clay rocks and filled with UTEE. When I baked this one, the UTEE bubbled up really bad. I ended up scraping it all out and redoing. I still had alot of bubbles, but it was ok. Unfortunately the rocks weren't creating a seal and the UTEE was leaking out of the pond and I couldn't achieve the depth I was looking for. It still turned out cute, and you can see the first one in finished form atop the purple box.

My second attempt, I made the blue water out of clay also, made sure I had a good seal around the rock bottoms, and tried again. Success!! Much better level of depth on the orange box topper. I continued to play with the purple box. I used a mixture of 4 or 5 paints to do a mottled background. I made large polymer clay rocks, drilled holes in the bottom corners of the box, and added the rocks for legs.

I added swirls of glue and coated them in 2 colors of glitter. I glued down a braid of fibers to add more texture. On the end of the fibers I tied 2 polymer clay hearts. Finally I added metal word tags such as dream, inspire, hope. Some of the metal tags have a glass bauble glued over them to make them pop.
The orange box was made using many of the same techniques. I used various stamps to add a discreet pattern that adds interest and depth. I sculpted a large goldfish to dangle off the fiber braid end. I added a star crystal to dangle from the middle of the braid, and a small swarovski crystal to brighten up the other end. I used letter stamps to add words as well as metal tag words.





Oops, I almost forgot about the inside. I used sticky backed felt, cut it to size and lined the bottom and sides of both the lid and the base to give a cozy finished look to the project.




So, what do you think? I had so much fun making these because I got to play with paint, clay, stamps and fibers all at once!




Lets see, I have adventures at the fair and an overnight camping trip pictures (I went dragonfly hunting with my camera) to share but I think that will wait until my next post. It seems amazing that its August 6th already. I want the remainder of summer to crawl by because it has been beautifully relaxing and rejuvenating. I do hope all of you are experiencing the same.