Organizing

Record sheet

Hmm...no work got done on the castle this last week. I found myself with chores and social obligations instead. With my social outtings, I decided to bring along some toys to make. When I got back home, I realized that I had made a royal mess of my supplies. There has to be a better way. In order to keep track of everything I began by creating a record page of each toy. I printed the photo on card stock.

That was when I realized I had over 30 colors of felt and wasn't sure if I'd used gold on the wings or the marigold. *sigh* (It was gold.) Definitely time to get organized. I included a swatch of each felt and a bit of each color of embroidery floss. Rather than deal with glue or tape that could fail over time, I sewed the swatch to the card stock with  the embroidery floss. Now I have a record and can re-create that color combo again. This makes me happy.

In order to determine the color of the different felts, I had to look at my orders from Felt on the Fly. (This is awesome felt!) I started by pinning a tag on each piece with the name on it. Not very safe because I was using straight pins. I wanted a way to keep the embroidery floss colors with each piece of felt rather than having to search through my floss collection each time. I've been using the "BAG-IT" system to keep track of my floss for years.

It works well. I have a ring for each family of colors. I took a page from their system and determined that I could put each felt in it's own ziplock bag along with the bag of floss. To keep it organized, I simply label each floss bag with it's number for ease of replacement. The gallon ziplocks I had on hand for the felt were the freezer style. They have a label area. Great, I can write the name of the color of the felt on the bag and get rid of the tag with a straight pin. (And not poke my fingers.)






The plastic is slippery. I have a very old hole punch. I found that by putting a scrap piece of card stock top and bottom, I could punch neatly through the plastic. Now I just hang the bags with the large ring.







All organized. Not quite done yet, but was excited to show what I've been up to. I think this will work out just fine.





Until next time...

Cross eyed

Transfering the concept of small stones to the larger castle has become an exercise in patience and going cross eyed. I originally thought I'd take a few days to draw out all the little stones. After all, how hard could it be? I'm just drawing ovals, rectangles, squares and circles. They don't have to be precise, they are rocks. Well, my original thought was wrong. It took me about 3 days of drawing on and off (I couldn't do this for very long without resting my eyes.) to get the back of the castle drawn on. Three more sides and the battlements to draw yet.

Now, I think this is going to be so cool when it is finished. But, instead of a week, it's going to be several weeks as I cannot work on this 100% of the time. Here's a close up of the pencil work. Not hard, just time and eye strain.

In other news, I've got a working concept for a logo. It needs some refinement and perhaps a rest and come back to it before presenting it as a final design. Back to drawing more stones on walls.

Until next time...

Experimental Success

The first experiment was a success! This is one wall of the separate little box/tower that came with the castle. I hand drew in pencil all the stone shapes. Then, painted them in with various shades of grey acrylic paint.

I posted this on the Fiber Art forum on WetCanvas. The response was overwhelmingly positive that doing the whole castle this way would be so cool. I agree.

Since the point of this exercise was to be a background for pictures of the toys, I took a few test shots of toys in front of this piece to kind of get an idea of what I might expect.

This is Reid, a Nessie.










And this is Spring. I think I need better lighting, but am pleased with the grey background.

Until next time...

Bricks and Stones

The castle is now completely primed, inside and out. It took a lot of time because I didn't want to paint everything. I wanted to leave the floors and stairs/ladders wood. I had to get in there with a really small paintbrush to avoid painting the stairs. Now onto the stones.

Ah, but not so fast. I have to figure out just how I'm going to do that. The first thing was to experiment with some homemade stone stamps. I cut a white eraser into quarters and carved out random chunks of one end. Ta-da, stones, sort of.
Of course I didn't have grey paint, only white and black. I mixed up some medium grey and tried the stamps on a piece of card stock before committing to the actual castle.

As you can see, I was having problems keeping a reasonable distance between the stones to simulate grouting. On the left, you can see where I actually took a pencil and drew out some abstract stone shapes and then went at it with a paint brush. (Paint brushes and I don't always get along.) I like the drawn and painted stones better than the stamps, so I am going to take a little more time and do this again on a scrap piece of primed wood. What do you think of these?

Work on the logo continues. I still haven't settled on a good image. I have yet another idea to work on. I will post a preview as soon as I'm somewhat happy with it to get some feedback.

Until next time...