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Mixed Media Winged Heart and Tiny House Magnets

I'm excited to finally be able to share this project, since I've been sitting on the photos for a while.
It's a two-sided winged heart ornament for the Mixed Media Valentine Swap over on Craftster. 
 First I drew out the shape on paper, then scanned it into the computer and worked the image into a cut file. Here's a pic of the shapes being cut out on the laser out of 1/4" birch plywood. Having a laser is amazing.... I can make whatever wood shapes I want. It's easily the coolest thing I have.
The piece is 3 layers glued together, and has the lil shrine cutout in the front as well as the back. I just clamped the three pieces together with wood glue, then coated it in gesso to make sure the paint and stuff would stick and be vibrant. I guess it's like primering....It might have sucked up a lot of paint if I didn't gesso it first.
So here is the first side.... It's covered in a gelliprinted bookpage and then painted on a bit more. Then I drew the wings with paint pen and filled them in randomly with pearl pink and mint green. The middle has a quartz crystal druzy, for sparkliness...

This is the other side and it has a totally different feel.

Dot painted, with a coral and navy blue color scheme... The pendant over the shrine hole made the perfect window. I'd had that little metal thing for years in my stash and I'm glad I finally found a good use for it.

And at the end, there were little house-shaped scraps from where the shrine fronts had been cut out, so I made some wee tiny house magnets for my swap partner, and for funsies, a little altered clothespin magnet, too.

She was happy with the package! The heart was pretty tough to send away, but that's the magic of swapping: trading art and making other people smile.

Naruto Fixation and Budgie Rock Lee


Soooo, I rarely get to watch any TV that isn't Elmo or The Wiggles or Curious George, or whatever else toddler-friendly show that I can stand at the moment... My boys will so innocently click the button on our smart tv to exit out of our streaming app if there's something they don't want to watch on the TV. It makes me crazy. So I'd rather just relax and go ahead and chill with cookie monster.

BUT.... When the lights go out, I watch Naruto Shippuden and it's like TV heaven. I love it. Fullmetal Alchemist is still my favorite anime (Kip's middle name is Elric for goodness sake), but after finishing 220 episodes of Naruto Shonen Jump and 2 Seasons into Shippuden, I'd say I'm fully invested in the Naruto franchise. I've got like 7 seasons left and there's still a new one every week. So that's freaking sweet. It's like a binge-watcher's wildest dream, and I haven't gotten tired of it. It's all I watch,
That being said, here are a couple of Naruto things. First is Rock Lee, in the form of a budgie. It's a things-I-love mashup. So weird, but I'm incredibly happy with it. I'm going to have it tattooed on my bum. (Kidding, that space is reserved for Picolas Cage)

And this is a picture of Kippymon, making his pretend "ANGRY FACE" and then I doodled some rough Naruto regalia on him on my phone. It's my favorite. We joke that someday, we're going to cosplay as a family. Kip will be Naruto, Buddy will be Sasuke, Bobby will be Jiraiya and I'll be Sakura. 

Anyway, until next time. Go watch some Naruto.