Sorted Buttons

I spent yesterday evening sorting the bag of buttons I bought in the afternoon. Here are some of the bags.

Home Crafts Fair Finds

Today I visited the local home crafts fair, which takes place twice a year. I love to see what people are offering, and I'm always awed and pleased to see how much creativity finds expression behind closed doors here in the north of Germany. Most of the things on sale are conservative crafts and not really my taste -- though I did see one or two things that I might have bought if I had a garden, which I don't -- but that doesn't make them any less pretty or interesting.

What I did find, though, was a woman who does a lot of sewing. She'd brought along a pile of buttons, but didn't really expect anyone to want them. As you might expect, there were a lot of ordinary buttons, but also a large number of colored and shapes buttons and some large ones. I bought the lot for 10 euros, and both of us were pleased with the bargain.

I also found these little clay faces for 50 cents each. They will be lovely for art dolls. I'm going to try making a mould from them using Fimo, so I can reproduce them using a lighter, air drying (paper) clay.

Threads ATC

I made these for a 6 for 6 swap on Alkymia, a European (only) group for ATC and spiritual art of all kinds.

The cards were cut twice the length of an ATC. First, I stamped and embossed the front of each ATC with a script stamp. The next step was to paint each card with gold and bronze acrylic. Then I punched out rectangles, affixed a scrap of metal mesh inside each card and folded it. The finishing touch was simply to weave various yarns through the mesh, leaving an inch or two hanging over at each side.

If I make more of these, I might try weaving the yarns into the mesh before closing and gluing the cards. I'm sure that would look nice, too.

OWOH and PIF Winners

I drew five winners using the random number generator at random.org. Each of the winners will receive a set of three crossover cards, which I hope to post out on Saturday.

The two One World One Heart winners are:

Patricia Mosca (Rochester, USA)
Angelika Tugal (Hürth, Germany)

the additional three winners will receive their cards as my PIF obligation.
They are:

Chris Bennett (East Blaxland, AUS)
Suzy Pierce (Bullhead City, USA)
Tamy Bollar (Crystal Falls, USA)

OWOH Giveaway and my PIF

I signed up for One World One Heart giveaway and posted my gift on the Art In A Carton blog a week or so back. Well, as of an hour ago, more than 180 people have signed up for a chance to win the two sets of cards I offered. (Anyone can sign up for the draw simply by leaving a comment on the OWOH post on Art In A Carton. You don't need to be participating by offering a gift yourself.)

I had a little think over the weekend and decided that, as my PIF here on Art Angelix seems to have gone completely unnoticed, I'd kill two birds with one stone and honour my PIF commitment by making three more sets of cards (see the photos here) and sending them to people who signed up for the OWOH draw.

As for the technicalities of drawing the winning names, I've decided to use the random number generator at "Violets Are Blue". That seems fairest to me.

Connecting

Yesterday, I decided to join in the ONE World ONE Heart project and uploaded a photo of my contribution to the Art In A Carton blog. I've also visited several of the other participants' blogs and left comments, which is part of how the project works. Today, I've had so many lovely messages from other participants. It's so wonderful.

Here are two blogs you'll want to look at, I'm sure.

Anna Nowicki
http://annanowicki.blogspot.com/

Creative Solace (Heather Robinson)
http://creativesolace.blogspot.com/

I also joined a new Yahoogroup called "Eurosupplies" today. It's owned by Mika and Shakti, two of my art friends, with whom I do a lot of art projects. The basic idea is that European artists can swap art materials, or materials suitable for art making, they have lying around or use the "wish list" ask for materials they would like to use in their art.

We've been exchanging materials in other ways for some time, but this is going to be much easier, as all swaps and requests are now organised in one place (on one group). So, If you're an artist living in Europe, feel welcome to join Eurosupplies and make use of the exchanges.

Eurosupplies
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/eurosupplies/