Coca Cola

At a garage sale I picked up a Christmas ornament that was already in a bad way.  My plan was to just keep it whole, take off the bottom, and have a few cartons of Coke bottles in the corner.

To put it in perspective, originally the top portion was full of tiny bottles.  Then, after some wiggling, I realized that the Coke bottles could be removed!!!  (Two snapped in half, but that's the peril of yanking glued-in plastic out of more plastic.)

In-scale soda for everyone!  Here's a pill bottle full of Cokes.

Lemmons Aid

My friends, Sam and Wendy Lemmons, are going on a mission trip to Nepal for two years!  I'm so excited for them.  I made them a sign for their fundraiser yesterday! 

It was a huge hit!  Here's a tutorial on how to do neat painted lettering on wood.  Print out what you want the sign to say.  Tape it onto your wood.  Etch each letter in using a pen that no longer works.  The indentations that you make with the pen will keep your paint from making the letters look sloppy.
I also did some killer facepainting!  So much fun!  I could have sat there and painted faces all day!

As for writing updates... I have a writing blog, too, now!  Check it out!

I wear a sombrero now. Sombreros are cool.

Over spring break I went to Mexico and I got a few magnets... basically just cloth sombreros with miniatures hotglued on! 

Check it out, yo. 

The most amazing thing is the little green basket... it's truly one of the smallest, most intricate things I've ever seen.  The picture is pretty terrible, but imagine a basket woven with plastic strands no bigger than a thread.

Pretty soon I'm going to try to decorate the hat... make it truly groovy, but I figured I'd put this post in there to show you that I'm still kicking.

Speaking of kicking-- my book is out on Amazon now!
http://www.amazon.com/Five-Items-Adeline-Stein-ebook/dp/B00BF6CBAK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1361199001&sr=1-1&keywords=one+out+of+five
If you like what you see, even if it's just the sample on the Amazon page, send the link to everyone you know!  Word of mouth is so, so important.  And you don't need a Kindle to get it... just an electronic device that you can download a Kindle app onto.

Anyway, it's had some great reviews, and since you guys are so important to my art life, I want you to be a part of my writing life, too!

ALRIGHT PARTY PEOPLE.

Today, I tried to make dollhouse candles with real wax, and failed miserably.  I found out that the reason is that I'm not double-boiling the wax... just trying to stick (unweighted) sewing thread into a candle, and not waiting for it to cool before I dip again.

That's why no picture yet.

But.  If you boil a heat-resistant container with wax in water, weigh down the bottom with a small bead, and are actually patient, you should come up with a tiny candle!  Don't try to light it, though, because you need to use borax, salt, and water to soak your 100% cotton wick in for at least a day for it to be functional and not a disaster.  All the same, I wouldn't light a tiny candle anyway.  A waste of a llllot of work if you ask me!  Happy arting!

leaf your problems at the door

Today I'm taking full advantage of autumn.

I made a wreath by taking fallen leaves, taking off the leafy parts and using the veins to weave together.  The trick is taking fairly flexible leaves.  I really like the different colors in it!

 

Not tiny stuff, but I made the first rose for my sister's bouquet!  I'd been putting it off because I was intimidated, but I think this turned out pretty well.

The trick is to curl the petals beforehand, and make five different sizes of petals.

Happy arting!

Terrarium

This isn't exactly dollhouse, but it sure is dollar.  I'm still working on Wolverine; I can't seem to cut his legs off... but that could be the healing factor.

I wish the picture was better quality.  The guy inside is a little old man with a cane who I painted with a safety pin.

But I will tell you how to hollow out a lightbulb!  Use pliers to take off the little metal thingy on the end of the bulb.  You'll be stuck with a thick black glass plug with a hole in the middle of it.  This threw me for a loop for a good long while.  I tried to hit it with something heavy and metal to shatter it, but it was really hard and it just flaked off bit by bit.  Then I stuck a dart in the hole and pushed it to the side, and it cracked right in half!  Then it's just a question of breaking up the glass inside and shaking it out.

At the bottom of terrariums you should put activated charcoal or those clay balls they put at the bottom of lizard habitats.  Then there's mesh, not metal mesh (which will rust), but fiberglass.  Then the dirt and the plant.

Happy arting!