What's on your Workdesk (and floor) Wednesday: Mosaic

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Today I decided to

finally start on a
MOSAIC project
which I promised
I'd do for Metro Home magazine.

I gathered my materials:
plates with chips
hammer (to break the plates into bits and pieces)
something to put the broken pieces on
(either a frame, mirror, shelf, chair, pot, etc.)
newspapers
plastic bags
white glue
grout
water
First you pound the plates with
your hammer.
Be sure to put the plate inside a
plastic bag,
and put newspapers above
and below bag for safety.

Do this on your garage floor
or a place where you
won't damage the surface!!
Try placing the plate shards
on your base to see if you have enough.

Use white glue to attach the plate shards to the base.
I'll edit this post later with the completed project.
For now, I'll have to wait
for the glue to dry
before I apply the grout.

See Mrs. WOYWW keeping watch?
If you'd like to take a sneak peak
at what other people have on their work desk,
head over to Julia.
I guarantee you'll want to
join in on the fun!

And head over to Kelly Aaron's blog
for some fascinating mosaic work!

The Bloggerette Sorority

This is
ME.

with my sketchbooks, paints, scissors, glue....

Usually I am alone in my craft room....

making collages, doing my journal,
making my scrapbooks, painting....

but I found out about the
Bloggerette Sorority.

Never joined a sorority before.

So I decided, why not?

Won't you join us?
Click on the banner below to join!
If you'd like your own paper doll,
you can win one
with your face on it.
Just leave a comment below.

What would your paperdoll
be carrying?

As usual, my wonderful friends/ followers get a chance too.
I'll add your names after the comments.

What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday: Sketches of my Husband

What's on my workdesk?

Nothing
made by me!!!

It was my husband's 50th birthday yesterday.
I cooked (a minor miracle
as my family will attest).
I made
Pilaf del Mar
with the help of my cook, Lucy.
She said I had to repeat the
browning of the garlic
as I burned the minced garlic
at the start of the process.
This is a wonderful recipe
my dad cut out of Sunset Magazine decades ago.
It's fast, easy, and practically unspoilable.
We had crabs, shrimps, salpicao
(courtesy of my sister Peggy's cook),
chicken with a lot of black pepper
(courtesy of my sister Meldy's husband, who bought it),
etc etc.

But what's on my desk?
I asked the guests to either draw my husband
or write him a birthday message.
Most of them opted to
draw.
Here are the results.
I shall put them
in a scrapbook.

Where Bloggers Create: My Craft Space

Oh dear, I thought I'd have enough time to

CLEAN UP
but nooooo!

So I'll just have to show you my craft space
in all it's
CLUTTER!
and all the
MESS!
This is a small part of my craft room.
But I also like to work on the
FLOOR

when the canvas is too big to place on my desk.
The oil painting on the left
is made by an inmate of the
QC Jail.
We're trying to help prisoners
with livelihood.
Below, see what I've been up to
on my desk-

I'm making some ATCs.

And to thank you for your visit,
here are two ATCs I'm giving away.
I used wall putty and watercolor
on the background.
Then I drew on it, and
added fabric and paper.

As usual, all my followers automatically get a chance.
I'll add your names after the comments.

I'm really sorry for the delay-
I hate the counting!
The winner for the ATCs is
Her Art Nest!

WOYWW: The Envelope Project

My family and I spent the
three day weekend in Baguio City,
summer capital of the Philippines.
I didn't do much except eat a lot,
shop in the ukay-ukay (vintage shops),
and visit the Bencab Museum.
Ben Cabrera is a national artist of the Philippines
and it was an interesting visit.
There were a lot of variations of
Sabel
on canvas, on tile, etc.
I asked one of the attendants there
who Sabel was and she told me
she was his muse back in his college days.
She was a "taong-grasa",
meaning someone who lived in the streets.
This is one of his paintings of Sabel-


On Tuesday, I prepared
what I would send to the
Envelope Project,
and gathered bits and pieces from
what my sister Peggy calls my "magic book".
Then I prepared the envelope using
wall putty,
transparencies from tape, and doodles.

So this was what my table
looked like this morning,
and the almost finished envelope:

If you'd like to take a sneak peak at what other people
have on their work desk, head over to Julia.
I guarantee you'll want to join in on the fun!

What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday: Playtime

I managed to visit almost everyone on WOYWW last week

and comment (except for a few Blogger didn't permit me to!).
It was
amazing
what some made for the anniversary project!
Congratulations to Julia for such a successful blog party!
I seem to have a hangover and have been very lazy this past week.
Yesterday I found some flat glass stones at the mall
and decided to make some magnets using magazine pages.
This is my desk as I was working.
On the right is an old dictionary page I was doodling on.
Below is a magazine illustration of an Irving Penn photograph
that I've kept for several years.
I drew on it, dried the ink, then cut up
the drawings to fit the base of the glass stones.
Somehow this required very little thinking
and I just happily enjoyed myself drawing what would fit the design.
It was sort of like the joy you get out of recognizing objects in the clouds!

The picture below didn't come out right because I used a flash
but I am too lazy (still) to fix it!
Hopefully I'll have a higher energy level these coming days!
I have to start on some stuff I got myself into
like the envelope project, and bloggerette sorority,
and a tutorial for Metro Home magazine (Philippines)
and swaps to do!
If you'd like to take a sneak peak at what other people
have on their work desk, head over to Julia.
I guarantee you'll want to join in on the fun!

Recycled Projects

I was not pleased at all with my project and was quite relieved when the TV guesting did not push through. They wanted me to make 5 organizers from recycled materials. For the first project, I used a graham cracker plastic container which I filled with toilet paper rolls and some cardboard to make divisions. Double sided tape was very useful to attach all the rolls together, to the sides of the container, and to the cardboard divisions.
I then covered the container with papemelroti paper and craft cuts.
I made other organizers out of cereal boxes and soup cans, etc. but didn't take pictures of it as I was rushed for for time, only to discover that the shoot was rescheduled!

But look what I found on the web! I looked around for things we usually throw away and how they can be repurposed, recycled, or just made prettier so you DON'T throw them away!

Aren't these resealable plastic bags wonderful? Babalisme used markers to make designs on them. I was thinking that they would be used again and again because they were so pretty!
And how about these toothbrush bracelets below?
Click on the picture to go to the instructions for bending toothbrushes. I wouldn't like to make them to use as bracelets, but wouldn't they go with some fused plastic bags as a handle?
Here's a guide to making those cereal boxes into magazine organizers. If you make several, add a label to identify the magazines and the year, I think they'd be quite useful.

And my personal favorite, crocheting plastic bag strips into a bag.
I tried this a couple of years ago in the hopes of starting a livelihood project for mothers of streetchildren but it hasn't gotten off the ground yet. There are lots of crochet patterns available like this one. Some women have been making sun hats out of these plastic bags!
So those are some of my finds. I'm always amazed at the variety of projects we can find on the web!

What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday: Mrs. WOYWW

I decided on making a

mascot
for my desk for WOYWW's anniversary.
I use an ugly bottle for my white glue and decided to pretty it up.

I cut up some old Indian pants,
found a face I had made out of sculpey a long time ago,
made arms out of thin leather, wire and cotton, and voila!

Meet Mrs. WOYWW!!



She just covers up my glue bottle.
I lift her up when I need to use the glue.
Here she is guarding my desk.

Thank you
for all the lovely, enthusiastic comments last week-
10 votes for straight, 8 for crooked.
I chose to put them straight not only because there were more votes
but also because Deuteronomy 6 is about obeying God,
and keeping on the straight path!
I've been gluing torn bits of painted brown paper
(applied wall putty on old meditation book pages,
painted them in various shades of brown)
to make the tree.

Now I'm in a quandary where to put the verse-
on the tree trunk, the background, around the house?

If you'd like to take a sneak peak at what
other people have on their work desk, head over to Julia.
I guarantee you'll want to join in on the fun!