Hand Dyed and Stamped Decorative Clothespins by Maddie and Lydia

The girls are so excited about their clothespins. They were tedious to make but with help from their big brother (who put all the pins back together after they were dyed) they got them finished! GoforthArtStudios

Our Etsy Shop!!!

We now have an Etsy Shop to sell some of our art pieces and craft creations! It is for the whole family. Right now I have mixed media art blocks for sale, but soon, my girls will have hand dyed and stamped decorative clothespins on the site. GoforthArtStudios

I have a dear friend, Stephanie, who has helped me in my house so much. We were making headway in organizing stuff before our whole house flooded the end of August 2013. She came back at least once a week after the flood (usually with her 5 kiddos in tow - and groceries) to help clean out and put our house back together. She organized donations for our family for months via FB. We are now back in the house and I wanted to say, "Thank you."

Well, there was ALOT of ink/paint spray left on the wax paper under the tags. Do we waste it? Oh, no! I grabbed a few sheets of watercolor paper and blotted it up, sort of like monoprinting. Here are the results:

Oh, the possibilities!

I was really excited after watching Rae Missigman's 15 minutes of mixed media. It her video she used waterbrushes with added color and I loved her results. So I went out to my local art and crafts store with my coupon in hand to get a supply of waterbrushes, and I ended up with this set of goodness!

These are watercolor brushes made by Speedball, and they are lovely to work with.

I used one of the sheets I had soaked up the paint and ink with, and filled in most of the white space with the watercolor brushes. 

The following is a project I completed for a friend using one of my no paint left behind sheets.

I think it turned out nice!

Art Tag Bookmarks!

Art tag bookmarks for Valentine's day! Here are some picts of the process:

Drying w/ my vintage heat tool :)

On each color tag, I used 3 colors of Tulip fabric sprays first (opaque). Then we sprayed with 3 colors of Dylusions. We finished up with 3 colors of Fireworks sprays.

My 7yo daughter was helping spray the tags.

After the background was dry I stamped some cool motifs with Tim Holtz French Market and Imagestamps Border Lines. I couldn't find my permanent stamp pad (probably lost in the flood we had) so I pounced some Higgins Eternal black ink.

These are the finished bookmarks. I printed verses on tracing paper, tore, and glued w/ a glue stick. 

I sprayed a top coat of UV acrylic gloss and finished off w/ a yarn tassel look.