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Posted by Julia Monroe | Filed under Inspirational, words
On my refrigerator…
20 Saturday Apr 2013
Author Archives: Julia Monroe
The Cardboard Letter Art Books
17 Wednesday Apr 2013
Posted in altered books, art, crafts
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altered book, altered books, art, art books, artist books, crafts, paper arts, scrapbooking, scrapbooks
Years ago I made these art books from hollow 3-D cardboard letters which were readily available back then. I used an X-acto knife and butcher knife to cut the letters in half. Some had strong corrugated cardboard baffles inside to keep the box from collapsing, thus the need for the butcher knife.
The “AT Dot Com” book. Since taking this photo, I have since filled the book with favorite website and email addresses.
The “At Dot Com Book” is made from a cardboard 3-D @ symbol, cut in half, with an accordion page glued inside.
Inside the At Dot Com Book. The accordion page is made of separate sheets of cardstock, cut and glued together to represent elements of the earth – green leafy vegetation, pink floral and blue water. For the water page, I masked off continents (which I cut from paper and taped down) and sponged blue and aqua inks over the paper.
The “C Book” scrapbook was gifted to my daughter-in-law when my granddaughter was born.
The C Book. The colored bits around the edge of the book are actually Light-Brite pegs. I was hoping to add a battery operated light inside the cover but never found one the right size so the book was finished without lighting capability. The word inside says “smitten”, which I still am. -heart-
The C Book shown open.
The “D Book” was for my husband. He works in construction so I made this book with wood tones and brass nails and hinge. It only has two pages inside and will be used as a scrapbook.
The D Book is closed with a clasp and secured at the spine with two hinges. Although there is an accordion page inside, the book opens as a normal book and the accordion page does not fold out because of the hinges at the book’s spine.
To decorate the “J Book”, I covered the cardboard letter halves with green decorative tissue paper and then stitched the plastic flowers on with embroidery floss.
Artist Book – The J Book, made from a 3-D letter J.
The J Book was the most complicated book to create. The photos taken of flowers growing in our yard are all separate, attached together with string and suspended from the book with string. They fold into the book accordion-style. Because of the weight of the photos, I glued rocks into the base of the J book for stability. Some rocks were kept loose inside the J and are used for display when the book is opened. When the book is stored on my library shelf, I keep it wrapped with a green cord to keep it closed and to keep the loose rocks inside.
Pineapple wins
15 Monday Apr 2013
Barbie, Chelsea and Ken play Triopoly
13 Saturday Apr 2013
The conversation during the invisible game went like this…
“Let’s play Triopoly, Barbie!
Ok, Chelsea. You take your turn first. Thank you.
Here, Barbie, have some money. You can have lots of money!
Move this piece, Ken. Ok, Barbie, here’s more money.
I’ll take some money. No, Ken you can’t have any money.”
The game ended abruptly…
“Ok, so Barbie and Chelsea won the game so Ken is grumpy because he lost.
So Ken is hanging by his feet from the table because he is grumpy.”
Barbie, Chelsea and Ken play Triopoly but Ken gets grumpy because he lost so he hangs from the table by his feet because he is grumpy.
Thank You – The Graphics Fairy
08 Monday Apr 2013
Posted in art, crafts, mixed media, Uncategorized
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crafts, graphics fairy, old graphics, The Graphics Fairy, vintage clip art, vintage illustrations, vintage pictures
I’m finally getting around to posting Thank You’s to some wonderful people. This one is overdue by six months.
I love vintage graphics and have a collection of old books from the 1800’s and early 1900’s that I use for inspiration. So I was thrilled to stumble upon this awesome website: The Graphics Fairy, run by Karen, a lady of terrific style and creativity.
I’ve collected some of her free graphics over the past couple months with plans to use them in artwork. Karen’s collection is remarkable and vast, with hundreds of graphics of excellent quality to use in your crafts. There are convenient search tools on site so you can search by category or word for specific graphics. I’ve searched for vintage birds, bird cages and Paris drawings.
One graphic that means a lot to me is a gorgeous Eiffel Tower print. It is from an 1890’s advertising card. I included the image in a post last year. Alas, I just discovered that I forgot to credit Graphics Fairy with the image last year. Back when I did the post, I was totally strung out on pain meds and barely made it through typing that post. I edited the post today to include the image credit.
In addition to providing images, Karen also includes creative ways to use them. There are great tutorials and tips for printing and transfering images to make dozens of lovely, vintage-inspired items.
Thank you, Karen of Graphics Fairy fame, for providing such a fantastic resource so generously. You are appreciated so much!
Thank you, Karen. This image was created using Graphic Fairy’s pink heart – http://www.graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/2012/02/vintage-valentines-day-clip-art.html
French Beaded Flowers
03 Wednesday Apr 2013
All the activity of last week finally caught up with me so yesterday was a down day. Some days are just like that; I just have to hold very still all day and let my old bones repair. Fortunately, I had a new craft to work on – French Beaded Flowers.
I used this book, French-Beaded Flowers, and this terrific video by Lana to get started. The book is very good for beginners but it was the wonderful video by Lana that finally made sense. Thank you, Lana!
I don’t have a studio so I do all my crafting on the dining room table. I try to only take over half the dining room table so the family can use the other half for actual dining. ha ha. My end is called “the work table” and here is what it looked like last night.
My work table (half the dining room table) covered with beading supplies for making French Beaded flowers.
The bead spinner was essential! In the photo above, it’s the little round wood bowl with green beads in it on the left. I was going to skip purchasing one until I tried to hand string about… (getting calculator)… about 2730 tiny beads. I put about 10 seed beads on the wire by hand and looked at the clock and figured I didn’t have the luxury of eight more months to finish. To string the beads quickly, I used the mini bead spinner from Bead Wrangler. It works fantastic! It was fascinating watching the beads fill the wire as I spun the spinner like a spinning top.
The beading tools are from French General. They are very durable and are stored in a lovely roll. I’ve purchased many unique and gorgeous beads from French General over the years and hope to incorporate some of them in my flowers.
I didn’t take photos of the beading process because the day was all about holding as still as possible. These flowers were all made while watching two movies, so basically less than 4 hours.
French Beaded Flowers, made with size 11 seed beads and delicas.
The construction wires were wrapped with green floral tape to form the stems. Delicas are cylindrical beads, such as in the pink flower shown here, while seed beads are round, which is what I used to make the leaves. I made up the green loopy leaves because I didn’t want all the leaves to look alike.
I aspire to making stunning flowers like these, from the Bead Society of Greater New York. Until then, I’m really pleased with my first little arrangement.
My first French Beaded flowers.
Spinning Tales
02 Tuesday Apr 2013
Posted in All Sparkled Up, Easter, family
Tags
dancing, dress, family, granddaughter, spinning, Spinning Tales
My daughter-in-law entered a drawing and won several amazing items from Spinning Tales, a company that makes the most charming spinning dresses ever. Here is a photo of my granddaughter spinning in this dress.
My granddaughter spins in her Spinning Tales dress.
My son Gabe Monroe took this photo, beautifully capturing the dreamy moment.
We made up a new recipe – PB & Jam Joconde Cake – Part 4
30 Saturday Mar 2013
Tags
cake, dessert, food, joconde, mousse, PB & J, Peanut Butter, recipe, sponge cake
PB & J Joconde – Almond Sponge Cake wrapped around a layer of Chocolate Almond Sponge cake under a thick layer of Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Mousse and topped with Cherry Topping.
After the pan was lined with the joconde strip and cake, we made a batch of Peanut Butter Mousse. I’ve made vanilla and chocolate mousses many times so I just adapted a vanilla mousse with the addition of peanut butter and cream cheese.
Peanut Butter Mousse
1 pkg + 1 tsp gelatin softened in 3 Tbsp water.
6 Tbsp boiling water
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 cups heavy whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
8 oz cream cheese
2/3 cup peanut butter
Stir the boiling water into the softened gelatin. Stir till dissolved. Set aside.
Beat sugar, whipping cream and vanilla until softly mounding.
Beat the cream cheese with the peanut butter until smooth.
Beat a little whipping cream into the cream cheese peanut butter mixture. Beat in the rest of the whipping cream until almost stiff.
Gradually add the gelatin mixture to the whipped cream mixture. Do NOT overbeat or the mixture will turn grainy.
Spread the Peanut Butter Mousse in the prepared pan.
When I made the mousse for this, I didn’t measure the peanut butter but it was about 1/3 cup. It wasn’t peanut-buttery enough so I made a second batch with 2/3 cup peanut butter (as in the recipe in this post) and that was much better.
I didn’t have any fresh fruit to make a jam topping so I used cherry pie filling. A fresh Crushed Blueberry Sauce would have been divine!
The finished cake was placed in the refrigerator for several hours. Six hours would have been better and made the cake slice better.
The cake is taken out of the springform pan.
I used a candy mold to make the chocolate shapes from Ghiradelli Bittersweet Chocolate.
There were rave reviews over our first Joconde cake. PB & Jam, dressed up to the max!
I’m looking forward to making a Lemon Almond Sponge with Pineapple Cream Cheese Mousse and Pineapple Mandarin Topping. Also a Raspberry rendition. And perhaps three crisp hazelnut dacquoise layers with coffee cream filling. The joconde was good just plain so we’ll be using the mat to develop some bar cookie recipes as well. All in all, we are very satisified with our first joconde cake.
We made up a new recipe – PB & Jam Joconde Cake – Part 3
29 Friday Mar 2013
— PB & Jam Joconde – continued from Part 2 —
The beautiful baking mat filled with dough fit our oven wall to wall, with barely room to spare when we first put it in the oven. After a mere 7 minutes baking at 450, smoke started pouring out of the oven. We threw open the oven door to see the mat had swelled up and was buckled and spreading up the sides of the oven! We were so relieved that the mat wasn’t on fire or melting. But some of the batter was burning on the sides and bottom of the oven. No time for photos, we grabbed the oven mits and wrestled the oven rack and huge mat out.
The steaming cake is placed on the counter.
We’re still trying to figure out what caused the gently rolling hills on the cake since we had spread the batter fairly evenly. Most likely it was caused when the mat started climbing the oven walls and the batter pooled.
The next time we bake a joconde in our little oven, we’ll try a lower temp, maybe 400 or even 385 degrees since the mat completely cuts off circulation, especially when it swells with the heat. In order to maintain some heat above the mat, we might try starting the oven at 425, quickly putting the rack and mat in but then immediately lowering the temp to 385.
A greased cooling rack was placed over the cake.
The oven rack, mat and cooling rack are lifted together and flipped.
The mat quickly began to shrink down after being removed from the oven. But you can clearly see how it is still larger than the oven rack. The mat was still very hot here.
The siliconed mat was easy to roll back off the cake. The mat was still so hot that I dropped it back on the cake immediately after this photo was taken. We had to use oven mitts to lift it off the cake.
Blurry photo but Oh what a Beautiful sight! We were stoked that the joconde was a success, rolling hills, singed edges and all. I let out a whoop of joy!
We mixed the leftover chocolate and almond batters together and spread them in a 9.5″ springform pan and baked it. It made a cake layer about 1″ thick.
The first strip of jaconde is cut and placed against the edge of the cool springform pan.
A second strip of joconde is placed in the pan to fill the gap.
Here I cut off the excess joconde with a sharp knife.
The pan lined with joconde.
The cake layer is carefully lowered and pressed into the bottom of the lined pan.
—Up next, the filling of the prepared pan with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Mousse and Cherry Topping in final Part 4!
We made up a new recipe – PB & Jam Joconde – Part 2
28 Thursday Mar 2013
— Continued from Part 1 —
Continuing our PB & Jam Joconde, we had a large baking mat, the size of the entire oven rack, filled with chocolate batter that needed chilled. If we were an actual bakery, we would waltz our carefully prepped mat into the walk-in freezer and park it between the charlottes and wedding cake layers. But we’re not a bakery, we’re just a little family kitchen with a family size fridge with shelves that barely hold a fat turkey. So we had to get creative.
We figured that the object of freezing the batter was to make it firm enough to quickly spread a second layer of batter on without disturbing the design underneath. Freezing was out so we went for a good chill.
We placed a towel on the counter and covered it with ice cubes. Then we placed two half-sheet pans over the ice. This made a very cold surface on which to place the batter-filled mat.
But the oven rack under the mat created too big a gap between our cold source and the baking mat.
We didn’t want to remove the oven rack lest it disturb the surface of the chocolate batter so we placed a wet towel on top of the cookie sheets to transfer more cold up through the rack.
The wet cold towel worked and the mat and batter became cold. It wasn’t frozen but it was cold enough to stabilize the chocolate batter before topping it with the second layer.
A second batch of batter was made but without the addition of cocoa. (Note here how large the baking mat is. It is almost the size of our oven rack. The fit in the oven will be tight.)
To spread the top layer of almond batter without disturbing the chocolate batter, it was critical to push the batter over the chocolate layer without spreading back and forth, which would have stirred up the chocolate batter. This step was similar to the technique used in crumb-coating a cake.
Finally the mat was filled and ready for the oven.
The mat still on the oven rack was slid into the oven. The batter was stiff and cold so it didn’t run out of the pan.
A very tight fit indeed!
And then came the baking and our THIRD MAJOR Obstacle. If I recall, we figured 10 minutes at 450 should do it. But by the time we hit 7 minutes, smoke started pouring out of the oven. “The mat must be burning!” I yelled. “Maybe it’s melting!” he responded. “I told you the cake might burn.” he insisted. We threw open the oven in a panic and discovered ….
— To be continued in Part 3 —
All Sparkled Up 