no time...

i haven't had much time to play, but i'm carving some out on sunday. i need to come up with some inspiration for a couple of surface design projects...

my first batiks

these are my first try at playing with wax. i used soywax and mx dyes. these are 4 layers of dye each. i waxed, then dyed, then batched and dried. i didn't rinse or wash in between, i just kept adding on.

the artist's muse...

velcro kitty. not allowed to work without her!

journal covers

i made a couple of journal covers to fit standard composition notebooks. the ground fabric was fun to make, but i had some difficulty with putting it all together. sewing isn't my thing so trying to figure what to sew where was kind of hard, but it all came together pretty well in the end. the fabric was hand dyed by me, then embellished with paints and stamping, and a bit of angelina and decorative stitching. i think if i do more i will incorporate elastic into the edge to keep it nice and tight against the journal.

jj's bag

here is the back of a fabric bag i made for a christmas present for next year, i made this as my project while taking an online class with my dyehards surface design group.

and finally...

the last display of charms...

more charms...

after making a whole bunch of generic charms, i started making charms for my group, and had a blast making little charms with their names and mine to go with them...

fabric charms

in my surface design group, a bunch decided to trade 1 inch fabric charms. i thought... hey cool! a way to use up all my scraps and bits of things that came from other pieces, but were too precious to trash.

200 charms later.....

earthday

a small bunch of artists have gathered some of our hand creations, and we will be auctioning them on ebay to benefit greenpeace. our group mom joanna thought that this was a great organization to help us celebrate earthday.

2007 Earth Day Auction

and here is my contribution to the auction:

postcard for cheyenne

a daughter of a fellow swapper wanted to do a postcard trade, so i offered to be her swapper. cheyenne picked 'under the sea' as her theme, so i made her a mermaid postcard, since all ten year olds (and me) love mermaids.

my blogging plans...

so, i just started school last week. i'm going to be a licensed massage therapist. i also work full time, and try (rather unsuccessfully) to keep house, and run a side business. needless to say, my art time is going to be severely restricted!

so my plan is to go backwords for a while and create posts on the things i have made up until now. since i'm just starting up a blog, it will all be new stuff, just rather haphazard as to creation dates and what not. i'll also be learning the blog process, so if it's all a mess... well. you know how artists can be.

i hope that when i catch up with all the backlog of stuff i made, i'll have a spare moment or two to create something new.

yin yang quilt block

i neede to make a quilt block that showcased my black gradation. i have thus far only made two quilt blocks so its all new to me. after exhaustive searches to find a block that i liked, i decided i didn't like any of them. so i got to making my own design. i decided that i liked the yin yang for the black/white relationship. i cut my fabric into strips, and re-cut. and arranged, and re-arranged. and stuck it all together. here is the finished square.

still life

i had a postcard challenge of 'still life'. it automatically evokes thoughts of fruit in bowls, or the paperbag my high school art teacher made me draw. so, i decided to reach a little further instead. hunny and i went to vegas a year ago to get married. after the ceremony we went to dinner at the tao. this statue is in the lobby there. i touched it up a bit, and printed onto a transparency. i made a base postcard, and used silk roving and glue to create a frame for it. then i mounted the transparency to the top, and stitched around the edges. still life takes on a whole new meaning...

flashback postcard

kim's flashback challenge to me was 'create a postcard that depicts war music of the sixties.' boy, did i have to rack my brain for this one. i decided that the thing to do was find a song that spoke to me, and then see if i could translate it to a postcard. i finally found a song by diana ross that said something to me, the theme song used for china beach.



so then to interpret it. it made me think of someone in the prime of life and love, who had to see their husband go off to war. a war he would never return from. so, the following is what i came up with.

fairies and fanasy creatures postcards

these are the postcards i made for a recent swap. i resized and printed a 4x6 photo of a tie-dyed mandala i made onto both fabric (pre-treated sheet) and a transparency. i carefully cut around two of the petals on the fabric. i had another piece of white fabric that i fused to some peltex, and i used the first piece of fabric as a template, and traced the petals onto this second piece with pencil. i then drew fairies, using the petals as the wings, adding some paint and sparkle. when i was happy, i cut the traced pieces out. then i sandwiched the transparency in between the two cut out pieces, using a smidge of glue. wah-lah.