Thursday, November 20, 2008

What Have I Been Doing



Well, not posting on my blog consistently! Although, check out the previous posts, I just put a bunch of stuff up. The past month or so has been crazy, with Birthdays, school auction, two sets of family visiting, and being sick for 4 weeks, not to mention that this is my busy time of year for my longarm quilting business--all those people making Christmas gifts. And, I majorly over-extended myself on swaps this fall. I do enjoy the swaps, and I think that it challenges myself to work outside the box a little, but I have spent way too much time making swap stuff the past 2 months, and virtually no time on my own art and quilting. So, I am feeling some withdrawl, and also some general burn out. I keep telling myself, no more swaps, and then I can't resist! Ugh!

So, in my recent vegetative state, I have been monoprinting and painting papers. I have been monoprinting like in my posts a few weeks ago, plus just messing around with the brayer, different color combinations, mixing acrylics with liquid watercolor, and a little bit with my hand made stamps. I am going to kit up some of these papers, along with a few embellishments, to offer at a handmade book class that I will be teaching locally in February. So, I am stocking up! But it is good "no brainer" work to do. I don't have to worry about composition or theme, or guidelines, I am just painting.

The first image is the papers layed out flat. The second one is of the papers in a box on end. A lot of papers! And I have a healthy stack of painted paper towels too for the monoprinting technique.

Autumn Charm Swap


These are some charms from a swap that I am hosting on Adornmentz. I chose an Autumn theme to celebrate my favorite season. These are caged glass beads, that I made with brown copper wire, and added a copper leaf bead on the bottom. I have all of the other charms in hand, so will take a picture soon. It was a terrific swap, and I am looking forward to making a bracelet or necklace with them.

Game Piece Charms


These are some charms that I did on a recent swap, with the theme, Game Pieces. I found these cute bright colored dice beads and couldn't resist. I have made several pairs of earrings like this!

Skinny Book Pages

I finished up these pages earlier this month for a skinny book swap on Mixed Media Art Friends. There were 4 categories:

Quote--from Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors.

Color


Fabric--this used to be a 24 x 36 inch quilt top, that I wasn't crazy about, so I quilted it, cut it up, and added the heart appliques.

Technique--This is a fun technique using Gesso to create a texture. Let it dry, paint, dry again, and then highlight with oil pastels. I sealed it with a clear acrylic spray to prevent the oil pastel from rubbing off.

Black Round Robin Quiltie


This was last month's quiltie that I made for our round robin exchange on Mixed Media Art Friends. Each month, we make a 6.5 x 6.5 inch quiltie with a specific color scheme, and send it to our partner. Last month was Black. I used one of my favorite animal fabrics for the focal image, and embellished with beads and a button. This is one that I made to keep--I forgot to take a picture of the one I sent to my partner. It was the same idea, different animal.

Friday, November 7, 2008

More Handmade Books



These are two more books that I made with a combination of paper and fabric. The top book is fabric collage, and the bottom book is mostly paper collage, with a little bit of fabric. The inside pages are all hand painted like the previous books.