WISS + WIP

This is my shadow standing in the backyard, the grass dry and bits of leaves blowing around. I came outside to take some pictures of the shadows of the hemlock tree on the fence. It's been really windy and they wouldn't stay put, so this is a bit blurry, but I loved the dark contrast on the faded wood fence.

I am so ready for springtime, but it seems a farway off so I have taken springtime into my own hands, literally. I have been wanting to do some beading so I did. After watching Mary Stori's beading DVD and perusing Larkin Van Horn's book, I finally felt confident enough to try it myself. I brought a little springtime in with this:


I have quite a few flower photos that I took last spring and summer and the sunflower is from one of those. I printed it on fabric and threadpainted the petals. I intend to take Lyric's advice and mount this to a small, square gallery wrapped canvas. I think I will blend some greens on the canvas as a backdrop. And I enjoyed making the sunflower so much that now I am working on a Gerbera daisy. Here it is in progress:


I will threadpaint the petals when the beading is finished.

I have also been rusting some more fabric. I have fallen in love with the Hubble Telescope website and the incredible images it posts. There are some that really draw my eye and they remind me of rusted fabric, but they look a bit "fluffy". In order to capture that texture I decided to try rusting some batting. Here is the the whole piece:


And here is a detail:


I played with adding some paint to it to get the amazing colors that seem to explode from these galaxies and nebulas. It is hanging to dry right now, but I will post it next week if it works out.

I have also been fooling around with some rubbing plates that I purchased from a child's school suppy website a year or so ago. Sorry I can't recall the name of the company. I used my Caran d'Ache water soluble oil pastels - without water - on black and a hand-dyed purple fabric. I love the colors and will keep these in sight as inspiration for something in the future. Not sure what, but I really like them.





So we'll see the future of the rubbing plates brings. Later.

WISS

As you can see, we finally got the new floor down last Wednesday! Unfortunately, the molding and threshold haven't been done. Our contractor swears we are first and foremost on his list for tomorrow. Let's hope so. Steve won't let me put the kitchen table or the butcher block table back in until it's finished.


I've actually accomplished quite a bit this weekend. I rushed home early Friday and made Steve's Valentine card. Yesterday I made two cards for birthdays next weekend - mil and niece. They are already in the mail.

A couple of weeks ago I made a donation piece for the Salisbury NC animal shelter's auction which will be held March 7th. It was very cute and when I showed some people at work, one fell in love with it. She has an old Pug and asked me to make another just like this for her. Warhol Pugs - who'd a thunk?

I played with the photo (from a free-use website) in Photoshop - desaturated it and then played with the hues to get the 4 colors. I arranged them in Adobe InDesign, printed it out on fabric, and fused on a batting. I played with a variety of thread on a practice piece until I found the colors I liked and then threadpainted them using 2 different thread colors on each - a light and a dark. I couldn't decide how to finish it, so after putting on a backing and doing a pillowcase turn, I painted a canvas black and stitched the piece to it. I think that was just the ticket.

I also made some more leaf cards. I scanned some leaves back in the fall and printed them out on fabric to make cards and a donation piece for Alzhimer's. I printed some out today and stitched around them with copper metallic thread. Now I'm going to play with some beads on them to give the impression [hopefully] of water droplets. We'll see!