Great Mail Day!

I love finding wonderful packages of awesome artwork from wonderful friends in my mail box!!Yesterday was an especially good mail day! I got the latest issue of Quilting Arts Magazine and I got the most wonderful collection of Valentine Heart Pins from my art group pin swap. In an earlier post I share with you the pins that I sent off for the swap. Now you get to drool over the pins that I recieved in return!!

Sammy beaded this wonderful pin.

Jan made this pin.

Barb needle felted this glorious chocolate and raspberry confection!

Look at her glorious presentation card! a work of art in itself!!!

And Hope created this wonderful little gem with tiny flower sequins and tiny french knots!!

I think that I might just wear three at a time from now till Valentines!! Thanks so much , girls!!!

Next I have finished up a few little sur[prises for several wonderful friends.

The bluebirds in the nest will go to Trina!! My wonderful friend Trina and I started working on books with similar themes, back in October. She has been so incredibly supportive and enthusiastic about my work that I thought her Altered book about birds could use a few Bluebird fledglings. Trina has also recently opened a wonderful Online store that specializes in All original vintage finds. The shop is called The Paper Flea Market at http://thepaperfleamarket.com . Trina has a passion for Thrift Stores, Flea Markets and Estate Sales and has opened her store to share her amazing one-of-a-kind finds with other apprecaitive artists. She carreis whatever she can find-from vintage brass stencils to vintage trims , vintage reciepts from the 1800's, game pieces and vintage puzzles. I urge you to check out her wares as her prices and stock are amazing!!

The Blue bird with the flowing tail is for a wonderful New friend, who will remain nameless as she reads my blog on a regular basis. I wonder who it could be????????

Pink Artist Squares and Porcupine Beads.

Here are my Pink Artist's Squares all done and ready to be sent off to MONICA fro the Pink Artist Art Doll Collaboration.

(You have probably noticed this button in my sidebar.) Artists from all over the world are sending Monica two inch square pieces of art that have fabric backings. Monica will then sew all of the squares onto an Art Doll and the Doll will be auctioned off to raise money for Breast Cancer Research. Monica has a wonderful blog called THread Girl Gone Wild and you can find a link to it in the blog list to the right!!

I made both of these tiny collages using needle felting and beading techniques. For the purple heart I felted thru a piece of the red and pink lace that I showed on an earlier post- the lace that I painted. For the Pink Heart, I used a piece of a fulled wool sweater for the background. I am really happy about how these turned out. Also if you go to Monica's blog, you can see all of the squares as they arrive for her to work on. She has gotten some beauties already but the deadline is not till the 1st of March! Hard to believe that I am an entire month early!! WOOOO HOOOOO!!

Now on to Porcupine Beads.

This is also an idea that I got from the wonderful Monica!!! As most of us never throw away our scraps of fabrics, as we may NEED them for some cool project some day-Here is a fun project ot add to the What Do I do With All of My Scraps list!!! Cut them into smallist pieces if they arent smal already and be sure to include some scraps that really ravel.

Throw the wad of scraps into the washing machine- I put mine in a net bag and include it in with another load of laundry. then dry the scrap bag along with everything else. The result will be a tangled mess of color and fibers. Then you tear or cut- if you must- off a small wad and roll it up into a ball. With a neddle and thread stitch throught the ball of scraps a few times and then with each stitch add a bead. In this manner yo uwill come up with some wonderful, totally unique beads to embellish all sorts of fun projects!! Some of them turn out looking like Porcupines because they have fibers sticking out all over! My 16 year old son said that they looked like Mines that were used during the second world war during the sea battles. That 's a 16 year old history nut for you!! What ever!!! I think that they are really cool and they are wonderful fun to have to work on when you want to do someting with your hands but don't know what you want to do!! I think that I might even make a necklace out of some of them!!

Thanks Monica for this wonderful technique! Fun, Unique, Funky and Fabulous!!! What could be better!!!

More Bird ATC's!

Since last spring, I have been involved in a swap of Bird Themed ATC's. Each month we send another member of our group three atc's. This will be my last batch of ATC's for this swap.

It has been wonderful to see what each atist has created each month and to be able to add 3 new atc's to our personal Birdie collections. We will each end up with 30 Birdie ATC's! At the beginning of this swap we each made a specail folder or book like structure which would eventually hold all of the ATC's.

For my last batch, I decided to really push the Mixed Media envelope. I made two atc's using needle felting techniques. I am not sure which one I will keep for myself, and which will go to Jo in Australia, we shall see.

This is the first ATC.

For the background I used a piece of a fulled wool sweater. Then I added the bird and the tatted vintage trim along the top. To attach the trim I laid a very small amount of pink fleece over the trim and stabbd the neddle through all of the layers. To finish the edges I felted on some wool yarn and then added the fringe beeds with a beading needle and beading thread.. the little flowers are sequins with seed beads in the middle to hold them down.

This is the second ATC. It took me only 30 minutes to make this one start to finish, as I was much more sure of what I was doing!

I had a bit more fun with the birds tail feather's here! I am very happy with both of them! Now I have only two more ATC's to finsih for Jo, but these are the only ones that I will needle felt for her batch.

A Project Finished: for MYSELF!!!

Don't get me wrong, I love to create art as gifts for other's and to sell, but sometimes I look around and realize that I have nothing that I have made for myself!! Besides, some of the best advertising is done when one wears pieces that one has created!! I started this bracelet project last summer. It got pushed aside as I got busy with swaps and gifts and the Holiday shows. Well now it is finished!! Having time to finish up special projects is one of the reasons that I like the winter so much! The Holidays are past, the garden is asleep and the kids are back in school and it is the perfect time to organize, clean out and finish things up!

As some of you know, I love to garden and I love Old Fashioned Roses!! When I came across a pattern for this bracelet, I knew that I had to try it!! I made each cabbage rose as a separate piece and then attached them onto a green square stitched base. Next I added in all of the leaves and little flower beads to complete the garden look. It just makes me smile and I love to wear it!!

Here is a detail shot!

Spring and roses are just around the corner!!!!

Valentine's Day Is Fast Approaching!!

I have just completed another fabric gift cone! This one is for my dear friend Patti B and is part of a Valentine's Day Gift Cone Swap on one of my art groups.

I used a vintage damask napkin as my base and then layered it with some wonderful old scarves. The pink one in the upper left corner is silk and I trapped a small piece of muslin stamped with an image of a bird underneath. In the back, I used an old Hankie with wonderful Red Poppies on it and then I added in some of the red/pink/purple lace that I had shown you in a previous post. I had such fun rummaging through my stash of old lace and bits and buttons to find pieces to add to this fabric collage. The flower jewelry piece at the front is actually an old clip earring that I stitched on to hold the top closed. At the very bottom of the cone I added a vintage chandelier prism and some sparkly beads. It is hard to see this detail in the picture.

In this picture you can see more of the details.

Here on the back , you can see that I trapped some paper butterflies under a cranberry red chiffon scarf and I did lots of Free Motion Embroidery over the whole piece to hold the thin floral scarf in place.

I will be sending this off to Patti after I add a few littl gifties to it! I hope that she likes it- but then what's not to like!!!

First Adventure with Needle Felting!

I have had the supplies for needle felting for months! I bought a wonderful collection of hand dyed fleece at a Fiber Festival, I bought a tool and needles at Hancock Fabrics when several stores closed in the area. For some reason I was hesitant to get into it. Maybe I thought that it had to be more difficult than it sounded, despite what my dear friend Patti B. had told me. Perhaps I thought that I would get too inovlved in "painting with wool" and turn away from all of my other projects. i'm not sure what was holding me back. Well, today there was a Demo/class given by Donna at The Fredericksburg Mixed Media Art Group meeting. I packed up my supplies and drove on down. I collected a few extra things with me because although I had not been playing with the fibers and tools, I had been thinking about the whole process and wondering what all I could combine into the needle felting process. I took some of my painted paper towels and some of my dyed cheesecloth. Well, after watching Donna's demo and learning how to stab the needles through the fibers ( incredibly difficult technique actually, NOT!!!),I started layering my various media and stabbed away! I am hooked!!

I layered a piece of synthetic white felt on top of a thin layer of quilt batting, then painted paper towel, then cheesecloth and then colored roving. I made these two pieces at the meeting and then made the third once I returned home.

I am not sure what they will become. At first I was thinking that they would hang together as a wall hanging, then I thought they would be neat individually on the cover of small journals. Any ideas???? They are each approximately 3x3.

Oh and I know that although I love this process and had a blast painting with the wool, I won't give up my other art passions! I stopped at my favorite Bead store on the way home!!! One can't ever live withut beads!!! I am sure that several will wander on over to embellish these pieces before the weekend is done!!

My picks for You MAke My Day!!

Here are my picks for You Make My Day Award! Getting the list narrowed down to ten was not easy!! Here are the blofgs that I visit most often and where I get so much inspiration. What am amazing community that I am lucky enough to be a part of. If you can, please take some time to visit these blogs and I guarantee that you will get more inspiration than one ever thought possible!!!


http://beadlust.blogspot.com
http://digitalgran.blogspot.com

http://bitze.wordpress.com
http://faerydi.blogspot.com
http://vickiewelsh.typepad.com
http://pattis-creations.blogspot.com
http://Robruhn.blogspot.com
http://Ruthrae.blogspot.com
http://stitchandpaint.blogspot.com
http://girl-gone-thread-wild.blogspot.com

There are some amazing projects of outreach to be found on some of these blogs and all of them are chock full of creative, spiritual and artistic inspiration! I have come to "know" all of these artists either through art exchanges, Yahoo groups and several I am lucky enough to be able to meet with in person. I am very grateful to each and every one for providing me with support and artistic encouragement. They all help me to reach to find the artist within me!!