Fabric cutter

Several months ago, soon after I got my silhouette cameo, I invested in a special fabric cutter blade. Actually, the blade is the same as the paper cutter except the plastic covering is blue. Just like I would never allow my sewing scissors near paper, the blue cutting blade is Only for fabric.

Today I broke the little blue cutter out of its packaging and used it. There is a new grand child due next month and two months ago I bought fabric to make this little addition a quilt. Other projects kept getting priority so the fabric stayed in its bag in the closet until today. No one knows if the baby is a boy or a girl including the Mom who specifically wanted to keep it a secret. Her rationale was that there are so few surprises in life, she wanted this one to be hers.

Anyway, she calls this child Baby Booth (its last name) and has decorated the room in greys and beiges. There is no animal theme, no color, just boring baby beige. So the quilt I am making is beige, grey, ecru, eggshell and white. Are there any other words that describe beige? No animals, just clouds, grey fields and snowy beige skies.

 

 

That is ok, it will be very functional. Maybe the baby's first birthday will be in color.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

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Thumbnail sketches

You are never too old to learn. I have been considering going back to school for sometime. This semester I enrolled in a Composition and Design class at the local college. I enjoy art and I especially aspire to improve.

Our last homework assignment was to use a single image to create three different and distinct drawings. The objective of using thumbnail sketches allows you to quickly create a practice design before forging ahead on a major art initiative. It avoids the possibility of finding out too late you don't like the image and you have wasted time and product on a throw-away.

For my class I chose several photos from our vacation trips in 2013 and narrowed the search to this one:

This is a little town called Perkinsville in Arizona that was the end of our northbound journey aboard the Verde Valley railway. Since my maiden name is Perkins I found the little ghost town quite fitting. Using a view finder I selected three views.

I loved the look of this tree and the fence line, it made an excellent composition of lights and darks.

Secondly I chose the foreground as the roof, vehicle and field all had colors of reds that helped with eye movement.

My last image honed in on the high horizon of the bluff and s composition of the tree line.

 

Each of my three thumbnails were sketched in pencil and shaded with distress ink. I believe anyone of them would make a lovely painting should I decide to take the next step.

 

But what media should I create it with? Guess I will have to take another class before I decide.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

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Winter Solstice

As winter approaches the days get shorter, frost stays on the ground a little longer each morning, tee times are delayed. Christmas lights are everywhere. Such a festive time.

 

And a perfect time to dust off the cast iron pot for soups and stews that warm the soul on these chilly days.

 

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Secret Santa

I have been a follower of Studio Calico since this summer when I started a subscription for their card kits. Well, in October one of the members put together a world wide secret Santa program. A huge undertaking right?

I have been watching my mail and studying the postings to try to figure out who got my name, by process of elimination I thought I had knew who it was....

Today, the postal carrier got out of her car, so I knew I had a delivery.

 

LOOK AT MY HAPPY MAIL! Thank you Secret Santa. It was worth the wait. She really got me right. I am so excited to get so much fabulous stuff to play with. One happy girl!

 

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Feeling dejected?

Sorry I have not returned to my blog in weeks. I have not been sitting idle. Christmas cards are done and out the door. Composition and Design class has one more week to go. And I have been developing mini books for Christmas presents. These little books are so cute they don't need wrapping paper,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just. Few more photos and embellishments and they will be ready to meet the postman.

They have been keeping me busy. There should be no question as to who each of their favorite Disney characters are...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Step One. START

Stress is inevitable this time of year. Mine is all self imposed. I have no job commitments, no kids under foot, no health issues. So what is causing me stress?

Truth is, I want to do so much! I want to take classes and make cards and do artwork. I have so many ideas and what should be oodles of time... But the days whiz by and I don't feel I have accomplished as much as I could have.

When you look at this photo you probably wonder what??

It is a start. That alone is a major accomplishment. I have been wanting to do this particular mixed media canvas for a couple of years. Granted a few years ago I had neither the experience or product to complete complete it.

Last week I started a composition and design art class at Coastal Carolina. Perfect! Because today I have the products, I have the expertise AND now I even have a platform upon which I can create this masterpiece.

Stay tuned...

 

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Welcome autumn

Fall is such a fabulous time of year for growth in the south. Since the mega pinoak tree in the front yard came down my plants have taken off. I have never seen basil grow to 4 feet before. Love the sun. I will love it even more now that the light is fading after hours and the morning chill is upon us.

Happy days of autumn. I planted 55 bulbs in this bed this weekend. I call them my Mackenzie flowers because they were purchased from her school fund raising project. Cannot wait to see what blooms in the spring.

 

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Craft My Story

I registered in a year long online class to craft my story using stamps. Story Stamps.

 

I decided it be best to start at the beginning, my beginning documenting everything I remember first hand and other things I remember being told. I am trying to dig up photos to accompany my story. I found this photo on the Internet, I recognize the houses and know the outcome of this 1954 hurricane named Carol. It kind of marks the beginning from which everything else In my story will unfold.

Picking my brain for memories from 1/2 a century ago is exhausting. It will be amazing to see what turns up, or doesn't.

Like the surf from Carol, it's going to be a wild ride.

 

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Seasoning stamps

I find the best way to season a new stamp set is to use it. Since you rarely can use an entire stamp set on one page or card the next best thing is your art journal. After all it really has no purpose other than to allow artistic freedom.

Here is today's art journal spread.

This is the stamp set I have had for a while and have not used. It is not top grade, so it takes some "seasoning" before the stamps will make good impressions. When stamping in my art journal I like to use ranger archival ink, it is a dye that does not blend with Watercolors. So your images will stay put and not bleed.

So I stamped both pages of my art journal with all the stamps from this set as well as a larger floral stamp I had not yet broken out of its pack. I loved the little star that came with this kit, can you tell?

At the same time I stamp on my journal I "stamp off" on a piece of white cardstock. These jumbled black images work great as backgrounds on future projects.

Next step is apply distress ink in rainbow colors, I saw it listed today as ROYGBIV - Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet.

 

And the same on the cardstock

After stamping and coloring it is time to embellish. I cut up a card face I planned not to use as a card, and some other word patterned cardstock, and pulled a few large die cuts from my stash. I adhered these onto the journal pages with mat medium and I was done.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

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3 Cereal Boxes

I have had three cereal boxes sitting on the windowsill in my workshop for about a week. Today I used them. I found a YouTube video a while back that showed how to make mini albums from cereal boxes, I made one before that holds 6x6 scrap book pages. I have been using that one for the grandchildren, I wanted to make more for other scraping stuff I do including ME.

 

These are the five I created today. For the first I used the honey nut Cheerios box, cut the box down to 6 1/2 by 16 including the spine. I used the remainder to make a smaller 4 inch album. The second was a cinnamon toast crunch box, I made another 6 1/2 inch album and used the remainder to make a 3 1/2" mini. The last was an all bran box which was big enough to make one 6 1/2 album.

The honey nut Cheerios box is now a baby album for the baby to be.

I put two pockets inside in the same paper as the backing.

 

I thought these colors would be great for another album, unfortunately when I attached the backpage cover it was upside down, so I had to flip it over and apply another strip of paper. I love the black die cut.

 

This is the inside of the cinnamon toast crunch album.

 

Finally the all bran box was used to create this multi color album in fall colors.

 

The inside of this album has dual pockets using the same paper as the cover.

 

The minin minis were created using the left overs. They are so cute. Not sure what I will use them for yet.. But I will think of something.

 

Inside of the brown flowery album.

 

The inside of this album is cut outs of some coordinating papers I had in my stash.

 

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Mariposa

A friend of mine gave me a tube of primary color quilling strips. I watched a video on YouTube to get some training on the process and made some shapes and designs. Then I stumbled upon a video in French on how to make a butterfly, I thought her project was gorgeous. It did have English subtitles, so I figured Why not? I cut some black and white strips and printed a very large monarch from Bing images as my guide.

The printout was placed inside a plastic document protector and that pinned to a cork board.The image was very symmetrical, I am not sure nature is that exact, but I tried to build all the parts in twos in order to mirror each wing.

 

I had thought quilling was only for flowers. I am pleasantly surprised to find so many artistic uses for these strips of paper. I think I will mount this with a black mat and put in a white frame. Next time maybe I will do a colorful bird. But not today.

 

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If I start now

I realized this morning that if I do 5 Christmas cards a week I can ready to mail by Dec 3.

 

In 2013 I made over 60 cards and today I have twice the experience of a year ago and probably five times the stash. Let's get cracking.

 

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