Unconventional Materials

A while back, the QuiltArt list had a call to artists to create an art quilt out of unconventional materials. We had only a month to pull that off. Not sure what there was about this call that grabbed my attention but I immediately had an idea of what I wanted to do. This piece came together in a matter of days! I think it was because I hadn't been doing much art this past year. Life was seriously getting in the way.

I started with a piece of fabric I had been using under my rust dyeing experiments. The material is from my mom. It has a type of rubber backing on it to prevent leakage and reminds me of stuff used in baby's cribs. It had some great rusting but needed a bit more color. So I dug around in the garage and found some old sienna brown glazing paint used for faux finishing. I added that in areas to create more contrast. The plant is modeled after my day lilies after a rain. I painted some thin foam material that had been used to ship some computer stuff to my husband. When dry, I cut various leaves in different lengths. I hand sewed the leaves to the background and had to be really careful not to rip the material. The spider web was made using a hot glue gun. I was going for a web with dew or rain stuck to it. I was happy with the look.

I finished up the piece by sewing on different sized washers onto it. They were to add another element of texture and create more of an earth feel. Viewing the final results, I was pretty happy with the project.

Key Lime Pie ATC

Our theme for this month was LIME. This year, we have deviated a bit from our usual theme and we will only be doing colors. I guess they were sick of my finding a way to make a tree out of every challenge! Just kidding. (But limes grow on trees . . . )

I constructed the pie using a hand dyed pink and purple fabric for background, lime batik for the pie and a cream and light brown for the crust. There was too much of a pattern on the bottom part of the crust so I used a brown dye pen to even it out a bit. I added detail to the crust by using a free motion stitch in rust to add another dimension. The lime was made from fusing a rainbow cellophane from a flower arrangement and green netting together. Free motion stitching in lime green added the details. I then quartered the circles so they would fit on each card. More detail was added using a dark green thread to stitch it to the card. The final piece was to use my favorite puffy paint to make whipped cream. Good thing I made extra pieces to test on because I ruined a couple when I was puffing up the paint!

See the other Lime pieces at Arts In the Cards blog!

ATC - Red

This year the group is going to do colors for the trades each month. Red is the color for February - how appropriate. My piece is titled PASSION which red always seems to signal to me.
I stamped all over my batik fabric scrap (which was in shades of red, orange and brown) with a handmade stamp. The stamp reminds me of something inside our brain that is all connected. When dry, I placed a red mesh fabric from a floral arrangement, over the entire piece and free motion quilted around the stamp and filled in with different sized circles using black thread. I cut them apart and added Glossy Accents onto the stamped parts to bring out the red. I think this may be one of my favorites! I loved out it turned out.
Don't forget to check out all the others at http://artsinthecards.blogspot.com

ATC - Two

I had to decline participating in our December trade which was a flat Santa trade. They were absolutely adorable. But everything is calming down once again and our January trade was TWO to celebrate our 2nd anniversary. I can't believe we have been doing this for two years already! So many wonderful pieces were traded!
My contribution for the two trade was based on the anniversary and what does one give on the second anniversary. How interesting that it is cotton! So I used cotton fabrics to create little cotton plants to give on our second anniversary. The background was my flour paste resist in blue for the sky, then a metallic green for background plants and a combo rust dyed with tanin on white cotton for the earth colors. I used puffy paint for the plant and cotton balls sewn in for the cotton of course.
I have managed to misplace my camera so a friend was kind enough to use her camera phone to take a picture for me. So no group shot this time around. Sorry

Faux Wood Doors

Every once in a while, I get calls to do some faux finishing. In a past life, I used to do it for a living but life gets in the way and the kids were small so it had to go to the wayside. A neighbor down the block saw my house and asked me to do some work in her house - a faux brick wall! Then a faux stone wall. They in turn had a party this past winter and a friend of theirs saw the work and fell in love. So when her office wanted to redo their meeting room, she remembered me. The job was to take the metal doors and paint them on one side to look like the wood floors and crown molding. Here are the before and after shots, I will let you decide if they turned out.

Cardboard Alphabet

Another thing I have been doing in the last few months has been arting up some 9" cardboard letters sets for the preschool teachers. I have done two sets for friends of mine and this set, I actually was paid to do! I took pictures of sets of them and my camera died before I could get the last few letters. Gggrrrrr. I have been having a bit of fun with my sharpie markers! Hope you enjoy them! I have one more set and I may try to sell it when done.

Why so busy!

November was NaNoWriMo which is short for National Novel Writing Month. Check it out here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/ They need donations to keep this program alive so please consider donating if you can afford it.

I actually am a winner! I finished a 50,000 page "novel" by the end of the month! I was feeling so lost with my art and totally unmotivated. Whenever that happens, I usually try to take a class or hunt down a book that will move me off into a new direction. Nothing was sparking my imagination. I had a crazy dream one night and thought that it would make an interesting book. Finding this website made me think that this was an omen and to give it a try. I found myself sneaking away for an hour or so a day and writing about my story. If you can write 1670 words a day, you can totally pull off a book in a month. It needs serious editing but I will leave that for another day! My creative spirit is refreshed and I am now feeling that creative tingle itching to get back into the studio. Yeah!!!

My certificate does not have my name because I keep forgetting to add it in. But you can only get this if you upload your novel and they verify the word count.