Trees Revisited

When I did my tree series, it did not match the idea in my head. My results were very disappointing. So I put them off to the side for a while and worked on one of the many other projects I have in the hopper. Inspiration seems to strike me at the craziest times. This time came as I was falling asleep. I thought about adding color to the backgrounds!! Well I did do that and was still not happy. The next night as I was falling asleep, I thought what about black trees? Black would make the pieces pop. So off I went to create black trees over the colored tree fabric. I have to say, I am much happier!! I used black textile paint and aloe vera gel to create a paste.





Of course we always have stuff left over and I hate to waste good paint so I started a few more using black paint first! I also dug out a commercial stencil to try out some different ideas. I will play with them today and post later.

Like Mother, like Daughter . . .

My daughter loves to create. She is an artist but completely opposite of me. I love detail and my projects take so long to complete. Madelyn gets an idea and starts collecting all the items she needs to put it all together. She really is going to be quite the mixed media artist!! I have to share her latest creation because it is so darned cool!!

For a little background, it all started from a couple of marbles that my next door neighbor Mary gave her. She ran into the house all excited and started rummaging around for her "supplies." I gave her a couple of cabinets in the kitchen and loaded it up with all kinds of art stuff so she can create when the mood strikes. This was in reaction to the numerous scribbles on walls and floor.



So I sat back and watched her go. First she cut strips of different colors of construction paper and then glued them together. Next came the plate (leftover from Halloween obviously). She found a plastic spoon and glued that on and colored it with a red marker in the spoon part. Then she glued the marbles onto the plate. When she was done, she just ran off to play leaving her masterpiece behind. I was amazed! The cobweb looked like spaghetti noodles! How clever was that??

I have to find the "turkey" she made from moon shoes, empty envelopes and her blanket and the dollhouse she had to have (even though she doesn't play with dolls!) I walked by to find the dolls hanging upside down, by their feet!! from the roof of the house - kind of like bats!! She never ceases to surprise me!!

Progress Report

Sorry I have been a little late in publishing. I wanted to show you an update on an experimental piece I have been working on. I took a picture of a water lily surrounded by leaves and was thinking to myself "how can I recreate that in fabric and paints."
First I sketched out the design with watercolor crayons and then blended with water. They dried back way too light. So I decided to mix aloe vera gel in with setacolor dyes and paint into the leaves and the water. I loved the look!





My next step was to use colored pencils to recreate the plant life growing underneath and shiva paintstiks to add more shine to the water. I added more detail and depth to the leaves by using ink and colored pencils. Then I added round, flat beads in various shades of brown, green and yellow to create the plants growing around the lily. I hand quilted the leaves to add more dimension and shiva paintstiks in yellow and green metallic to create more shine. The lily was created using moleskin fabric on one side and a simple white cotton on the other. I made two sets larger and two sets smaller. After turning them inside out, they created this puffy, almost realistic looking lily! I just love happy accidents. I am now investigating ideas for the center of the lily. I will post progress on that later.



This is my piece for the going green challenge. We need to create a 4" x 6" postcard from only materials we had on hand. My card is made from fabric scraps from another piece. After trimming the piece to size, I realized that they would make a nice little postcard. The colors were so wonderful. I started laying the fabric strips together until I found a composition I liked. The "brown fencing" is actually from my potato bag. I want to add more thread painting to create tall grasses but alas, my sewing machine decided to stop working. Cleaned it all out, put it back together and now the bobbin casing will not stay where it is supposed to! I will have to borrow a machine to finish or do it by hand. Bummer.