Dew ATC

This months color choice was Dew. For whatever reason, I had an idea almost immediately and digging through the handmade fabrics, I had the perfect starting point. The fabric was a yellowgreenish color. I took fabric markers and drew leaves all over it with several shades of greens. Then I went in with darker markers around the leaves to make them pop out more. I did a free motion stitch around the leaves in green to add some texture. I cut them apart and drew spider webs on each card. I used Stickles glitter glue to get the sparkles of water or dew on the spider web. After it was dry, I put glossy accents on top of the glitter spots to make it more dimensional and like a drop of dew. I really love how these turned out. Don't forget to check this months entries at our blog Arts In The Cards!

More Stuffed "Thumbs?"

I really liked making the one stuffed piece based on a little girls drawing and decided to make a bunch more. I am even thinking of selling them. Me selling my art! This is indeed new to me. I really have to try that some more, otherwise I am going to run out of room in my studio and there really is only so much wall space in a home isn't there?!

I tweaked the design a bit and made them in three colors. Some have curly hair and some have straight! There are several other designs I have made. I just have to move from paper to fabric! Stay tuned!

ATC Turquoise

This trade is by far my favorite! The unique interpretations of this color really blew my mind. Apparently we all enjoyed this color! Check out the others at Arts In The Cards blog. You won't be disappointed!

My turquoise interpretation was of the stone. Have you ever looked closely at the stone? Lots of levels of blues and greens with some brown and black. Using a hand painted fabric of a turquoise water and beach, I added a flour paste resist over the top. I wanted to get the crack like look of the stone. Was this overkill? Probably but it was fun to play. After the resist dried completely, I cracked it into big cracks and some fine ones. Then painted into the cracks with brown dye paint. Once that dried, I had to peel off all the resist. Good thing I made it really thick. It was much easier to pick off but still a lot of work. Once done, I fused the fabric to pellon backing and free motioned stitched over the cracks in a black thread. It looked really flat until I went back in with paint. I painted a light blue green color up to the edges of all the cracks. Then a painted in a slightly darker blue in spots which gave the cards more dimension! Loved it! The final part was to paint a silver edge around each cards and stitch it down. I wanted silver to mimic silver and turquoise jewelry. No single shots this time but if you click on the picture, you can see more of it closeup.

Prayer Flag

Our ATC Revisioned group has posted our next challenge which was to create a prayer flag for spring. Go here to see the rest of the groups finished pieces http://artsinthecardsrevisioned.blogspot.com/Arts In the Cards Revisioned

I always struggle with these types of projects because I hate putting such personal pieces out for the world to see. It's as if you are opening up your heart for all the world to see! I loved the piece until I finished adding the border. It just wasn't the right color I think. I auditioned a bunch of colors and this one was the only one that seemed to kind of work. It just seems too pink for me. But the universe knows what is in my heart and will overlook my bad color choice I believe! LOL

 I started with a piece of white cotton fabric and thought I had cut the size correctly. Apparently not as I will explain shortly. The colors were added with the watercolor crayons drawn on and then blended with water. After it was dry, I wrote words or thoughts onto the background using a dye pen. This whole process was done intuitively. I just went with whatever thought I had on creating and didn't question it. The overwhelming desire to quilt this in rows was too powerful to ignore so that is what I did. I have been wanting to try this out and found myself very pleased with the results.

It has been gray and dreary for well over a week now so my colors are just as dull as the weather. I always believe that thoughts are like prayers and they fly about the universe. So I created free form birds out of fine netting. Thoughts can be positive or negative and sometimes we just down pay attention to where we hold our attention so I made dark and light birds to remind myself to try and think positive thoughts! When I trimmed my piece to size, some areas did not have fabric! So to compensate, I had to make my border much larger than I wanted. Combine that with the color choice and I was suddenly very unhappy.

I tried to offset some of the "pinkiness" with some ribbons and fibers. It kind of reminded me of dream catchers. I added some green beads to represent seeds or my thoughts growing in reality. For now I am done and ready to send it out to the world but I may leave it up on my design wall and think about it some more. A flash of inspiration may strike and I will be able to fix what I imagine to be wrong or I will leave it and spring board off in a new direction.

Kids Drawings

Did you ever look at one of your child's drawings and think that it would make a cute stuffed "animal"? I have on more than one occasion and saved many of my daughters drawings on the idea that I would eventually do that. Well time never permitted. (My son didn't really like drawing much) A few weeks ago, this little girl Abigail brought in a drawing to show me. It was so darned cute and I asked if it was for me. Well in normal Abigail fashion she immediately said no! she was giving it to Miss Keri. She promptly brought it over to Keri and she hung it up. I kept seeing it each day and thinking how cute that would look as a stuffed whatever it was. I snuck it out of the school on Friday!

The original drawing! So cute!

As you can see, the piece was a quick drawing in black marker on newsprint. I took creative liberties and added some color to my final project.

Looks great in color!

Side by side comparison

The body was red felt and I gave it purple hair. The eyes were black fabric fused onto the felt and then hand sewn in place. I embroidered the eyelashes and mouth. The white parts of the eyes were created with white fabric paint.  Of course I showed this to my daughter who immediately asked for it. I told her no and then she wailed on about how I made stuff for other people and never for her blah, blah, blah. So I guess it's time to hunt down those pics I saved of her art and create them in fabric to stop the whining. LOL

If April Showers . .

bring May Flowers, what do May Flowers bring? The pilgrims! I still remember that joke from my childhood! Corny but cute. So our latest trade was Rain. Rain as a color really stumped me for quite a while. Well until I realized that it really is clear and picks up the colors it lands on. So I used the idea of a driving rain against a window.

I used a hand dyed fabric I made a long time ago in blues, whites and a pale pink. Details were added with watercolor crayons and water. Once dry, more details were added with fabric markers and then free motion stitching in metallic blue. For the highlights and sparkle I used a scrapbooking product called Stickles in star dust (fancy term for off white!) That had to dry overnight. Additional dimension was created with markers in blues and some pinks. I knew it would be impossible to get the sparkle into the photograph but gave it the old college try. This was as good as it gets unfortunately.

Sketch to Art Quilt

When I saw the challenge in the Quilting Arts Magazine, I felt compelled to create something. I had done a zentangle sketch and used elements from the peacock to fill in the different areas. It was so cool the way it turned out and I thought it would make a great quilt and look good in color!

This was the sketch I started out using as my idea. I made photocopies of it and experimented with different color combinations.

I sketched the design on white cotton fabric and filled in the areas using, paints, dyes and dye pens.

I free motion stitched in black thread in most areas and hand stitched the smaller areas. Unfortunately it did not make the cut for the challenge. Oh well. I loved doing it! Actually, I loved this so much, that I have started a much larger version of this piece but a few color changes. Can't wait to work on it!