I've missed being here

Hello everyone,

It has been so long since I have posted and I have missed it. So back into the grove!

Ten of us from the Mixed Media Mavens group met to learn and create.

This was our first attempt at deconstructed screen printing. We all loved it. It was surprisingly easy as a technique but there is so much potential for design.

We decided to try something like an Alisa Burke technique. We all had our own ideas of what that meant to us so there was quite a variety. The important part was to free ourselves up and just paint.

Then one of the ladies, Linda, gave us a quick tutorial on drawing faces. Loved it! Have a long long way to go though.

Next was some stamp carving and building.

Then we painted on our canvas until the end of day.

MAKING MYSELF ACCOUNTABLE

I have put myself in the position of having to produce, I joined three groups. The one I talked about last time "Fabric Art Workshop", and "artist trading card workshop" by Bernie Berlin. These each have a weekly exercise so I will post what I do. The other is "creative every day". Theory is to create something everyday, right now the theme is play. I also committed myself to my photography exercise.

(FAW-1) Angelina fibers fused over a stamp.

(FAW-1) Angelina fibers fused, sliced, woven, fused.

(FAW-1) Angelina fibers fused, cut into bits, dropped on a bed of fibers, fused again.

(FAW-1) Shiva paint stick with stencil.

(FAW-1) Shiva paint stick shadowing (the soft black lines).

(FAW-1) Shiva paint stick rubbed over a texture sheet.

Today was our local mixed media group. Good friends, great show and tell, and yummy food. What more can you ask for?

Michelle Jackson is so talented. You might Google her name and see her work and patterns.

Some of you may know the lady on the top left. Elizabeth Dawson made a new quilt for her own bed.

I was looking out my window and realized how seldom I really looked at the bottles on my windowsill. Today's picture.

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I love blue glass.

December 2008

The blog is about ready for weekly use. Look backwards (old blogs) to see what I have added to my history. After today I will write forward.

Sweet Charity - We finished and distributed 737 quilts this year. They go to about thirty groups in New Mexico.

This is a work day making love quilts.

These are for the Blue Stars mothers.

My mixed media group did a tin exchange. We all took a altoid tin (compliments of Lynne) and decorated it for someone else in the group.

This is the one I made for Linda. I think of her as elegant and glitzy. The flowers are made from Crayola's paper clay.

This is the one made for me by Michele. I love it.

This mixed media group is full of wonderful women. Here is a picture of some of the group at our last meeting.

Buried Treasures- - -What I have been doing in 2008

Seth Apter of http://thealteredpage.blogspot.com/ has started a challenge to find buried treasures in our blogs. I think this is a great idea as it is so hard to look back through just found blogs. This one of my favorite posts that I have done.

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This year has been a breakthrough for me. I am trying new things and trying to release my inner muse (it thinks I have lost it).

I bought a new tiny camera that I can easily take with me wherever I go. The week I bought it I headed to Kauai and took over 1200 shots. I was in heaven!

I make a lot of what I call "stones". They are small things that I can build on. I normally have no idea of what I am going to do with them but I can't seem to stop once I begin.

Fabric beads (mostly polyester) rolled and heated with a heat gun.

Made with fabric and glue.

Pipe cleaners wrapped with fabric.

My second group exchange was a post card challenge. No theme to this one, but since I had just come back from Hawaii fish seemed logical.

All the cards are made from cotton scraps with just a few emblishments.

I participated in my first art exchange with my mixed media group. It was a "skinny book" and our theme was "woman".

I used paper towels and dyed them with old markers. Then I drew on them with india ink and added crystals.

I have a wonderful source for upholstery fabrics. I made a number of purses, designed one myself, sold a few, and taught a couple of classes.

I discovered felting machines. A friend came over for a play day and brought this wonderful machine that she had found at a quilt show in Chicago. She let me try it and I was hooked. I bought my own the same week. This is one of my favorite things to do. I haven't done much quilting since I bought it.

These are all 4" by 6".
I used silk on some and polyesters on others.

In our mixed media group we do some mini workshops. One day a member, Debbie, show us how to do a type of free form quilting. We worked up rectangles and then slice them up and put them back together.

I found some wonderful silk leaves and made some small art pieces.

Most of the leaves are silk but the backgrounds are a blend.