Many Projects Up In The Air!!!

It has been far too long since I have posted to my blog!! I have had so many things going on and lots of projects in various stages of done-ness. I only have a short bit of time as I have a big deadline ahead with company due to arrive and projects to finish before my lovely nieces arrive!!!
I am going to share a batch of pictures of projects with short descriptions and I will post longer discussions later. If you see something that you want to ask me about please do so!! I will answer any and all questions when I reply to your e-mails!! I hope that one and all are having a wonderful summer, winter so far!!!!




My brand new Business card!! I am very pleased with this version. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get this sort of thing to READ the way that you want it to! ( The picture is the front and the info is all on the back.)

On July 4th we were able to inhale our very first garden fresh tomatoes!!! It was a long winter without decent tomatoes!!!
My red Day Lilies look like burgundy velvet and they are blooming like this in the shade!!

This is a new cuff that I have just finished. I will be submitting it to a Call For Art with the theme of Texture and Pattern.


My youngest niece Kate loves to cook and always asks for relatives favorite recipes. She loves to spend time helping me in the kitchen whenever they visit. I amde this cookbook for her to serve as a place to collect all of her favorite recipes. I took a vintage Better Homes and Gardens Binder style book and recovered it. I used the same dividers from the original book and collaged over the text with images form other vintage cook books. Kate was thrilled with it.

Here you can see the dividers.

I took plain page protectors and stitched them smaller and then stitched on a fabric strip to cover the trimmed edge of the divider.

For Mali, my eldest niece I created this shoulder bag. I was very inspired by Pat Winter and her Bo-Ho Bags that she has been creating. Pat does lots of layering of textile trims and then does a vintage crazy quilt look on the front flap. Mali is not a vintage fabrics girl so I did a more modern take on Crazy Quilting and used some of my own hand dyed fabric and made some of my raggedy roses for embellishing. i am really thrilled with the result and so was Mali!!


Becca and I are off for our All Girls Road Trip to Cape Cod tomorrow . We will be back in 10 days. I am planning on taking my computer so I will try to check in between beach time and time spent with friends!!!
I will get back to my regular posting schedule when we get back!!

Painted Canvas Collage Experiments

WelL, believe it or not the Christmas Gift Making is not yet complete!! I have two items left to craft to send to my two amazing nieces who live in Tanzania, West Africa. The girls and their parents spent their holidays going on safari in two different locations with some friends from the states. They were snorkeling in the Indian Ocean on Christmas Day and watching giraffe and wildebeast herds and even lions in the grasslands 4 days later! Hard to come up with compelling gifts when these sorts of activities are your competition!!! Actually, we have all gotten used to having packages arrive at all times of year as the mail systems are not exactly what we are used to here in the states, so this year I have pushed the limits a bit!!

I have really gotten into playing with paint on fabric and when I saw a recent article in the Nov/Dec issue of Cloth Paper Scissors about using left over scrapbooking stickers as a resist for paint, I had to get out the paints and canvas and give it a go! The idea was to use letter shaped stickers secured to your fabric and paint over the stickers . Once the paint was dry the stickers are removed and you have the fabric show thru in the letter forms. I have quite a few stickers left over from my scrapbooking days that I ahve never been able to part with but that I don't really use anymore. I am all about trying to use up what I already have!!!

I chose some bright colors of my cheapo acrylic craft paints and some cotton duck and started to play. I had decided to make some colorful wall hangings/art quilts for the girls and I was trying to tailor the color schemes and the words/numbers/resist bits to each girls particular tastes.

First I took a long piece of fabric and just added paint in various patterns. then I took smaller pieces and applied the stickers ot the fabrics after warming the fabrics slightly with a warm iron. I burnished the stickers to the fabric to ensure that they were very well stuck down. Then I painted over the stickers in various colors.

In this picture you can see that I have applied paint over the top of the black stickers. Not terribly easy to see.

Here you can see that most of the stickers have been removed . I have left the J sticker at the top half on and half off to demonstrate the difference. this technique proved very effective and it was fun to do as well!

So now what remains is to cut up all of the resist parts and combine them in a pleasing composition with whatever embellishments that I come up with. Then I will stitch it all together some by hand and some by machine, into two art quilts!

Better get cracking! Hopefully , these will be on their way to Africa before Valentines Day!!!