Gone way too long.........

It has been a very hectic and crazy fall and the blogging has definitely suffered!!  To keep this short and very visual I am going to give you a picture review of some of the things that have been keeping me busy since my last post!!!

Stitching journals with my own sun prints and creating Art Quilts.

Creating some fun textile necklaces with my fabric/paper/resin beads for sale at Artful Dimensions Gallery.

Managed to squeeze in a trip to Cape Cod to visit my Mom over a long weekend in October.  I even managed to catch a glorious sunset at Rock Harbor in Orleans, MA.

Got some shots of some sea gulls hunkering down for some blustery weather!!

We took a wonderful little drive to a friends organic sheep and veg farm!!

Once back in VA, I have taught several classes, Collage Jewelry classes have been very popular.

I took part in Fredericksburg VA, first experiment with Yarn Bombing!  Hopefully more events will be coming this summer!!

I was very involved in the Presidential Campaign for Barack Obama !! Becca and I were able to get VIP tickets to go to a Rally featuring our wonderful First Lady, Michelle Obama!!  What a thrill that was!!! She is such an amazing woman, incredible Ambassador for our Country, a wonderful Mother and an amazing speaker!!

Unfortunately we could not get close enough to shake her hand or to give her a hug.

Becca and I had a wonderfully inspiring time with all sorts of like minded Democrats and Obama supporters!!

Election night was so very exciting as our candidates,  President Obama and Senator Tim Kaine, easily won their respective political races!!!! I spent many hours working the phones and knocking on doors to make sure that Virginia came out in the Democrats column. Such a relief!!

Buddy and I spent several hours sewing and getting things organized in the sewing room .  I have been making finger-less gloves using cashmere and wool sweaters that I have recovered and re purposed after felting the sweaters in the washing machine.

This group of my gloves have already been sold but I have just listed several new pairs in my Etsy shop.  You can take a peek here.

I created some collaged fabric with silk fibers, silk fabrics, wool fibers and recycled cashmere sweaters to create this swing vest.  After needle felting , lots of free motion embroidery and then wet felting, this garment is now available for purchase at Artful Dimensions Gallery in Fredericksburg, VA.

Creating this piece was a wonderful adventure and I plan to work on many more garments in the near future.

So that is a quick wrap up of what I have been doing with some of my time!  I promise not to ignore my blog and my wonderful followers for such a long period again!! I have missed you all!  I hope that everyone has had a wonderful Fall and Thanksgiving , Spring if you are among my Down Under buddies!! 

ART ON EVERYONE!!!! 

Colors in the Rain

Last evening and most of the day today it has just rained buckets!! I love rainy days especially when I don't have to be out in it!! So after I got Becca up and off to her first day of High School, I decided to play for a bit. I put aside the Should Do's and the Must do's and just had some color play time!!

Lately I have been very drawn to the wonderful work of Roben Marie Smith. She has had several articles in some of my favorite magazines and she has wonderful tutorial videos on her blog. She plays and paints with abandon and I would love to be able to achieve the carefree sort of art attitude that she exudes. Her videos are delightful! I love her little finger tap routine- Now you HAVE to click on the link above to go to see what I mean!!!

So i dug out the paper and the acrylic paints and the acrylic inks, spray bottles and Gesso, brushes, glue sticks and paper bits, and went to town . The page above was my first attempt. The shot below shows the first of several mailing envelopes that I have begun to use to send off things to friends.
All that I can say is once you start working with Roben's techniques make sure that you have a big space cleared as you will not want to stop and you need lots of room to lay things out to dry!! such wonderful fun!!!

After a bit of lunch I decided I needed to get back to a few deadlines that will be coming up quickly . These pieces are all about color, so I was able to keep the color theme of the day going strong! Below you can see three small art quilts that I am working on all created from my sun printed and hand dyed fabrics. I have not decided yet whether these pieces will form a triptych or will hang alone. I suppose I don't have to figure that out till they are stitched and finished. For now I have plenty of stitching to do!

These two are still in the not sure still planning stages. It looks like we are in for a bit of soggy weather so I should be able to get these all done by the end of the week. Fingers crossed and the creek don't rise too too high!!!