A Semi- Presentable Studio!!!

I have decided to share some images of my art mess as I call my studio. This is as good as it has been for several months! I work on too many projects concurrently, for my s mess to ever achieve Capital S studio status, like those that appear in the magazines. It is MY space and I love it, and it inspires me !

The reason for the big sort and clean was my First Formal in Studio Class. A good friend who I has been a student of mine int he past was bringing her girls over for some collage jewelry fun. Long story short, the teenagers stayed at home and Ann and I had a lovely afternoon of creating!

I was able to open this chapter of my teaching experience with swept floors, a clean covered table top and plenty of leg room to accommodate 4 people at the first work table!

the second worktable is till under a small hill of supplies and fabric and stuff and the sewing area floor is still covered with fabrics and projects to be sorted , however there are now negotiable paths form here to there and a welcoming place to create !! This is a huge step for my space and my usual method of creating in the midst of clutter.

Beads and Bead storage area including found objects and stones.

The fabric storage and dye area still needs some work and larger sorting bins, but there is a clear path!!!

this one bench behind the table needs some attention and my stamp wall needs some serious weeding out. I just don't seem to use my stamps anymore and they take up a very large amount of space. I need to figure what to do with them- a need to pass many of them on to others who will use them, as I now use mostly those that I have carved myself! Perhaps They will find their way to my Etsy site??

Sea Treasures beaded collage 1 inch wide cuff.

Sea Foam Free form beaded bracelet.

Besides having a lovely afternoon working on a collage creation with my friend, she informed me that it was her intention to purchase two of my Beaded Ocean Themed pieces that were featured in my Etsy Shop. She left with both of the pieces that you see above!! banner day for my bead work and now I have a clean space to work in as I design and create more of my free form beaded collage jewelry. Perhaps it was a reward for finally getting the majority of my work space under control?? What ever, i am thrilled that the pieces are now owned by someone who treasures them and that they will find some wonderful new homes with my students dear friends!!!! It does not get better than that, for this artist anyway!!!

Last but not least I wanted to share some pictures of a small bit of the found object treasure that I gathered on my recent trip to Cape Cod.

I am planning on trying my hand a t drilling small holes in these lovely smooth stones so I can incorporate them into some of my new bead work designs.

I had lots of luck finding sea glass this year and I also found a very old piece of tumbled china (not Pictured) . I will be working on incorporating these bits either with wire wrapping or treating as components in some resin pieces. The clam shell bits with holes (Quahog shells) will be added into the free form beaded work.

Guess I need to get busy beading!!

I hope that everyone has a very creative couple of days !! Try to find a cool spot to follow your creative muse!

Back from the Beach

We are back from the beach and trying to get reacclimated to life here in VA. Still plowing thru e-mails etc. I really enjoyed being totally "unplugged " for ten days! Now I am getting ready for a huge selection process of artists for shows for the Members Gallery at the Fredericksburg Center for the Arts. We had 43 submissions this year- double what we had last year. It is all very exciting but a ton of work. Fortunately, my wonderful dh, otherwise known as resident computer Guru, is helping me get the power point slide presentations put together for the jurors.

I will be back up for air, and a proper post, after Wednesday!!

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!!

Finishing Up and Starting Again!!!!!

Since my last post I ahve been working on another cuff, this time for SALE!!!! Later today I will be re-launching my new Etsy shop , Elizabeth Creates Art and this cuff will be the first item posted. I call this piece Ocean Spirits and I plan on making this the first of a series of Ocean Cuffs.

This cuff is a bit more slender than my usual size. It is 1 and 3/8 inches wide. I have tucked in all sorts of treasures including this little perfect piece of green sea glass. there are also vintage hand cut crystal beads, African Recycled glass beads, lots of Fresh water pearls and a wonderful bit of textured purple Quahog shell.

I am getting much quicker with my bead stitching and hope to ahve many other color ways available soon!!

So this is one of my latest finished projects.

Now for a new project, at the very beginnings.

This will be the back ground for a collae that is still floating around in my head. I ahve begun to make sketches and I am almost ready to begin cutting and stitching. I used a large piece of damask linen from an old table cloth that I rescued , painted it with Seta Color fabric paints and tossed on a large handful of Kosher salt. Here you can see the salt working it's amgic and drying on my deck.

I have also put the finishing touches on my Poppies Quilt. As I mentioned in a previous post, this quilt began it's life in a fabulous class taught by Laura Washilowski. I did some Free motion quilting and added some more hand stitching and backed the piece witha beautiful piece of batik fabric. I edged it with a rolled binding and hand stitched the edge with hand dyed perle cotton.

Here is a detail shot so you can see some of the background quilting. I added several rows of stitching around each blossom to give them a ruffling effect. You all know how I love adding layers of texture!!!
As a parting note I want to share an image of my wonderful hydrangea's. I have been cutting large bouquets of blossoms and sharing them with friends and bringing them inside. Every time I cut a blossom, the plants put out new, fresh blooms. In case anyone is interested, these hydrangeas are called Endless Summer. If you have a semi shady spot out of strong western sun, PLANT SOME!!!

Now I have some new projects of finish up and have no doubt, new ones to begin!!!

Happy Creating everyone!!!!

Getting Better Photos

I am so excited to be able to get better close up pictures of my work!! For my Birthday, Tom and the kids gave me a photo taking box with special lights for diffuse lighting and less glare!! The picture you see here is Turquoise Oceans cuff that I made for my daughter's Counselor in Middle School. Outstanding teachers and mentors really do need to be recognized and appreciated, don't you think??

Every time I create one of these cuffs I learn something more about the process. I think that this might be my best work yet.

These Shaggy Loops earrings are for Becca's wonderful Language Arts Teacher, Ms. Scott.

This Shaggy Loops Bracelet is for Becca's phenomenal French I teacher, Ms. Johnson. This gal is one of the best teachers at the high School where Becca will be going next year. Becca traveled tot eh HS every morning to take French and had a wonderful and inspiring educational experience. The kids are very upset to have to say good bye to her today. Becca actually told me that she wanted to take French all summer just to be with Ms. Johnson! All of her students feel this way. Now that is a wonderful teacher!!

An Addendum , A Card and Some Hombre Dyeing!!

One of my blog followers pointed out that I had forgotten yet again to post pictures of the hand dyed threads that I purchased from Laura Wasilowski!! So Sorry about that!! It seems that I can't get entirely thru a task these days without forgetting something!!!! SIGH!!
I bought two different sizes of the Perle cottons in the eggplant colorway- I simply cannot resist anything purple and green!! the other two hanks are both #8 perle cottons. Laura's threads are so beautiful because of their intense vibrancy and the wonderful color shifts that she is able to achieve without a hint of muddiness!! The multi-colored hank at the end is the group of threads that we were given as part of the class. They are long gone- stitched on my poppy quilt. There, I feel better, No more dangling pictures, so sorry to leave you hanging!!!
Laura sells 52 different color ways of threads in both cotton and silk and you can purchase them here!!
After my birthday, I had several thank you's to write so I stitched up a few more of my collage floral photo notes. I am really having fun with this little project as I am using up old duplicate prints of floral shots form a time before the era of the digital camera. this card went to a very dear friend who actually gave me the seeds to this flower that you see here. This is an old fashioned columbine, a true pass-along plant, that would bloom it's fool head off in the heat in my Oklahoma garden. I am pleased to have found a way to combine collage, stitch and old left over photos to create unique cards for any number of occasions.

I also fooled around with my Procion MX dyes to see if I could achieve some color gradations of my own. I had such fun working with the fabric in the class and I wanted to see if I could do some of my own without turning everything to a muddy brown. I seem to have figured it out!!!

In these two pictures you can see that I got yellow -orange -pink-red colorway and then various blues ( I used PMX Ice Blue and Royal Blue) turquoise- green -yellow!!! I got nice mid range colors and very little white!!!! Here is how I did it- this was pure experimentation on my part!!!
1. I soaked the fabric strips (approx 15 inches wide) in soda ash solution.
2. wrung out fabric.
3.Hand pleated the fabric at both long ends and lay down the resulting fabric pleated strip along a long piece of saran wrap.
4. Using a foam brush I painted on the dye starting with lightest color first- Yellow- for about 5 inches.
5. Then went in with next color, either Cherry Blush or Turquoise and overlapped the yellow by about 2 inches. So the yellow and pink gave me the orange and the yellow and turquoise gave me green.
6. Next color was straight cherry Blush or Turquoise and then I overlapped those colors with Turkey Red and Royal , respectively.
7. When the fabric was saturated but not swimming in dye, I grabbed each end of the scrunch pleated fabric and twisted the pleated fabric nice and tight, rolled it up in the saran wrap and left the dye saran wrap sausage out in the heat and humidity to batch.
I think the saran wrap tube separator really helped with preventing any mixing of dye colors and gave me the results that I was after.

Every once in awhile blind experimentation based on a bit of fore thought works out!!
WHOOO HOOOO!!!!

Quilt Progress

I have made a few additions and done some hand stitching and this is where I am with my fused quilt.
I am very happy with how the quilt looks now. It was at this stage when last I blogged. I really felt that the center was too open.

Here are a few of the hand stitching details. I really do love the hand stitching and bead work, surprise, surprise!!
I forgot to show you the marvelous ahnd dyed perle cotton and silk threads that I bought from Laura Wasilowski. They are simply glorious ! It was very hard to resist purchasing the whole basket full!!!!

On another dyeing note, I stopped by an Estate sale yesterday and picked up too decorative iron trivets. Now I do not use trivets for fancy dinners and all of my plants are living outside for the summer, I look for these little gems to use in rust dyeing!!! I came home , mixed up some vinegar and water, found my lunch trays and plastic sheeting, cut some fabric and put the whole deal out in the sun. Two hours later look at what I had!!! Circles, circles, Circles!!!! Such potential in these little pieces of rusted loveliness. I am quite pleased with the rust on the blue fabric!!
Happy Creating everyone!!