Day 7 DD

Here's a little project inspired by Anne Eckley, who taught a workshop on free-motion machine embroidery on papers and found objects. This is a leaf that she brought to the class that was already dried out. I glued it to some found papers and "sealed" it with heat-set plastic wrap, with an iron over parchment paper. Then today I dug it out and did some stitching, and manipulated the colors a bit in Photoshop. I like it.

Day 6 of Daily Devotions

"Keeping Watch" ... the outline of the cat says, "Mariah watches for the monster in the fax machine to come out and attack, but it never does ... so she snoozes in between fax arrivals."

Catbook

A 3" x 5" collaged hand-made accordian book, which stands up like a tiny little room divider. Painted Timtex, stitched images on fabric, beads, feathers, and mirrors. This was a lot of fun, and I finally finished it today. The colors and images make me happy.

Talisman

This is a huge talisman (almost 5" square) that I started in Larkin Van Horn's beading-on-fabric workshop almost 2 years ago, and finally finished this past year. Once I had put so much work into this "sampler", I decided I might as well get some wear out of it, and made it into a pendant. (It now has a somewhat more substantial 'chain' to hang from.)

A birthday card

A birthday card created in Photoshop, then sewn with tulle entrapping some tiny beads.

Metal play

A couple of pins or pendants made in a HAFA (Houston Area Fiber Artists) workshop, focusing on bending, distressing, and embellishing metals. (That's a typewriter key embedded in a bottle cap on the right.)

ATC's

Here are just a few of the ATC's I made during the course of Rachel Kitterman's "Daydreams and Doppelgangers" workshop. It was lots of fun, very freeing ... and I discovered that I like working in a small scale.

Book Girl

I've always loved reading, but only recently discovered hand-making books. This is one of my first ones, taught to me by my good friend Martha. This was so much fun, with its own hand-made envelope.

Photoshopping

A collage that I played with in Photoshop ... one of my favorite pictures of my Mom, when she was 11 years old.

Devoted Sisters

A small collage that I created, then reduced and made into "nametags" for Christmas gifts for my sister this year. The quote "there were never more devoted sisters" is from an old song our mother used to sing to us when we were fighting!

Some previous stuff

Now that I'm playing on the blog, thought I'd post some pictures of a few other things I've done in the past few months. These are the front and back of my first journal, done with fabrics, shredded papers, paints, and gel medium, with a few beads thrown in.

Day 5 - again

"Random Flora" ... imaginary flowers.

Day 5 of the Daily Devotions challenge

"Haunted" ... lately I seem to be fascinated with the cat/girl blend.

Day 4

"Half an Education". A sketch of half of my bookshelf in my living room. Not very inspired, I must have been tired. (That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)

Day 3

"Empty Archway". An attempt at creating a realistic-looking archway ... not at all successful. Proportions are all wrong, but I'm determined to post something every day anyway, as a matter of self-discipline. I actually worked harder on this one, and like it less than my previous sketches. I think I concentrated too hard on the stone texture and not enough on the overall structure.

Day 2

"Girl-Cat-Girl" ... cats seem to me to be inherently female (even the boys, sorry!), and there is a blurring in my mind of their separate personality traits. This sketch is really just a mixture of a few dreams I've had lately.

Daily Devotions 365 Days ... Day 1

A little belatedly, I've signed up with the "dailydevotions365days" yahoo group, in an effort to goad myself into concentrating on art every day, even if in a very small way. I'm just glad I found this group before the year got too far along.

This first sketch was done with a fair-to-middlin' sized cat on my lap, alternately purring and biting me to get attention. I was trying to achieve the illusion of transparency in the bowl.