The full picture

Some of you asked to see the full picture of “Half way to nowhere” from this post. I have been photographing it, turning it this way and that, trying to figure out which way would go up and suddenly noticing the bunny ears.

I found that it could go either way as now all that I see is those two long ears.

Looking for a suitable frame, I found a framed print purchased in Tunisia many years ago. It hasn’t been up on a wall in more than a decade, so I decided to use both the frame and passé-partout. I need to remove the signature though, hopefully the use an eraser will make it magically disappear.

The frame is painted to echo the print, but I like the teal colour against the hot red and yellow. My first instinct was to repaint it, but now I’m thinking of adding some texture and mask some of the colour through some kind of decoupage. Paper? Fabric? Hmmm.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonderful weekend!

Half way to nowhere

Sometimes I wonder

whether some of my stumbling attempts at mixed media art

would be frame worthy.

It’s particularly this piece

that has me wondering

as I love every little bright bit

or maybe I should make a collage from these pictures; that could be frame worthy.

As for me, I’ll soon be on my way back home from celebrating mother’s birthday and handing over the Spring in my step quilt. See you when I get there!

Full bloom

There’s not much blooming around here these days except for my hard-to-get-rid-of-throat-bug-thingie. I’ve been feeling under the weather since I got sick even though I finished my antibiotics a week ago - which is tiresome any day and even more tiresome when you need all your energy elsewhere. After spending 4 hours waiting at the ER yesterday, I’ve got a new type of antibiotics which hopefully will get rid of that stupid thing already so I can get back to life as I know it.

Anywho, besides spending a fun filled Wednesday evening with my quilting friends, grandson and I did a little mixed media collage/paintjob last weekend.

Plain coloured paper, lollipop sticks and leftover circles from the gift tag extravaganza.

We ran out of glue stick and our craft glue was old and thick so we had to use a paintbrush to get it out of the bottle leaving shiny glue everywhere. Lots of tearing, gluing and happy use of scissors later we had two pieces of collage.

The next day we dipped into our little stash of acrylic paint and this is how we left our collages.

My mind has been playing with how to transfer this into a mixed media quilt including the shadowing and all. Hm, we’ll see.

Thanks for stopping by!

Mr Bug

I bet you did not see this one coming.

I didn’t either until I started drawing with a paintbrush dipped in decoupage glue.

Mr Bug, my mixed media guy.

He snuck up on me when I wasn’t paying attention. All I needed was a little of this and a little of that and a little patience. The black velvet yarn is the 7th layer I think. I should do this more often, not worrying what I’ll do next, just enjoying the moment. That and letting things dry in between layers.

Quite a funky looking guy isn’t he, and so much fun to make.

Thanks for stopping by!

Moving on

Step by step and with ever so much pleasure of doing something I don't know how to do, the mixed media canvas is coming to life. I have added some circles stamped on with a sponge brush and stencil cream in two different colours.

Loving all the layers, I think the background is finished soon.

A week in review

So this has been quite a week; a little of this, a little of that, and lots and lots of those. About a week ago I wished for a few days of rest, so be careful about what you wish for ‘cause I’ve done nothing much but resting since Tuesday and it was not fun at all. Add together a strep throat, the flu, throwing up, skyhigh fever and actually crying at the doctor’s office and you get the picture. The saddest thing though is that I missed my daughter’s birthday on Tuesday and haven’t seen her since as I cannot afford to make her sick.

No matter how fidgety I get when not making stuff, I’m not quite ready to get back to quilting just yet. You don’t realize how hard quilting is physically until you try doing it under the influence of buggery bugs, do you. Anyways,  even though I have not been able to keep up my brilliant plan of creating every day, here’s the last week or so in review. No sick pictures, I promise.

A few steps forward with the mixed media painting. This is how it looked when the fog dried up

 

 

So, loving the textures, what can I do next, oh yes, more tulle.

Yesterday I added lots of new decoupage glue and some torn paper pieces, a little tulle and some words leftover from a quilt

which looked like this when dry.

My last stunt so far is adding a layer of red angel weave fiber this morning, and I’m excited to see how it dries.

I tried to create a hand stitching project too, free form cutting circles from crafting felt. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with them, but I have an idea for the next step.

Husband was 50 a week ago and celebrated with a birthday dinner out with the kids and in-laws. They all behaved very well indeed, and the food was great.

I said they behaved, not that they sat totally still.)

Grandson and I also made him a chocolate cake from my mom’s old recipe which she wrote down for me like 30 years ago. It is well used as you can see.

We did a test of how many Non Stop (like Smarties) we could fit onto one cake, and that was quite a few indeed. No pictures though, the cake disappeared quickly with the assistance of daughter, yours truly and the kids.

I have chosen a tea towel for a challenge over at 15 minutes play.

And I have labeled and shipped off my challenge pieces within the deadline. I made a couple of mistakes on the hand written label so I made a new one in Excel - which I forgot to take pictures off. Oh well, I'll just have do it when it returns. I'll post pictures as soon as the challenge is over.

Today I have been doing the guild’s accounts, paying the bills, and uploading a few pictures. Enough for today. Tomorrow the kids will be back here, and hopefully daughter as well. It will be busy and noisy and messy and I won’t get much done, but my goal is still to be creative every day for the next 4 weeks.

Thanks for stopping by!

One day at the time

Yesterday was a long day, but my daughter made it through surgery with flying colours. Thank you for your prayers and happy thoughts! Now we are facing a six week recovery period with no baby lifting for mom. Like at all. Some of you might remember we went through something similar just a few months ago, so it will be all right, we know what to do. Both boys are used to being here, and now that grandbaby has started kindergarden, I will have a few hours a day to myself, providing some much needed relief for my less-than-fabulous knee. 

The good part is that I get to see them all a lot, and I will have to get more structured about getting quilting related work done, making time count. Most days I don’t even bother to start on anything unless I have hours of free time ahead of me, and I have wanted to change that.

I did get a head start on Project Making Time Count this weekend. Husband took grandson bowling on Sunday, and while they were gone, instead of slouching in front of the telly, I got started on a challenge piece for our upcoming guild meeting on Wednesday. 

I even finished it after grandson had gone home in the afternoon, so now I am all set for the meeting and quite proud of myself for making use of a little time here and a little time there. I’ll be teaching a Kvist class before the meeting, thank goodness the kits are done or I would have been in big trouble indeed.

Grandson and I also spent a happy hour painting. We used to do so quite often when husband worked every weekend, but now that he spends more time at home we do other things. First I had to clear away the Christmas decorations; I am ashamed to say they had been waiting on our dining room table for more than a week.

We had bought some new paint which turned out to be water colour paint rather than acrylics. Note to self: read the package! There were some difficulties getting the paint to stick onto the canvas, but not adding water helped.

I’m thinking this will work very well as a basis for experimenting with creating fog as it does have some nice layers and textures.

Oh well, I’d better get on with my day (or rather tomorrow as I wrote this last night; I have a feeling this will be a regular thing for the next 6 weeks). Thanks for stopping by!

Play on a Saturday

Painting on the most facinating fabric using our creative emergency kit and loving it.

Harware store art

I was picking up a few items at the hardware store, and had a look around for things that could be used in mixed media art. Quite a lot as it turned out.

What if I take one of the backgrounds on which I have been working

and pair it up with a few paint chip circles (made with my new Fiskars Squeeze Punch)

what it I move them off the end

and cut the background in half

what if I cover them with glass fiber strips you use to join dry walls (comes on a roll and have glue on the back), add gel medium and some threads from a bag of what we used to call twist (those white threads used for polishing cars)?

When dry

it looks very different than the other half (the other half was used for the Zentangle doodling in this post)

but what if I add a little paint and a few tiny lines with a black marker?

The light coming from the side makes the white grid rather prominent, it is quite soft really.

Hmmm, interesting, lots of layers, a fun exercise with a few tricks and supplies that I can bring into my quilts.

How do you exercise your creative muscles?