Machine Doodling on White

I was doodling on paper and suddenly thought 'what if...' so I used my light table to transfer the design to some white fabric and then I machine sketched over my pencil lines with black thread.  My plan is to do some painting and then hand stitch to add texture.  I'll share as it progresses...

Celebrate Spring..

Every the optimist,  in spite of ice storms and resulting power outages because of all of the trees and branches that came down, I am celebrating Spring... because I know that one day it will come!



Linking up with Our World Tuesday, Texture Tuesday, and Sweet Shot Tuesday.

Look Around...

This journal spread was inspired by Carissa Paige's "21 Secrets" lessons.  I had fun just freely laying down colour and then drawing/scribbling over it with Inktense pencils.  I love that the Inktense becomes permanent once wet and then dried so that you can go ahead and add more layers over top.  Carissa's idea of using photos of yourself and then painting over them was fun and since I had a photocopy of my profile pic (which I had used to help me draw my face for the painted portrait I did a few days ago), I decided just to use the glasses and my eyes since my message was all about looking around and seeing what's around you.

A Treasure Map

"Searching for Serenity" is the treasure map art quilt that resulted from a funny bit of dupioni silk that my friend Heather gave me a few years back after she had done some dyeing.  It was actually her wipe up cloth, and the colours and shapes in it called to me to do some hand stitching.  If you'd like to know more about it's progress, you can read about it here (original post showing the dye stained silk), here (showing the extensive hand stitching), and here (where I posted about adding the machine stitching).  

As I completed the the machine stitching, the hand stitched areas seemed to rise from the surface and I watched as a treasure map emerged.  Jean noticed this too, and even commented on it in a previous post!  Free motion pebbling was used to add additional depth and texture, allowing the islands to rise from the sea, and the sea to flow out into the border of the quilt before changing to a linear echo of the flowing water.  I did free motion machine embroidery on water soluble stabilizer to create the pirate ship and the compass rose.  The island names are small metallic pieces with words engraved into them, including the word Serentity...the ultimate destination.

First Attempt at a Painted Portrait...

This week I've been participating in Kat McBride's free online class "Let's Draw and Paint Fabulous Faces".  Kat breaks down the process and makes it very do-able (for someone like me who has never painted a face before!).  The class was intended (I think) to teach us to paint semi-realistic 'beautiful girls' for use in our art journals, etc. but never being one to start easy, I decided to try a self portrait.  Well, I don't see a future in portrait painting, but I had fun.  I seem to have grown a bit of a Jay Leno chin. LOL








I played around in Photoshop to see if I could do away with the extra long chin.  ;o)


I think my next effort will be a more whimsical 'pretty girl'...

Threadworks Fibre Art Show: April 20 - June 4

I'm thrilled to announce that my piece, "Ode to Dr. Seuss" has been accepted into Threadworks, a juried fibre art show.

This piece was made with machine felting, hand embroidery and beading, free motion quilting, three dimensional fish and a nod and a wink to Dr. Seuss.  You see, there are two fish, each about 4 inches long and heavily beaded.  One fish is red, the other blue.

Threadworks is a juried exhibition of needle arts, and the theme of this year's show is "Water".

The show runs from April 20 to June 9 at the Wellington County Museum and Archives in Fergus, ON and then will spend the next three years traveling to museums and galleries across Ontario.

Threadworks is a special project of Ontario Network of Needleworkers' in association with Wellington County Museum and Archives.

Without Light There is no Shadow...

Bonnie's challenge this week over at Photo Art Friday is 'shadows and/or light' so I had to use an image which I had taken a couple of summers ago.  I had been out walking the dog in the late evening (although I'm not sure where Casey is...?) and my long shadow just caught my attention.  Thank goodness for iPhones!

 Here are the components I used:

         Original image        PDPA-Antique Farewell        PDPA-Gauze Sheers                 PDPA-Ma Belle 2

This next image is of an African Hammerkopf that I shot while visiting the Toronto zoo back in October.  This is straight out of the camera.  I just love the light and shadow in this shot and knew it didn't need anything else.

Back to the Beginning...

On Saturday I posted about the first inside spread of the new journal I have begun.  Since then, I have been working on doing the outside cover.  I created the tree because of a wonderful quote I found that says, 'Storms make trees take deeper roots." Trees, to me, also symbolize strength and stability and they can be so interesting and majestic!

Tulips Two Ways...

 For this weeks 2-For eDition, in addition to using two textures on the image I'd also do two different images, in two different ways.  I was intrigued by these purple tulips and the fact that one still looked so beautiful while all of the others had dropped their petals so I took this shot, and as I was processing it this quote came to mind...how perfect for that one tulip to hang in there in spite of what was happening around it.  :o)

The second image is another colour palette.  I just about went crazy making it because my colour squares kept coming up sort of soft and almost pastel and it just wasn't right.  I actually deleted all of the layers and started again...Note to self:  Make sure brush is at 100% opacity before stamping! :P

If you're interested in the steps I used for processing, you can see the screen shots of each image below.

Linking up with Our World Tuesday, Texture Tuesday, and Sweet Shot Tuesday

Just The Right Inspiration

For a few weeks now, I've been meaning to create a journal to record my thoughts as I work through a book called Healing From Trauma by Jasmin Lee Cori (which I highly recommend if you're looking for this sort of book).  Anyway, I hadn't quite decided on the format I wanted to use until my friend Kathie told me about Valerie Sjodin's art journalling.  Valerie is an incredible artist and she has created a number of stunningly beautiful art journals.  This gave me a jumping off point.  I loved the idea of some interesting edges and flaps as well as little pages within the bigger ones.  

Once I had the journal bound, I got started on the first spread.  I've decided to call it 'a healing journey', so the journey begins with that first spread.  I've mentioned in the past that it is my goal to do Art Every Day because I find it very relaxing and even healing at time.  Today was no exception.  As I started working on the page, thinking about things as I worked, I felt the burning need to start journalling.




I stopped working on the overall spread so that I could quickly finish the lower left area in which I knew I wanted to do some journalling so that I could get my thoughts down on the page.

Once I had written down my thoughts, I got back to finishing the rest of the page.

I incorporated part of a map into the top of the page and drew a bicycle to represent my other passion, cycling, which is another vehicle (no pun intended) for allowing myself to work through issues when I just need some 'zen' time to burn energy and think.  Those endorphins do wonders!

Here's the finished spread: