DLP Week 20: Modelling Paste...

...or not! This week's Documented Life Project prompt was to use modelling paste and the theme was 'rising to the occasion'. 

I certainly feel that Yoshi, my Lions Foundation of Canada future dog guide puppy has risen to the occasion. She is an incredibly beautiful, gentle puppy and on Monday I returned her to Dog Guides so that she can begin her formal training as a service dog. She will be training to work with a person who has a physical or medical disability, possibly someone in a wheelchair, although not necessarily.

The "or not" comment is because I was so involved in moment, creating this page that I completely forgot to use modelling paste, and I love how it turned out, so I'm leaving it as is!

My friend Marilyn accompanied me for the drop off and took lots of pictures of this milestone event in the life of this fabulous dog guide in the making. Thanks Marilyn!

Organizing the Archives

As you know from previous posts, I recently got Lightroom 4.  What an incredible piece of software!  Anyway, I've been busy learning how to use in, in part thanks to Kim Klassen's online class, Round Trip.  So, I've been spending a lot of time going through my archived photos to do a bit of organization (OMG what a mess my photo files are in!) before I import them into Lightroom.

This morning, I came across this picture of Spencer, our little basket baby.  Spencer was a 'free' kitten (and then came the vet bills for shots, etc. LOL), picked up at the Bait and Tackle shop in Magnetawan (near our cottage).  He just loved this tiny basket (not sure how big it was, but certainly a lot smaller that a standard 6 qt basket).

Spencer became known as our 'puppy cat' because he followed our dog around everywhere and behaved much more like a dog than like our other cat.  He'd even run to answer the door!  Sadly, he got sick and passed away when he was only six yrs. old.  Thank goodness for photos and these happy trips down memory lane!

From Photograph to Art Quilt...a sneak peek...

Back in April of last year, I took a photograph of a monarch butterfly and I digitally altered it in Photoshop.  You can see both the original photo and the altered one by clicking here.

I loved the colours in the altered photo so much that I wanted to use it in an art quilt.  I transfered the photo to fabric, went through my stash of fabrics and selected a number of pieces that I thought would work with it, sketched out a couple of ideas on paper, and then got busy with other things...

Finally, in October I got back to it and actually started working with the fabric and the image.  I wasn't happy with what I was coming up with, so again it was put aside so I could let my ideas 'simmer'.  Then came Tracey's GOE challenge for us to finish a UFO...which I turned into a personal challenge to try to finish all of my UFOs (or at least as many as I possibly could).  I've been working at the quilting of this piece for a few hours today, so I thought I'd give you a little sneak peak.  It still needs a lot more machine work and then some hand stitching, but I'm hoping to have it done by Wednesday evening, when our little group meets.

Gorilla Love

Bonnie's photo art challenge this week is to create an art image using her texture 'Signed & Sealed'.  Yesterday my friend and I were at the Toronto Zoo and I got a great shot of a gorilla's hand.  My image today was simply a matter of adding four layers of Bonnie's texture, 3 using a soft light blend mode (100% opacity for all three) and the forth was added using a pin light blend mode at 73% opacity.  Simple but fun!

Thanks for the great texture Bonnie!

This photo is being linked to This or That Thursdays, and Photo Art Friday.

TUSAL (Totally Useless Stitch-A-Long)

My ORTs jar started off with threads that I had in
a bin beside by my chair in the family room.

Thanks to my new cyber friend, Connie, I've joined the "Totally Useless Stitch-A-Long" for 2012. Check it out at Daffycat.  The object of TUSAL is to collect all your bits of thread (also known as ORTs - Old Tattered Threads) from your stitching for a whole year.  It's a totally easy idea that won't require me to do anything I'm not already doing, except that now I'll put the threads into a glass jar and photograph it once in a while. I've got an old fashioned candy jar that I'll use to collect my threads.  It will be a real challenge not to dip into the thread stash to make some funky greeting cards, but I'll do my best to stay out of it.  It'll be really interesting to see how much thread collects in a year.   Since I've already got some thread collected I've decided to get a head start (there's no prize for having the most,  so it's not cheating :D don't worry.)

My ORTs jar in it's new place of honour in my studio.