Connecting With My Past

This week, I got a small parcel in the mail.  It's always exciting to get unexpected surprises, but this turned out to be the best present I may have ever received.  You see, the package contained CDs of digitized images of all of my Dad's old slides.  It turns out that my brother Wolfgang, the handsome little fellow with the vest on, had taken the many boxes of slides (almost 3,000 images) and scanned them into his computer, over the period of several weeks, so that he could digitize all of our family images and then he sent a set of the disks to each of his sibs.

The timing is fabulous since as you may know from recent posts, I have just started using Lightroom and I'm in the process of organizing all of my images.  I can't tell you how thrilled I am to have all of these images, dating back to the late 50s, of my brothers and I growing up. The pictures date back to shortly after my parents and three oldest brothers arrived from Germany, through to the mid 80s.

And so this week, I'm taking a trip down memory lane, to a shot of my four brothers with me, their baby sister.  Yes, I'm the youngest of five and the only girl.  And to make life even more interesting, when I was four my aunt and my cousin Karl came to live with us so from that point on I essentially had five older brothers, two moms and my dad!

I'm not sure what the occasion is in this picture...perhaps there wasn't one, because I know that Mom would have us dress up for family photos now and then 'just because'.

I didn't have to do much to get that vintage feel in these images LOL.  I added a layer of Kim Klassen's 'Daisy' texture (from her new Downton Abbey Collection) at soft light, using a 75% opacity, and then brushed most of that off of our faces, leaving a soft vignette around the outside of the image.  I also decided to add the vintage frame to the image since the slides, and therefore the digital images, were missing that.

In this second image, probably taken about a year later, we have the five of us again.  This may actually be my favourite picture of the five of us!  Again I added a bit of a texture (Isobel, from the same collection).  As with the other image, I used a soft light blend mode and removed most of the texture from our faces before adding the frame.

It's going to take me some time to get through all of these photos and add keywords, etc. but as I'm sure you can imagine, it is going to be a labour of love!

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

I Need A Plan 'B'...

after

A few days ago I posted about an experiment I was trying based on something I had read online over a year ago.  Well, unfortunately either I am not remembering things correctly or I'm just unlucky. 

This is the piece I've been working on and after hours of piecing and wrestling with grass trimmer plastic to do the free motion quilting, it was supposed to shrink!  The small sample piece of wool that I tested shrank, but this piece, which is entirely backed in the same wool, unfortunately did not get the memo!  I used the sanitize cycle on my washer and the hottest setting on the dryer...You can be sure that if they were a pair of pants or a favourite sweater they'd now fit a Barbie, but sadly when I wanted, even needed, this to shrink considerably...nothing!  

I guess I can be happy that at least the dyeing process worked as I had planned.  If you compare the before and after images you can see that the after image, while still having a pleasing variations to the different shades of blue, has a more cohesive look to the colour.  But, instead of having a really interesting textural piece, I have a rather boring blue quilt...certainly not the 'fibre art' I was shooting for!

before

And so, I need to figure out a plan 'B'.  I have no idea where I will go from here...

What do you do with a very boring blue 'quilt' with funny plastic strips running through it?  I'll have to ponder this for a while and get back to you...

...'sigh'  

Decorative Doodling...

Well, I finally met the Art Queen herself, Joanne Sharpe.  It was great to meet her in person after a year long friendship on line through Facebook and Joanne's online classes.  As you can imagine, she's even more fun in person!

Kim, another online friend surprise me.  She had told me she would be there during the day and since I was going to be there in the evening, we would not be able to meet.  As it turned out, Kim also signed up for the evening class and we ended up sitting at the same table!

Then, as a total surprise, my friend Jan, a member of GOE (our fibre art group) was there too.  She was a my place on Wednesday and had meant to ask me if I was going but she got side tracked and never did...

Here's a shot of Joanne teaching us some new doodling ideas and a fun collective puzzle doodle that we created.

I started a lot of little pieces, playing with the ideas and media that Joanne shared with us. None of these are finished, but I thought I'd show you what I've got and then repost some time when I can show you the finished pieces.

And, I was able to pick up a copy of the new Somerset Studio magazine and Joanne was sweet enough to sign it for me! ...'sigh'

If you ever get a chance to take a class with Joanne, online, or especially in person, I can highly recommend it.  She's an incredible teacher!

Playing with Words

On Valentine's Day, our Letter Love 201 exercise was to write the words, "Love, love, love. Do what you love" (I can hear you from here Leah! LOL). So I played with different letter styles and had some fun.  I especially like what I came up with for the last word at the bottom. 

 I really liked how using the word to create the word worked for me, and I thought my clever (if I do say so myself) little hearts wrapped around the bottom border where fun. I also really liked the black and white, so I left it there...

Then, this morning I decided to play some more with this technique.  I wrote the words "Play with your words", again using words to create the letters.  I also hid a subliminal message in the page...

I like the ribbon effect that I'm achieving, and I had fun again wrapping it around the border.

This page didn't pop, probably because everything is the same weight and there's really not focal point, so I got the Tombow's out and created a shadow effect with this pretty aqua colour.  This close up shows the effect of the Tombow before the ink was activated with water, creating the sharper shadows (right and bottom) and the softer watercolour effect achieved by activating the ink with a water brush (left and top).

And here's what the whole page looks like: 

The hidden message...the large words obviously say "Play with your words".  The word play was made by repeatedly writing play as you can see in the close up above.  However, with is made up of the words 'but' (the w and i) and 'not' (t and h) and the word 'your' is made of 'with' (y and o) and your (u and r) and then 'words' is made by repeatedly writing 'food'.  My mother's in my head today. :o)

Now, you've all heard the expression "Leave well enough along."  I wish I had...

Perhaps if I go back and do some more, stronger watercolour in the negative space I can salvage it...or maybe I just put down the brush and walk away...

Five Layers of Fun...

...or perhaps a few more.

One of the lessons in Letter Love 201 was to try working with a dry brush technique while lettering with a paintbrush.  A few weeks ago I bought some liquid frisquet or frisket (*see end of post for more info) and I thought this might be a great place to try it out.

1. I started by using the dry brush technique to write the words.  Then I painted over them with watercolour and used a bit of Dylusion's spray (yellow) through a stencil.

1a. You can see the texture created by the dry brushing. Interesting to note that the  Dylusion's spray seemed to go through the frisket in some areas.

2. I added some white lines, using a Uniball Signo, around the letters to give them a bit more pop, particularly because some on the right side didn't show up too well (dry brush was a bit too dry).

3. Still using the white pen, I added the border and the white 'bubbles'.

4. and 4a. Show the highlights I added to the bubbles and the cross hatching in the border.

5. and 5a. The final step was to add another layer of texture by journalling in the red areas. I decided to use a very fine black pen (0.05 Micron) so that the journalling would be very subtle.

And here's the finished page:

*Liquid frisket, or masking fluid, is a combination of latex and ammonia that is used by artists to temporarily block out a portion of a painting until the areas surrounding it has been completed. It can then be gently removed so that portion can be painted or left white.

Masking fluid is similar in consistency and texture to paper cement/rubber cement glue. Once applied to the paper, it dries fairly quickly, developing a rubbery texture that you can rub off with your finger or an eraser.

Fingers Crossed...

My cat, Arbour, finally let me finish the quilting on this challenge piece and I finished sewing on the binding last night.  Now for the scary part...

This piece is an experiment, based on something I read online about a year ago.  At the time I thought it sounded interesting but didn't think I wanted to try it.  Unfortunately I now want to play with the idea but I don't recall the site, and haven't been unable to find it again.

Best I can remember, it involves sewing pieces of plastic grass trimmer cord into the quilt, which has a wool backing.  The next step is to do some immersion dyeing and then to wash the piece and dry it in the dryer so that the wool shrinks.  The plastic cord, of course,  will not shrink, thus creating interesting ripples...

I'm worried about going to the next step, but the quilt as it is now is not is very inspiring, so apart from hours of piecing and quilting (a great challenge, fighting the plastic cording...not to mention the three machine needles I broke), what have I got to loose?

As I said in the title of this post, fingers crossed...

I hope to be able to post about the next few stages soon.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Taking Time for Fibre Art

In addition to all of the art journalling I've been doing lately, my other passion is to 'doodle' with my sewing machine.  I started this piece almost two years ago when my friend Heather gave me an intriquing piece of silk.

I have been working on it slowly, adding hours of hand stitch as I showed in this previous post.  I'm still not exactly sure where this piece is taking me, but I knew that the next step was to add some free motion quilting of these fun little 'pebbles' to fill in the areas that didn't have any dye on them, and therefore didn't get hand stitched.

I love how the machine work flattens the areas between the hand stitch, allowing the hand stitched areas to come to the forefront.

With this step done, I now continue to look at the piece waiting for it to give me some idea of what is to come next...

Puppy Love...

Last spring, our neigbours got Buddy, a Shih Tze puppy.  From the first day they got him, as they tried to walk past our back yard (we're on a corner lot), Buddy saw Casey and just walk in through our fence to visit with her.  It was love at first sight for all of us!  Casey was about to turn 12, a senior for a dog her size, and here was this tiny puppy that just wanted to jump up on her and give her kisses...so adorable!

As you can see in the top left image, Casey was quick to get in on the pouncing fun.  Although we certainly see signs of her age at times, when Buddy's around Casey just becomes like an over grown puppy herself.  It's so fun to watch them wrestle and play and I really think he helps to keep her young.  However, notice the very centre image...that's Casey's way of imposing a short break to get a little rest.  Has she captured an adorable little sleep toy or what!

These days its a bit of a tight squeeze for Buddy to get through the fence, but they still play regularly, and right now they are loving the snow!

This photo collage was creating using the print module in Lightroom 4.  I then exported it to  PSE 11 where I added a subtle soft texture called Cora, by Kim Klassen, at a soft light blend mode and lowered the opacity.  I put a layer of the digital scrapbook paper with the musical notes over the lower part only, and again lowered the opacity to allow the text to show through.  The final step was to use a variety of heart brushes to stamp on the little hearts on the last image as well as over the text area.  Love is in the air...

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

Feelin' Groovy...

What a riot!  There's another hour gone...  Sipping my morning coffee, Simon and Garfunkel's 59th Street Band's Feelin' Groovy blaring in the background and armed with my Sharpies, I had a flash back to the late 60's as I played around with lesson 9 in Joanne's online class.  When I finished my name, I decided to cut it out, glue it onto a page prepared with black gesso and then using a white pen I wrote the lyrics to Feelin' Groovy around the outside.  There was still some space left at the sides, so some 'groovy' doodles, made with metalic markers, filled those up nicely.

I Really Need Some Discipline...

My plan for yesterday was to do some sewing.  I've got several art quilts in process that I really want to finish (honest!).

Enter Joanne Sharpe and her Letter Love 201 online class...  I know I can do these 'lessons' whenever I want.  I don't have to keep at them because as Joanne always reminds us, "You bought the book! You have these lessons forever!" But they're just so much fun.  I can just sit at my desk with my pens and watercolours and play all day.

After dinner I finally 'forced' myself to spend an hour sewing... and then you won't believe what happened... Yup, I was back at that damned desk with a pen in my hand...

Anyway, here are a couple of pages I did.  I love both of these quotes. In fact, if you look closely at the page with the white writing you'll see that I used these same quotes under the large focal word on the respective pieces.


Can you tell that Valentine's Day is coming soon?