Catching Up

I'm back!

For the first time in a very long time we actually spent two weeks on vacation!! Weird ---

As we have done shows and traveled for those in the past few years, our "vacations" have usually consisted of an extra day after a show to visit a place we've not seen before or to visit briefly with friends.

This year, since I will not be doing any shows that I'll be traveling to, and because a dear friend was celebrating her 80th birthday, we made a trip to California.

The point of the trip was that she and I got to "PLAY"!

In this post I'm going to talk about about the projects that I've worked on the past two weeks, then in another post in the next couple of days, I'll talk about our travel "adventures".


Project #1: The Angels
You may remember this project from a while back.

Even though in general I was pleased with the way it came out, I have long maintained that doing faces, especially human like faces, in any medium is not my strongest suite. This piece was no exception, so I took it and the fabric markers I had originally used on it with me, hoping for some help with it.

The suggested fix? Darker markers to do the shading/highlighting of the eyes, nose and mouth and under the chins.

The result I think is much better.

Project #2: Rubber Stamping
That we should be messing with rubber stamps at all is sort of funny as neither of us have ever been all that into the whole rubber stamping craze, but when we recently got involved with cutting rubber stamps from our own drawings, we got a lot more interested!

These are the pair of zebras that I cut and the first stamps of each of them.

There's only one problem with this -- my original plan was to have two zebras that would FACE each other --- except I got the transfer to the rubber wrong, and so both of them face the same way ---- Pfffttt!!

Okay, that means that I need to cut one more, but I'll have to get another sheet of the rubber stuff to cut first.

Project #3: Rubber Stamping and a Painting Technique Lesson
You probably remember that I've been sort of giraffe crazy of late, and that has spilled over into this project too.

There at the top is the giraffe rubber stamp, and underneath is the stamp with the embellishment of an added tail and mane that are drawn on with a fabric marker.

Because my friend has taken all those classes in painting techniques that come along with a BA in Fine Art she gave me a techniques lesson on using various sea sponges to create the tree and the ground beneath the giraffe.

My plan next is to use thread and beads to further embellish this and to create something that can be hung on the wall from it.

And yes, I'm thinking about something that will involve even more stamped animals.

Project #4: Dye Workshop
Ok, perhaps we should have labeled this "playing with dirty soap"

This project involved squirting dyes into a pan of shaving cream to form patterns then laying the fabric over the pan to take up the colors and patterns -- sort of like you do with marbling techniques on paper.

After that you pick up the fabric and let it dry for about 24 hours before you wash out the shaving cream and residual dye.

And these are my pieces from the project.

My plan is to use them as parts of more stamping/embellishing projects in the future


The Shopping Spree
This was not a trip where I did a whole lot of shopping for anything.

I did get the chance to go into a quilt store in San Jose while we were there and picked up a piece of fabric for a wall hanging we are working on that is titled Breakfast on the Hoof.

The "cow print" fabric was just too cute to resist especially since they were having a sale.

And here's the next question --- which is more useful, the purchase or the bag?

Since I work with lots of media, the bag will be just as good to have as the fabric!

A Project Complete!
One of the things I can do quite well while riding for hours in a car is knit.

While we were traveling I completed the last of the mittens for this year's Mittnz challenge.

I'll be sending along my picture this week.

Since those were finished by the middle of the second day out, I started working on this year's sweater project. Because sleeves are usually the last pieces I knit and I usually dread them if they are just plain sleeves, I decided to knit those first this time. And I'm now within 10 rows of having both sleeves complete.

And there have been some other knitting experiments which I will be sharing in the next few days, incuding the purchase of some absolutely amazing silk yarn.

And so there we are.

I'm back, I played, and now there is a ton of laundry to do ---- more soon!