a few more completed experiments/projects

my daughter asked me to add an embroidered name to the sock for the newest dog in the house

I finished this up yesterday afternoon

dark green rayon embroidery thread on the red and white dotted fabric

lookin' good


my daughter got a set of scrap booking scissors for Christmas (the kind that cut all kinds of fancy edges)

like with the colored pencils, she wanted some way to keep them organized and under control

while we were still at her house we went to the fabric store and she picked the fabric and I made the roll for her

(hey, I'm getting really good at this!)



bead work complete on another building!

the satin fabric for the metal siding worked pretty well

so now I could start on the next building -- if only I could remember what I did with the folder with all the drawings and notes that I put in a "safe place" when we cleaned up to decorate

this seems to happen to me every year about this time and it is really frustrating

I really need to have some organized place to keep things that doesn't need to be "cleaned and decorated" because other people might visit

anyway, as soon as I find the folder, I'll start on the next piece


I had started on this little "experiment" back around Thanksgiving, and finished it up when we were visiting at Christmas

the idea here was to test my idea about making the trees on the wall hanging actually stand out in a three dimensional look as well as seeing if I could get the "look" of both aspen bark and redwood bark

I'm pretty pleased with both

in the little picture you can actually see how the trees stand up from the background

so the next step is to experiment with the idea I have to create the look of leaves in the background of the piece -- I have airbrush ink in several colors and I'm going to try mixing it with some starch to give it some "body" so it will stay where I put it until it dries -- hopefully

we'll see how that goes

one more afghan square complete

I started a sort of sea foam green baby afghan just before Christmas -- it is one of those that is knit on the diagonal (started with 5 stitches, increased one stitch every row until there were 160 stitches on the needles) -- so yesterday afternoon I "turned the corner" and have started decreasing every row -- this part seems to be going a lot faster!


while we were away I did some design work for a new beaded piece -- looks like I'll finally be using that gift certificate I got for being a finalist in the Fire Mountain competition -- I'll need to order some beads to use for the design


So it's been an eventful year here at Esmerldas Studio -- we look forward to an even more productive year in 2010.

Happy New Year to you all -- party safely!!