Card Trade

Doreen and I have been involved in trading cards since we both like paper and fabric! I wanted to wait to post some pictures until she got her parcel.

Our theme was to use shaving cream, fairies, and artist choice.


For the first card, I had great fun using shaving cream! I used some inks in the shaving cream and then I stamped the image. I also used inks to color in and some pastels for the skin coloring.






















































For the second card, this is made with paper fairies built in layers and then the backdrop is hand dyed silk.






























And, I love the 3D effect, so I tried this with a commercial print fabric.


































This last fairy wasn't apart of the trade. Just another I did, it has a backdrop of silkfusion and silk.

Only a Mother Could Love..

Yum! I guess this is what a person with a fiber fetish would say! I got this great deal...this is what 50 yards of cheese cloth looks like. But, I must say it's better than cheese cloth. I'm thinking it's more a long the lines of scrim. I've bought the cheese cloth from the grocery store and this holds much better. We have this shop near by called The Rag Shop and they were going out of business so I bought it for .60 a yard. Do you think this is a good deal? I'm thinking it was. It was originally $3.00 a yard but I would never pay this. It dyes beautifully and I love the texture. I can't wait to put it to good use!

Black White and Blue

As you all know, I was on the quest for some "silver grey" for my silk fabric. Well, I did end up with quite a bit of pink, which will ultimately be turned into something else. I did figure out that you get a really beautiful "grey" when you dye blue really light. I'm thinking I like this. Also, it was funny, I was in a rush to finish up some of my black and grey combo fabrics and I didn't have a midrange grey, didn't feel like dyeing anymore, so I just thought I'll use blue. So, I'm digging the result of using greys and blues together. Here are some of the fabrics I dyed...

Dyeing Commercial Fabrics

Remember the black and white fabric in a prior post? I thought it would be interesting to dye on some black and white fabric combinations. I'm thinking next time I will use really bold colors. These colors are kind of mid-range.

Winner

My son picked number 2 which is Sequanna. Please email your info and it's yours!

M.Roberts Blog Back in Action

I just wanted you all to know that one of my favorite quilt artists has her blog back in action. Margaret Roberts was on one of the earlier covers of QA and does some of the most incredible landscape quilts. Here is here blog and here is here website.

Card Addict

I've been finishing up a couple of cards for Doreen for a swap that we do together. She just makes some of the most wonderful cards and I'm so glad I found her through blogland! We both love to do cards and work with fabric. I wanted to show you a small tag that I worked on in addition to some cards. I got this really tiny fairies to make 3D from. They are called 3D Mini. And, can I say, boy, were they tiny!! I put a quarter next to it so you can see how tiny I had to cut them. Quite a challenge! I thought that they would be great to do as little tags.

Also, I wanted to show you the lovely cards I received from the SurfaceDesign trade for color composition. They are all just so well made. Thank you ladies! From, left to right, they were from Norma, Judy, Carol, Jan.

A Give Away

I know it isn't too big of a giveaway, but I have much more "pink grey" fabric then I need. So, my mistake is your reward, if you so desire. This is silk. Remember the last post? Well, these two pieces are yours, just leave a comment by the end of Sunday, if you want them. If more than one person wants it, I'll draw a name. And, if nobody wants it, I'll experiment redyeing. So, leave a comment if interested. I'm thinking you have somewhere between 1/2 yard and a yard of fabric.

Since when did grey become pink?

I've been dyeing up some grey combinations...here are just a few pictured. I used two different types of dyes. One was procion and the other was sabracon. The sabracon seemed to turn the silk pink (big raspberry). I really wanted this light grey. So, now I will just use the procion to get the light grey. I am wondering if it turned the silk pink because it was close to a year old or if it just doesn't like silk. Now, I have this load of light pink which I am not sure if I am going to try and redye or not. It is kind of interesting on the one piece how I got red and green in there...wierd. I guess this just means I stick to procion with black dyes. It didn't seem to have an effect on cotton.

Arthur Rackham

My next project is an art quilt based upon an Arthur Rackham illustration. This is going to take me a long time. But, it is something I really want to do. So, I hope you will all enjoy my walk through the process. This draft is to test out how I like certain colors and how to go about doing them. I won't be using this particular one because I don't like how the hand turned out on the blue fairy. But, this was a great start and I'm loving how the water color look is going. I don't mind that it runs off in certain areas because the fairies will eventually be cut out onto another piece. I also learned that when doing this I should start out with the lighter colors first then move the darker colors. I love the look of the black fairies hair but I don't like how it kind of has a little bit of a muddy look in small patches. So, on my next draft this should be remedied. I sure hope I'm not going to have ten drafts. I had another version with inks but this looked really bad, so this is the second draft. This image is copyright free so I'm trying to be true to it. I love Arthur Rackham illustrations they are so detailed. This is also just the smaller part of it. The biggest fairy is seperate. So, stay tuned for more as I slowly progress. After I'm done painting all the images, then I need to thread paint them all. Hopefully, I'll be done by next year .

Tag Book

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of taking a class to make a mini-photo album scrapbook style. This is the first time I have taken a class in scrapbooking. I thought it was really interesting and boy do those gals work fast! It was a great experience and I learned about some "tricks of the trade" and some must have tools. Once a quarter, they have this get together for weekend retreats, where they scrapbook into the wee hours of the night, quite the die hards! I hope to take some more classes in the future in making little books and cards. I still have to put in the photos of course. I was really interesting learning how to do little pockets, tags etc.

Charm Clock

Here's my finished latest creation...a charm clock...improved from my first test.

Doreen and Paposue

You two are winners, Doreen and Paposue. Papoosue..could you send me your email address? Congratulations! I hope you like the fabric.

Joanna

Fabric Purchases

I recently bought these two fabrics. Although I don't often buy commercial prints much anymore, I couldn't resist these two. I'm thinking of dyeing them and seeing what happens. I really like this computer print..isn't it interesting? What is also interesting in the written text fabric is that it looks a little smudged where the change in color on the cloth appear. This must be intentional and it does make it look more authentic, both are interesting prints. And, since you were so kind as to read all my thoughts today, if you are one of the first two to put into your comments, "send me some", I'll send you some of the text fabric, around a fat quarter size, since I got a few yards of it on sale.

All Time Favorites

Are you all ready for my all time favorites? I hope that you have all enjoyed looking at my reflections back and haven't been bored. I hope now in the future to spend more time on larger compositions. I'm in the middle of projects but have a great idea for a quilt. I really hope it can turn into something great. As I get to a stage where I think it might happen, I'll post pictures. My problem right now is thinking about how to do a backdrop. This will be an art quilt but I don't want it to have a one piece single hand dyed fabric as a backdrop. So, I'm thinking how I will do this.


Now on to my favorite PC, this is by Carol Straus. And, the reason it's my favorite, if you can't already tell, is all the incredible detail that is in this little card. This is all free-motion stitched..no embroidery machine. Check out the little souls of the little elves shoes, which are a different color. It amazes me. Also, the tree is made with felt and free motion stitched. The black foilage you see in the backdrop is thread..free motion stitched. This gives me something to aspire to.




















Here is my favorite PC, it's based on a painting by Franz Marc, who is one of my favorite artists. I just love the color play and how it came together. If you've read my blog in the past, you know how certain colors meant certain emotions to Marc and I really love the depth and thought that went into how he created a piece. It was funny when I was creating this PC, I didn't have to look to far to get the right color combinations in my dyed fabric stash...because they were colors that I loved.

My Favorites

I've shown you my top ten I've received. And, here are the top ten I've made... I'll save both my all time favorites for the next post.

Cool Website

I really thought this was really interesting. It's an artist who works with construction paper. I found the link on PaperFriendly's web blog.
Check it out!

Also, check this out aren't these little men really cute? Doesn't he look like he's breaking a sweat?

A Look Back

It's been over two years since I began making postcards, so I figured I'd take a look back and show you my top 10 best I've received and top 10 best I've made. I'll start with the ones received. These are in no particular order and it was difficult to choose just 10. There were many more I wanted to include but I also wanted to limit the pictures. I am showing you the 10 and leave my all time favorite for a later post. I also challenge all of you to post your own favorites and those you've received. It's a great reflection back and I know I love to see what others have done.



From Ann:
















From Francoise:



















From Hetty:




















From Heidi





















From Michelle:
























From Carol:























From Kim M:
































From Kerri:




















From Patti:

















From Jan Z: