My First Stuffie!

I created this for an exchange on the Embellished Circus Yahoo Group. It's my first stuffie and all made by hand - no machine. My sewing machine scares me, so I rarely break it out. The face was a rubber stamp that I stamped onto a piece of white paper and then scanned into my computer. I shrunk it down to the size I wanted and then printed it on an Avery Inkjet T-shirt Transfer sheet.

Thanks to Judi on EC, after ironing the face onto the lighter fabric, I made a circle out of it by cutting a piece of cardboard to the size circle I wanted, "painting" starch around the edges that stuck out from the circle, folding those edges over the cardboard and ironing them down. I then removed the carboard and voila! a circle sans frayed edges!

I used the star shape in Microsoft Word for my pattern and though you can't really see them here, there are beads and sequins sewn on the star's rays and around the face. I hope Aimmer likes it!

Fire

My parents' house caught on fire last week. They have a large house filled with many collections. Though the fire didn't spread far, the smoke did, covering everything in a layer of sticky, smelly black soot. Walking in the front door is like walking into a nightmare or horror movie.

The only saving grace of the whole thing is my parents' wonderful neighbors who have been incredibly kind and generous, providing them with a place to sleep and lots of food, as well as emotional support. Thank goodness for kind people!

I did this quick watercolor sketch from memory my second night there. The hallway walls where the soot is dripping down in streaks were the most upsetting to see.

Tiles

I painted these tiles at my friend Meredith's store, The Clayroom, in Portsmouth, RI. It's a great place - nice and big with lots of fun items to pick from, as well as tons of colors to paint with. I'd like to do a couple more in this elephant theme. I have no idea yet what I'll do with them. Suggestions are welcome!

Sketchbook

These are sketches of my cat Osiris. He gets into the strangest positions, sometimes we're sure he's dead. But then he moves.

I love drawing the cats. I could do it all day.

Comp Art Journal Page 4

I think this is my last post for the day. For some reason, I really like this journal page. I bought a set of metallic poster paints at Michael's for $2.97. I used one of the shades of gold & copper here, kind of messily. Then, based on the suggestion of someone in the CompositionArtJournals group, I finally broke out the Caran D'ache water soluable crayons I've had but never used. I made the circles and then went at them with a wet paintbrush. I'm happy with the effect, though in this scan, you can't tell the paint is metallic.

Elephant deco

Maggie (lil' Frank) sent me an elephant deco, because she knows I have a thing for that particular pachyderm. There were a couple pages already done in it, and they were wonderful. I hope mine is up to par. Now I just need to find someone to pass it onto. Any takers? (Update: this deco has been passed onto an ECer.)

This was an ATC I sewed, but was actually a little too big to be traded (I didn't plan for the fabric going around the edges). I'm glad it found a home in this deco.

Comp Art Journal Page 3

This is one of the pages in my journal. I think I'm going to decorate each page and then write in it later. By the time the paint dries, I've ususally run out of time to write anyway. This page was done with layers of acrylic paint and then the leaves drawn on with a black Sakura micron pen (.03). I colored in the leaves with Sakura gelly roll pens. This page was inspired by the very first deco page I've ever done, which I will post momentarily.

Composition Notebook Art Journal

One day I was surfing the web and came across the website of Kathleen Marie Pequignot. She does a lot of cool stuff, but what really caught my eye was her composition art journal. She took one of those cheapie notebooks with the black and white cover and turned it into an amazing work of art. I joined the Yahoo Group "CompositionArtJournals" and bought my own notebooks. This is the cover.

Paintings

These are my latest watercolor paintings. It felt so good to paint again, instead of these random little projects I had been working on. The elephant, especially, was very satisfying to work on.

First Time

This is my first ever blog entry. I thought this would be a good way to post artwork for family & friends to see. And I am envious of all my Yahoo Group friends who have these things. So, here goes.