Triple Heart

    Just a quick note to show I've not been idle. Even in the evenings I've kept my hands busy. It's great to have my hands working again!!! Doll Street offered a heart swap and these are my offerings. The faces are on Bristol Smooth Paper, stitched into a window in a stack of six fabrics that create the wonderful ruffle-y frayed edges. I also made mini flowers using the same stack of fabrics and a jewel in the center. Each heart is embellished with lace, hand dyed appliques and ribbon flowers as well as random bead accents. The final touch to each heart is a small medallion that simply says, "Create." I hope you like them.

Phish Stix!

I haven't been advertising my workshops well lately. Shame on me. But I've been working so hard creating them and having a blast doing it that I forget about everything else!

Mosaic: Angel Phish Jewel

I've been working on my newest class called Phish Stix, a mixed media class where instead of doing boring samples on squares that you can't really do anything with, we create little phigures on sticks that can stand on the mantle, or you can remove the stick and make a mobile or...

Victorian: Lady Phlora Phish

Lesson one works with paper variations, lesson two covers assorted styles of collage, lesson three free motion embroidery including handwork, and lesson four adds heat techniques to the artistry we've mastered in prior lessons and mixes things up a bit for extra phun.

Cat Phish Charlie

Phis Stix is currently running at Joggles.com - pop on over and Go Phish! http://www.joggles.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=75_110&products_id=23447.

Immerging

    Well it’s been nearly half a year since my last post, the dark side held me captive with health issues of one type or another most of it, but now I am looking towards Spring (I know it’s early but I am looking forward to the sun and my garden blooming). Till then I’ve been drinking oodles of tea.

    Low and behold this morning I heard of a new to me brand of tea and they were doing a drawing for a free gift of tea. I was reading this lovely post on a blog called “Eat Drink and Be Aware” and learned about the Steven Smith Teas. Anyone who’s been to home has seen my collection of teas, and some teas I have on hand only because they are a certain friends favorite, but most teas I buy are for me. It helps to have a son who works at Starbucks who gets to taste new Tazo teas and a DIL that loves to go out and try new flavors of everything else to introduce me to as well. And yes, I do need a larger shelf!

    Anyhoo, Eat Drink and Beware is offering that 1 lucky reader will win the “Steven Smith Teamaker No. 1626 Smith Variety Tea Pack,” which is 1 tea bag each of 12 different flavors so you’ll know what you love when you place an order. And by the way I think the thing that impressed me most is that Steven Smith was the founder of both Tazo and Stash teas, and several of each already occupies my shelf. Needless to say, this tea-totaler entered that drawing!!!

New Workshop!

    At last my Harvest Queen is complete. She's a 3-Dimensional mixed media canvas based textural collage and will be offered for the first time as an on line workshop at Joggles October 13th. Now I have to figure out how to mount her to a frame or shadow box because I can't wait to hang her in my kitchen! Well... as soon as those clouds across the moon dry completely anyway...

    She looks extremely complicated but only because there is so much going on. Broken down into steps and done bit by bit, almost any skill level may complete this project. I offer a template for the face as well as a face lesson so don't let that frighten you off. And you can always change the color scheme... So many options... so many dreams... I hope you'll come and play with me at Joggles.

Harvest Queen in Progress

    Lately I've been working on this canvas board collage creating the Harvest Queen for a new workshop to be on line this fall at Joggles. The Queen is a handmade "paperdoll" placed over the textured and colored background with 3-D hair and embellishmnets added. She still has a long way to go. She'll be holding a golden challice trimmed in copper, still needs her "make-up" including eyelashes, lipstick and nail polish as well as majestic eye shadow, and a few mini swarovski crystals on her tattoo. I expect I'll add more bits and bobs to her hair as I go as well because she just keeps commanding me to give her more. Courteously, as she is a kindly Queen, but she is still royalty after all. Who am I to argue?

I also think the harvest moon need a touch more red/orange 

and maybe a cloud or two drifting by...

Discworld Was Divine

    My Son Shawn and I took a week and went to Madison, WI for the North American Discworld Convention, stopping by my sisters near Chicago to brake up the nine hour drive to and from NADWCON. Miles and miles of windmiles are pretty but one's butt gets sore and eyes get really tired after so many hours, you know? I had created Errol, my Swamp Dragon as a prop for my costume and learned we had to do a mini skit for the masquerade. You can see Shawn's fabulous work below, his leather legionaires skirt, leather vest, leather pouch and leather wossname for his sword to slide into. Yes, it's a real sword, he collects them. He's also a leather smith and made his whole costume. But since his character, Sam Vimes, the Captain of the City Watch wears a steal breast plate he had a friend teach him how to make that out of real steel as well. He detests fake costumes. Shawn helped me char up my apron for Lady Sybil Vimes, who is an Aristocrat but thinks that's hogwash and would rather raise swamp dragons, which she does and lets the estate get over grown. My hair is a mess, I have charcoal rubbed all over my clothes and face and the apron is burned and torn. There is actual blood splattered on the apron from where I had cut myself in the hotel room so I flicked blood all over it when the bleeding wouldn't stop. This added not only color but nice character since swamp dragons are notorious for periodically blowing themselves up when they hiccup and such. We won an award for workmanship, and were quite thrilled since it was our first con!     Discworld is a book series created by Sir Terry Pratchett and quite a funny SciFi/ Fantasy realm where just about anything can happen and does. He offen takes a commonly know story like Shakespear's Macbeth, and tweaks the snot out of it and twists it all around so you don't know which end is up and you laugh so hard it really doesn't matter. I took a group of dolls to NADWCON made by different artists from members of DOLL STREET representing characters from any of the 40 books in the series and 1,000 attendees voted for peoples choice. There were some fabulous representations there. I felt quite honored when my Errol got the most votes. Needless to say getting that and the masquerade award helped me to enjoy NADWCON even more, but it was awesome all by itself. I suggest that you check out the books if you like humor and don't mind a parallel universe that may include wizards, witches, trolls, werewolves, vampires, and other human variations. It's a great way to talk about things such as racism when the group for dwarves is called the "league for equal heights." No one is offended and yet the point gets across to all the readers clearly. See what a mean? I suggest you might begin with, "Guards Guards" as a first book. You don't really have to read them in order, but it's a great place to start. And Errol is in it so he thinks so too.

Ta Da!

Presenting Errol! Finished in plenty of time to get a full nights sleep before packing 

and driving to WI and the Discworld Conference. He's currently hanging upside down to let his eye brows stiffen upright. He's on the back porch airing out from the spray sealer.

Errol has three different leathers, a variety of paints and his brows are made of Tibetan Lamb stiffened with Spiking Glue my son left when he moved out. His brows really are almost as big as his wings! This has been a blast to construct but my next dragon will be much smaller.