A doorstop mosaic rock. This one has a frog, in water. I'll be doing a class on this in the Fall.

 Red Rose book, for a gardening friend, Deb. I used a napkin that I had wiped my paintbrush on, to cover the box. But first I put a layer of gold tissue all over it.

 Back and front. It says "The future is bought with the present."








Be sure to zoom in on the words, wisdom cut from magazine pages.
The cat says Meow. The orange writing says "this book belongs to Deb, and she wants it back!".
The vegetable paper covering the inside is a little bag from a  local store.

 Electric Motor book! Why not?
While cleaning the cottage, a virtuous act, I came upon this box. It once housed a motor kit, made by a grandson. Since it was nearly empty, and had been for a couple summers, I repurposed the box. When you do good things, you get the reward, a cool box to play with. Remember how your kids play with the boxes on Christmas?

Since it's such a masculine idea, (motor), I decided to equalize things a bit, and added butterflies on the first page and inside cover. Now I want to go out and collect all the cool patterned napkins I can find, it went on so nicely.

Next week I get to play with my peeps for 3 days, and make stuff. I must have done something else virtuous.

 This book is White Rabbit. It is made from plastic grocery bags ironed together, in a stack of about 5. I pressed them, trimmed and folded edges, and pressed again. The cover says White Rabbit, and Curiouser. It has 2 heart charms sewn on the front, and a heart embroidered on the back.

 This page is the reason for the name. It refers to an art quilt challenge I am entering.
You can see I folded up the bottom edge, to make a pocket, and to fit my pages.
Below is an inside page. I colorwashed the paper, and collaged torn bits of wrapping paper, patterns, and maps on them. Then I whitewashed them, enough to be able to write.

 Hello! I am back from vacation. Too bad it had to end. While there, I made several books. This one is for me. I used a Special K granola box as my cover. I stamped, stenciled, painted and drew on it. Also, I stuck down a paper doily, and a couple stickers with gel medium.

 This is the front and back covers. I carved my own stamps and used them on this, thanks to Leann, of the blog Leanderthal.

 This is the inside front. It says "Ready, set, Smile. Being a clown is hilarious, love it! make smiles from everything you know. Switch off time! You'll love giving your little artist muscle a sense of balance, 'cause the fun stuff just can't wait."
All the wisdom I gathered from cutting words from magazines.

 This is inside the first page. There is a Lady of Guadalupe, my favorite icon. And I used an antique wrapper from Rick Rack. Around it I wrote,"A reliable product. I have used my own personal Rick for many years, and he has performed admirably in almost all circumstances and conditions." (Rick is my sweetie of 45 years.")

More stamps I carved, and one my grandson did. And a cute little skull from a paper napkin.
My book also has tabs. One says Samuel Johnson, the next Road Trip, then a Gala color paint chip, and a couple strips cut from a watercolor painting.
This book project was the first, and you know I never make just one.
More tomorrow.
p.s. Remind me to show you my abstracts too.

Just got back from Art Camp. Five of my grandkids came to our cottage, and we did a lot of fun things. Mary and Beckie taught us to make Pysanky Eggs, a Ukranian traditional art. First you draw lines on the egg with melted wax. Then you dye the lightest color, yellow. Then you draw some more, and dye orange. Repeat with turquoise, then red. The final dye is black.
Then you use a little tool to blow out the egg contents, and rinse with vinegar water.
It was our first try, and we are very happy with the results.
I think we'll make this a family tradition, three generations of Pysanky artists.

 I'm going to show you my day yesterday. I went to Deb's house. First we painted newspapers. We left them to dry....

and we worked on some stacked, layered, velvet, felt, organza pieces. We piled them up, quilted them with designs, and burned away the parts we didn't want. This made the yellow felt look like Colby cheese. It was a fun experiment. The only cotton thread I had was gray, black would look better. Mine is the yellow one, Debs' is black, red and gray.

 Then we stacked the newspapers, with layers of organza, a map, and some magazine papers. We quilted channels all over them.

 Miss Bibbs, the cat, watched us manipulate the trash. She understands the impulse.

 After sewing, the channels have to be cut open. This was VERY HARD. My hands were limp puppies from the effort. I had 15 layers to cut through, without cutting the felt on the back.

 Deb found it hard going too. She used scissors on the whole thing.
This is her finished piece. She used paper as the top layer.











This is my finished piece. I used organza as the top layer. I will distress it more, as soon as I get a wire brush.

 This is what it looks like at 2:30. I burned out a lot more, following the quilting lines. I like this look more, it is almost lacy. See below for a shot that shows the holes.

This is an experimental quilt, not merely mental. I layered a bunch of synthetic fabrics, quilted the sandwich with lots of swirls and squares.
 Then I distressed it with a heat gun, melting the layers unevenly to expose the underneath colors and textures.
Then I used a woodburning tool to burn away parts of it. The edges have curled up, like a potato chip. I think I like it.
This is the way it looks now. I might  do more burning.

 This is how it looked after quilting, and before any heat was applied.

 This is after the heat gun burned away some of the layers.

A little something different today- a birdcage/card holder for a friends' wedding. My buddy Gail supplied the cage, and I added moss, excelsior, flowers, a nest, birds, and ribbon. The guests will slip cards into the wide slot above the birds.
It was fun to play with pretty things that are out of my ordinary media. But I have written down all the things I do,  that I could think of in a few minutes, and there are 40 different things. And I did not add anything about the stuff in this project. What should I call this? Flower arranging?

Tweet
This is an encaustic painting. I made it in Rob Kinseys' class at TwoTwelveArts. It is beeswax and resin, mixed with oil paint. The substrate is a piece of 2"x10".
I added embroidery on cotton fabric, to reference my fiber art. I also added my hand dyed cheesecloth fabric, buttons, wood circles, and wire shapes. I made a wire G-clef for the bird's song, and a curl for his melody. The bird is cut from a bit of fabric, and sits on a swing. The word says Tweet, the name of the piece.
If you look at the previous post, you'll see my first try at encaustic.

About 6 years ago, I made this encaustic painting. It is done with crayons instead of beeswax. I saw an article in an art magazine, and adapted it to do it my way. I used a heat gun made for rubber stampers, and a small quilters' iron. After some experimentation, I made 2 paintings and I was quite happy with the results. Finally I thought to frame this one, and hang it in my house. It looks like a bed of flowers to me, maybe Impatiens. Too bad I forgot to take a picture before the glass was put on. Sorry for the reflection.
I recommend playing with your toys in unintended ways.

 This is some of the fabric I dyed yesterday. I did 15 pieces. the results are fantastic. I'm sorry you can't see these in person, they are luscious. This brings the count to 169 items.

This is the fabric I am dyeing, in the batching stage. I'll show you after it's washed and dried tomorrow. A bunch of colors are done in each container, the results will be a surprise. I hope a good one.
With the windchimes I made, the count is up to 154. I know I missed a bunch of stuff, but that will do.
Today I am taking an encaustic class. I made a couple small embroideries to put in it, but they are not counted. Hope to have something to show from this later.
In the meantime, it is 94* here. If not for the wind, we'd be cooked. I worked outside in the shade for more than an hour, then I got hot.

 I also grouted these rock mosaics. These are fun to make. They are big enough to be doorstops. In fact the turtle rock is too heavy to be practical. It must weigh 15 lbs. The others are more reasonable, about 3 or 4 lbs.

I made this mosaic a while back, grouted it today.

Today I'll catch you up a bit on my artworks. This is a diaper cake I made for a baby shower.

I am doing my part to support the post office today. I am mailing 5 birthday cards, and 2 graduation cards. I am lucky to have loving family and friends, celebrating happy occasions.

We had a Campau family reunion on Sunday, and 50 family members and friends spent the day together. It was so lovely, happy smiling faces all around. The picture shows 5 of 6 siblings and some of their adult kids. The newest family members are 4+1/2 months old  and 2+1/2 years old. Although they won't remember it, I am glad they shared the day with the rest of us. We celebrated my upcoming 60th birthday, Father's Day, and family reunion together. We had people from Michigan, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Maybe next time the ones from Illinois, Texas, Colorado, and California will join us too.

This is the one I told you about. It has a lot of stitching that you can't see unless you look closely. The thread colors are subtle, not a term I usually apply to my stuff. I didn't want to upstage the art cloth I used for the background.