Actually working on projects

And finishing a few. I'll leave out the mundane ones, like cutting out lots of clothing to be sewn at some later date and painting various furniture items. Today I finally got to a long-overdue project, one that came to me much earlier this spring in the form of a swap group. Several of us in my LikeMindedArtists fabric arts group decided to swap parts of our stashed items to see what other people would make with them. I've received several packets of fantastic, unusual, fun goodies that include fabric, fibers, buttons, sequins, lace, etc. With the commitments of school, however, I fell way behind (luckily there is now hard fast deadline--although it would be much nicer to stick with the program. I want to say sheers to the women who have kept up each month!) and finally today finished the first one.

I'm feeling a lot of pressure to paint (in preparation for teaching it this year!), but have a hard time finding things I want to paint. I would much rather take a picture of something than paint it. And many of the things that I would photograph feel rather daunting to paint. Argh. Today I looked to DJ Pettitt and Deryn Mentock's article in a recent magazine and found inspiration to combine the swapped goodies and some painting and came up with "Give". The work card is from a vintage vocabulary card set I picked up at a local thrift store and the background is painted. All the other items are from the swap group (thank you Pallas). I enjoyed mixing the colors, slowly building the glazes and paying attention to what colors work well, etc. The torso is lacking, but the face isn't too bad, considering I still haven't completed ten paintings in my life. Looking at it from a distance I can see that the value contrast in the face could be greater. I'll live with it for a while...



Another project I do have a deadline for is three fabric ATCs with a flower theme. I saw an article about using embossing powder as a resist medium and since I recently acquired carving tools I had to make my own stamps first. ;-) (While cutting flowers in the garden the other day I was pondering how my co-workers used to tease me about having exacto knives and box cutters and how I really do enjoy cutting things up. I suppose it was inevitable that I would eventually get a carving set. I really enjoy using them, too.) However, either I didn't use the right medium on the fabric (I used inks) or I need different embossing powder, but the resist part was a bit lacking. Now I'm trying to figure out how to finish them to make the floral theme a bit more obvious. The debate has come to stamping again or free--motion-stitching. I'll probably settle on a little of both, but we'll see. In the meantime here are the stamps and the practice fabric, along with the finished fabric piece.