Play Time: Prayer Flags

I took another class on Sunday afternoon just for fun. It was taught by my friend Jami and was offered at Stampin' Cat Studio in south Salem. Here's Jami showing off her prayer flags (and that's sweet and funny Carole smiling in the background - take a look at the post she did on her blog about our class by clicking here).


Jami is SO generous with her supplies. She brought oodles of fabric, stamps, and embellishments.



By the time we actually got down to cutting and laying things out, we only had a couple of hours to work, so I didn't even get any where near being ready to begin stitching. I played around with an off white theme, added some punches of black, then played around with pops of color . I envision red stitching on several of the pieces, more bits and pieces of jewel-colored sari ribbon, and and and. But it's all for another day. Here's how far I got in the time I had. Of course, nothing is stitched down so EVERYTHING is subject to change!







It was a fun, relaxing way to spend the afternoon, that's for sure.

Time Makes All Things Clear

Back in October, I bought several boxes of vintage goodies from my friend Jami, also an avid collector of stuff (click HERE to see the post and photos of the treasures). Jami didn't want to be paid in cash, but rather in Curious Elements. She had carefully set aside some of her favorite found objects and asked that I create a series of Curious Elements for her. I've been working on Jami's pieces alongside the dozens I created for various holiday shows. Today I gave Jami her Curious Elements so I can now post photos of what I created. Here's the whole gang of Curious Elements that are now residing with Jami:


Individual photos of all eight of the pieces.









Jami's leftover bits that I wasn't able to incorporate into Curious Elements.


Today, when my Salem Art Group met for our December gathering, I handed Jami her box of Curious Elements and we all got to watch her open the eight little gifts.

Goodies Galore

My friend Jami has been on a mission to downsize her collection of vintage bits and pieces and I've bought items from her in the past. This was her final batch and she asked if I was interested. Well, hello, yes I'm interested! Here's some of the treasures Jami delivered to the studio on Monday morning. And guess what I did for the rest of the day? Yep, sorting and putting away all of those fun bits.









In return for all this goodness, Jami pulled aside some of her favorite elements for me to make her a series of Curious Elements using her prized vintage pieces. I'm excited to get started on these pieces for her.

Four Fabulous Females in February

Where to begin? My friend Jami contacted me many months ago and asked if I would like to participate in a show with three other women in February. The title of our merry little band would be Four Frickin' Fabulous Females (we later dropped the Frickin'). We met at a coffee shop and decided our theme would be flora and fauna. As you can see, that is a lot of F's! I started putting FFFFFFFFFFFFF in the subject line of my e-mail posts to the other ladies. The other artists are: Jami Moffet of Off the Hook Studios, Melinda Dalke of Day-Lee Mojo Arts, and Dani Mouser of Dani Photography. We decided the theme could be loosely interpreted as long as it involved some sort of flora or fauna.

Beatrix the Chicken

In addition to our individual work, we decided we would each create a 12 x 12 canvas using the same image. Dani, the photographer in our group, chose a photograph of her chicken, Beatrix. Now I have to tell you, I'm not a big chicken fan and dear Beatrix really flummoxed me. I spent way too long on my original attempts to create my required 12 x 12. I started out by doing a series of nine mini collages on my canvas. I worked and reworked the little pieces of art to no avail. I started to add some 3-D embellishments, but the piece seemed to be getting worse rather than better. So one day, I took my jar of molding paste and slathered a thick layer of goop over the entire canvas, burying the mini collages forever (but I know they're there). I enlarged my photograph of Beatrix 400 times and used just her head to draw into the molding paste. Once dry, I got out my acrylics and began adding some color. She's not my favorite piece by any means, but I have to admit she kinda grew on me.

The Finished Pieces

The titles of my pieces include: Fearless, Patience, Jump, Soar, Swoop, Emerge, Courage, and Twirl.

Breaking Free - One Final Piece

After we hung the show, there was space for me to hang one more piece. I decided to finish up a piece I had started a couple of years ago in a class taught by Lisa Kaus. It already had some bird imagery, so it qualified for the show. I added a few final embellishments, then added a light coat of wax to finish it off.






Hanging the Show

Cafe Noir

This is the space where our show is being held. The cafe is tucked in a small space just on the outskirts of downtown at 610 Marion Street N.E.




Please join us for our opening reception on Saturday, February 6th, from 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.!