Don't you just love leaves this time of year?

I am mourning a little... the rain and wind of the past few days has taken a toll on the pretty leaf population in my part of the world. We had an excellent year for them and the maples planted around my property have finally begun to color up the way they should. With the hickory that grow here naturally it is a great combination... like summer sunsets that last for a few weeks.

I should have found time to do this craft with the kids earlier this year but we had an exceptionally busy fall and I didn't. A few years ago (pre child #3 who is now 3 years old!) I gathered some leaves while they were still supple and pulled out the craft acrylic paints and the vinyl table cloth and the boys and I went to town. We painted on the leaves and then used them to 'print' with and the boys used the leaves themselves as paintbrushes. They had a great time and made some interesting art. As always, when I do this sort of thing with them I have to make my own (so I keep my nose and influences out of their art!) I chose to print with the leaves on pre-made blank cards. These are a few of the printed cards I have left. I have used many of the best ones as greeting cards over the years.

An interesting thing happened when I had printed with the same leaf for a while... the older, drier layers of paint on the leaf would soften  from the wetness of the new layers and peel off when the leaf was printed with again. This gave a layered and ragged look I was not expecting (see the tulip poplar print below on the right).  I really liked it and there was no real way to 'control' the effect which made it exciting and organic, if not a bit frustrating at times. I think if I were to do it now I would use plain card stock 'blanks' cut to a size that would allow me to mat each print with colored card stock before mounting it on the card.

It is a fun way to make yourself some lovely greeting cards (somehow pretty fall leaves make for a  lovely condolence card) and celebrate the changing leaves in your town... and make the look last a bit longer too!

Come back and visit soon for another card making idea... this time with all that 'kid art' you don't know what to do with but can't bear to get rid of!

Tangling the month away

I have been keeping up fairly well with my Art Every Day commitment, even if I don't post about it everyday.

Check out all the fun everyday this month at Creative Every Day

Some days it is sewing for 15 minutes, some days it is half a zentangle piece, some days it is more... but it IS happening!  The past few days it has taken the form of working on an entry for this week's zentangle challenge over at The Diva. She also has a fabulous giveaway going on until Nov 30th so be sure to check that out for all sorts of tangling goodies. I was really intrigued by this weeks' challenge which is to use three different geometric shapes as a string to fill in with new-to-you patterns. I had already been trying to incorporate at least one new tangle pattern into every piece and I am always stuck for string inspiration when starting a new work so it seemed perfect. It was harder than I thought! I guess there are reasons I gravitate toward certain tangles (I like the way they come out when I do them) and away from others (my results with them are horrible!) I was also having a couple of off days, even things that work pretty well usually were not coming out well. So here is my entry for the challenge, it is also Art-Every-Day-Month #15.

I like certain things about it... its regularity, its ballance, but it seems pretty constrained and the 'string' is still VERY obvious. There is no overlap in the pattern areas... for all of it's order and neatness, it is a little bland.  All the tangles are new to me, learned for this challenge: waves, claws, scrawlz, quiltz (my version), petunia, verdigogh. I did resort to using an aid to get nice circles since it was a big element. I hadn't been happy with my close-but-no-cigar attempts on other tiles. I do like some parts of the other attempts, AEDM13 and 14 respectively. New tangles include: knit, propell, floatfest, oke, whirlz (LOVE this one!), pokeroot, phud, verdigogh, misst, waves, flez, claws, petunia (can't you tell I've been visiting Helena's flickr stream!) and Fricle.

See, lumpy circles, odd shapes, wavy lines that are supposed to be straight... just 'off' for me. I almost think it would be better to do the shapes 'wonky' on purpose and not try to get them super regular and miss. I think I will try that next because this type of string is sort of an interesting challenge.



The final piece was one done on Friday and Saturday (previous to the posting of the new week's challenge) and inspired by the cave formations I saw on a field trip with my middle son on Friday morning. Three of those patterns are new to me and I am not even sure if two of them are patterns I saw somewhere, or something that morphed into being from my own head (the far left filler and the filler in the left hand 'drip'). I guess the left hand drip is sort of 'black pearls' in a grid and the other may be sort of a combination of archer and flukes. The others moving to the right are Sanibelle, marbles, tripoli and echoism. The other at the top left I really like and use all the time, but I can't recall the name right now. I suppose I should take the trouble to find out!

So that is what I am up to so far this week. The rest of the week will be devoted to getting ready for the holiday week coming up here in the US... and tangling and sewing when I get the chance of course!

Fabric choices and a technical quandry

Good morning! I have hexie news today! I am within a few green hexies of finishing the body of my small hexie project.  I need to choose a blue for the border, sew in a few blue hexies to fill in and then cut and sew on the border fabric. First things first... WHAT blue to use? I have, um, a few to choose from since blue is a favorite color around here and I have been collecting 30's repros for a while...

I have the blue versions of both the green fabrics I used (one is in the upper left corner and the other is not shown) as well as the blue version of the red flower centers (upper right corner). All of the fabrics shown have a very small second color to them, either red or yellow, pink in one case. I think from the photo the upper right corner fabric is winning out in my opinion. It has the right value to compliment the body of the quilt. I also like the  one at the far right and the one on the far left bottom. What do you think? I think I will look at them all together for a while, get your opinions and let it sit before I make a choice.

Now for the technical questions... all you hexie makers out there need to tell me how to proceed! I want the yellow flowers to have a complete (or pretty close) green hexie border around them surrounded completely by blue. I had planned on making the top and bottom edges straight (sewing across the points of the straight line of hexes) and filling in the 'dent' in the middle of the far right and left edges with three blue hexies. I think I will also need two blues in each corner to bring that out square. Then what? Should I unfold the seam allowances of the outer hexies and then sew a straight border strip on each edge? Should I just bag the whole sewing thing and applique the top onto a large piece of blue? Clearly, this is my first hex project and I am unsure how to finish it off! Advice please!

If you want to see what everyone else is up to this week hop on over to Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday. 

More Art Every Day

I have been enjoying having a small daily goal, artwise lately. I have gotten some exciting sewing done on current projects, but as always, it is an 'in progress' thing so not much to show yet. I have been keeping up with tangling too and this is the result. In the last post I included a drawing that I wanted to add color to. This is the colored version and the black and white...

  

I added the puddle at the bottom and I like  Dragnoaire as a leaf.  Then there are Art Every Day drawings 8, 9 and 10.  I am happy with the first two but the one from today (#10) is a bit of a ramble, no real focus or point to it. I feel that way a bit today, lots on my mind, lots I should be doing but little focus available to actually be doing it. 

I have a busy weekend ahead I hope to keep up with my art commitment. I will likely post on Monday with a weekend review.  Pop on over to Creative Every Day and see what others are up to. 

Art Every Day #4,5,6 and soon to be 7!

Gee, I have a little catching up to do!  Art HAS been happening every day, I just haven't had time to post about it.  Mostly I have been snatching moments to work on ongoing sewing projects, one in particular which you can see here. The rest has been learning new tangles from looking at a few other "Art Every Day" entries!  So here are the ZIA results of Art Every Day.

Nov 4 2011

Nov 5 2011

Nov 6 and 7

This one will get color today, but was drawn yesterday.

I also managed to sew some yesterday and get a few blocks done toward finishing my Crumb Quilt "Heart of Gold". I have also thought of changing or adding to the name and calling it "my quilting life... so far" because there are little bits of SO MANY other quilts that I have made. It is fun to go through and name off the quilts from which the scraps came and try to recall when they were made. Here are the latest blocks and a photo of the final layout of the body can be found here.

So that is the progress on AEDM over the weekend. Hop on over the Creative Every Day and see what other creative artisits have been up to so far this month.

Finally progress on the design wall!

Yea! I have some progress to show on the design wall today! I have been finishing up the blocks for the crumb quilt and finalized the layout of the main body of the quilt and decided on a border treatment. I can't wait to start sewing the body together! First I am trying to finish up more of the 4" blocks I need for the border. This is what the layout looks like so far.

The final 8" block and a few 4" I will add to my next post about Art Every Day (I have some catching up to do!). I can see the light at the end of the crumb tunnel... although I can't say that I'm all together happy about that. There is something about these little blocks that are SO fun to make!  Maybe I'll try to lead a class on it or something... it does seem to be catching on!  It will be a releif to get it off the wall and out into the natural light to get a decent photo of it! Hop on over to Patchwork Times to see what else is going on design wall-wise this week in blog-land.

Art Every Day #3

So far so good with Art Every Day Month. I did some hand sewing on the hexie project I showed yesterday a bit today and did a couple of tangles while on the phone and sitting at the table with my daughter who wanted to draw/paint (if I don't sit there other things besides paper become her canvas... table cloth, skin... you get the picture). Not much new to show on the hexie project, but the tangles turned out OK. This one was inspired by one of the entries into the Punzel challenge over at I am the Diva a couple weeks ago. I had flipped through the slide show (here) and saw a take on it that made an impression. This version is still a bit awkward, but it would improve in its general line if I did it again I think.

Then I got really carried away with my paints. I do really like the direction this one is going in. It is more the style I would like to achieve in the range and type of tangles used. I may fiddle with the color a bit more and add some pencil shading, or I might do another one and start from scratch! I am using Peerless Transparent water colors and I love them! The background around Purk came from another visual impression from browsing the internet today. The Enthusiastic Artist posted her AEDM post for today which included this tangle, Jalousie. It came from yet another Zentangler, Stephanie Kukla. What WOULD we do for inspiration without the internet!

That is all for today. We shall see what tomorrow brings (and Saturday should be great since I have a 3.5 hour time slot to fill while I wait for my son to finish his Saturday enrichment class!). Catch you later.