More Pretty Little Things

I've ordered copper tape from a supplier I found in Milton called Insurge- really nice guy on the phone, and he's cutting 3 widths for me - 1/4 inch, 1/2 inch and 1 inch. I have my soldering iron and have silver solder now, along with flux. The electronic techs at work think I'm a madwoman, but were very helpful sending me to suppliers. I found the tape on my own, though.

I've also joined my first ATC swap with the Fibre Art Traders group. It's an April Fool swap, so should be fun to do. It's a very talented group -Normajean Brevik, who leads the group, was featured in the last issue of Quilting Arts. Good company to keep - such terrific ideas every time I read the posts from the group. I'm learning lots and am so impressed by the creativity.

Above are a couple of fairly awful pictures of some ATCs I did. I had lots of fun with a soldering iron, dyes, and lots of glitzy materials at a retreat putting these together. The other quilters really wondered about me when I stepped away from my machine, grabbed an extension cord and took a soldering iron outside onto the concrete. All the ATCs on the left page and some on the right were from the one experiment, all cut up. I sent one a couple of weeks ago in a trade with a very nice lady from France. Her card has beautiful flowers on it and I'm thinking of spring now. Anyone interested in a trade, please let me know!

The Hamilton Quilters Guild rescheduled my Dear Jane talk for May (9th, I think), so there's little chance the meeting will be cancelled again on account of a snowstorm. I'm looking forward to it, because it's such a great group of quilters.

Quilter's Home

I FINALLY found the latest edition of Mark Lipinski's Quilter's Home mag at Chapters yesterday, after checking and checking and checking.....I love it because it's more than just pics of quilts. Mark's a riot, and it feels like a forum of friends. I just wish they'd let me subscribe. I'd save a ton of money, though Chapters would lose big time (how do you walk out of a bookstore without a book or mag???)

Today, I'm taking an English Paper Piecing workshop through my guild - mostly because my friend (and sometime student) Melissa is teaching. I really don't need another project, but it's something to add to the list of techniques I know.

Tomorrow, I'll be manning the Oakville Quilters Guild table at the MASS (Music and Art Shared Space) Festival at Oakville Town Hall. http://www.musicartsharedspace.ca/

Maybe I'll get myself up to the studio and do some dabbling before the workshop. I made a few collage backgrounds last week. They're dry and flat now. Not really sure what I'll do with them, but I'm sure I'll be cutting them up somehow.

Pretty Little Things

I got Sally Jean Alexander's book, Pretty Little Things, last week, and I've been playing with collages since. I've started a few, but have been practicing the Abracadabra Collage Technique. I've done one as an exercise that is very similar in colour and some techniques to her example in her book. I love the colourway, so decided to see what it looked like. It was lots of fun. I've GOT to order the silver glitter glass she uses. I haven't found any up here, so I'll just get it from the same supplier she lists at the back of her book. I have some clear, but the silver just looks so beautiful! I used a tiny artboard and over the week found some charcoal pencils, and got myself some kids' chalk and Crayola oil pastels. I haven't used the oil pastels yet, though. I plan to keep adding to it, and try out the beeswax I bought yesterday. I'll see if I can leave gold off this one. I don't think it works on this, though I love my Krylon gold pen.

Here are a couple of the ones I'd started previous to getting this book. I've added to each of them this week:

I used a transparency to stamp the image in the top left, and have some transfers from magazines onto packing tape. I think that's such a cool technique. I'd painted the background a couple of years ago. I've added some aged, torn, stamped paper and what looks like little envelope since. I think this one is a good candidate for coating in beeswax because of the colours. I love the pic of the lady. It was from the promotional material for an opera company; she looks so confident and somewhat unapproachable. More work to be done on this one.. I think I need to make it darker still. Maybe some sheet music....

I did this one for fun, and just in time for Valentine's Day.

I've got a huge pile of emails from the lists I'm on, and in doing some cleaning today came across one from a French CQ list, from a lady asking if anyone wanted to trade ATCs. I got one ready and into an envelope so fast my head spun. If I didn't do it RIGHT THEN, then it wouldn't happen at all.

I even save the darned baby wipes I'm using to clean up after myself. This looks like little butterflies or birds to me. No way am I throwing it out - I know I'll find a use for it:

Really, how cool is that?

Off to play some more. A friend and I saw the opera Lady Macbeth of Mstensk put on by the Canadian Opera Company last night, and I'm trying to duplicate the floor of the warehouse, if you can believe it. All dark browns, black and grey, with some lovely ochre. Great opera, by the way. You don't really come out of a Shostakovitch opera humming tunes, but we really did laugh far more than I would have expected to. P and I have a sardonic wit, so had lots of fun with it.