On this wintery day filled with snow, I leave you with this one summery thought... Like the card says, "delight in the little things".

No prompt today just some knitting. I finally broke down and bought a new wool pea coat the other day. My old one was just too big after my weight lost last year. Well a new coat deserved a new hat so two nights ago I started this and knit as I watched a little TV. These whip up in no time and I just finished it tonight. This one is sure to keep my ears warm on the beach when we walk the dogs. :-) Maybe I should knit the dogs some sweaters!

Prompt for the day is: Flowers

OK, OK I looked out my window and there are NONE, of course not, it's January! What I did see was my poor, shivering cold Rose of Sharon just waiting for the Spring to warm her up. (How I know it's a "her" is beyond me but she is a her and ready for Spring. ) So I snapped a pic of my inspiration and created a card with water colored paper, stamped flowers, rick-rack and a sewn on metal leaf charm. I haven't given is a sentiment yet, nor does it have a purpose other than just plane fun paper. Now while we are on the subject of paper art... I may be a little slow on the take up but I finally figured out why this sudden urge to create in paper.,. not much time to create and paper takes less time and planning for me then fiber art! Duh! Ah well perhaps I need to think about taking on a larger project in fiber but giving myself more time. This I will ponder but for now I'm having fun with paper. :-)

It's my friend Wendy's birthday soon so I made her a card. This is all the art that I can squeeze into my busy day today.

I love Halloween so when I saw the Stampington had a call for Halloween cards I had to give it a try. The theme is Hitchcock Horror so I picked Psycho. Oh what fun it was to make this and pay homage to the Master of Suspense a.k.a. Alfred Hitchcock.

No prompt for today just plain fun in the classroom with my students. I had two classes at Beautiful Impressions in Westport, CT today. Joyce, Holly, Laurie and Debra are pictured here with some of the art from our class. Sharing my art knowledge is the very best way I know how to create. :-)

Prompt for today was: "Home"

OK, OK I confess... this was a project that I started 4 years ago. If you have been in my kitchen you know that I love chickens and roosters, they are everywhere. I purchased this print from Michael's but didn't want to just frame it. I wanted it to look old and weathered. I used a wrapped frame and gessoed it black then painted it with black paint. I distressed then decoupaged the print to the wrapped canvas then had my husband cut some wood trim so that I could give it an inside frame. Well I couldn't decide on a color for it at the time so it made it's way to the cellar and there it sat until this week when I rescued it and finally painted the wooden inside framing trim red. I rather like it and the red was just the right color for this. Jeez I'm glad all my projects don't take this long to create. ;-o

Ah, today is the anniversary of hubby's an my first date so my art for today is the card that I made him. We still celebrate even after all these years, isn't that too cute?

The prompt for the day is: WORDS!

I've been looking forward to this prompt since I wrote it down and put it in the bag. So here goes, the Mystery Poet returns!

HURRY EARTH

Today is dreary, dull and drab,

the sky looks like a granite slab.

I check the ground for signs of life,

all I see is snow and an icicle that looks like a knife.

When will the daffodils and crocus rise?

When will the earth be warm with sunny skies?

I can't wait, my bones do ache,

please hurry earth and wake, waKE, WAKE!

Prompt for the day is, "finish something"

On one of the many, many trips that I made to Florida this past year I began this little dalah horse ornament with the intention of having it on our Christmas Tree this year. Well that never happened and I don't know why because it literally took me all of 10 minutes to finish this sweet little guy. I got the pattern from the book, Scandinavian Needlecraft by Clare Youngs.

Prompt today was "Useful".

I had made several of these little bags at Christmas time but had never gotten around to making one for myself. Everything was cut out and ready to stitch so I made one for me today. This little bag has a unique little closure that keeps my change tidy in my purse. I decided to add the tiny little flashlight to my bag just as I had the ones that I gave away as gifts.

First prompt was "pink", say no more, I knew what to do but frankly I'm quite confused where all this paper art is coming from all of a sudden. Hmmmm didn't know that I had it in me. Well I'm having fun with it and letting it run it's course. What to do with all the fabric in my studio is the question... :-)

The first prompt that I pulled today was "reuse". I stopped right there and knew immediately what I would do for art. My art for the day is actually yesterdays ATC. Ahh but it needed more any way. So my ATC is now "reused" into a greeting card. Hmmmm seems this is my year for paper. Perhaps this one should be submitted to Somerset too?

Words for today: Spring, Charm, ATC

If you look really, really close you can see the robins in the trees just waiting to welcome spring in this ATC (Artist Trading Card). After all the snow we've had I can't wait to welcome spring myself. :-).

Words for today: Travel, Brown, stamp

This card came together in nothing flat. I love the bike stamp and the pussy willows added some nice interest. I like this one enough to send it along to Sommerset so I'm saying Au revoir and sending it off in the mail today.

You just can't beat Mother Nature for artistry. Even if you don't like the snow what's not to love about the grandure of these huge hemlocks humbled by Mother Natures idea of a play date. WOW! It's so beautiful the dogs and I stayed out and played for a very long time and had fun time frolicking in the white stuff. NOW this is true art! And I was patient enough to catch a pair of cardinals on the feeder, your just gotta love um.

Things never quite go as expected but sometimes we have happy accidents. One of the marble bodies didn't quiet come out as expected so I made a second and am quite happy with the results. I call them Solder Syrens Of The Sea. I'll be teaching this class at Beautiful Impressions in Westbrook, CT on January 22. The website for sign ups is: www.beautiful-impressions.com if you are interested. :-)

Today we have two part art... Whaaaaat? Well I have drying time involved in this project and so I've completed stage one of the project, tomorrow I'll finish and post stage "done". These are samples for my "soldered collage people" that I'll be teaching at the end of the month. See you tomorrow with my finished project.

No prompts needed today, my friend Charmion (what a beautiful name) is hosting a button fairy trade in my group Fiber Art Traders, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FiberArtTraders. My sweet little fairy creation will be circling overhead until she's assigned a home to go to in the trade. :-)

My art for the day is a "rescued" experiment. My friend Dee Dee and I experimented with Beryl Taylor's reverse applique technique from Beryl's "Mixed Media" Art Quilt Video from Interweave Press. OK, OK I'll admit that I don't have the longest attention span and that I do like instant gratification, so when my project didn't seem to be working out I set it aside and opted for another project. Well you can call me a lot of things but a quitter isn't one of them, soooooo I found new hope in the little applique this morning, when I looked at the piece it resembled the letter Q, with that in mind I beaded, water colored and stamped paper, banged some metal and quilted... WAA-LAA! Here's my project of the day with a few detail shots below. Ahhh the sweet smell of success.

Today's art is one of my favorites... BOOKS! This one is jam packed with blank drawing paper to be journaled or doodled in. I began with corrugated cardboard and exposed some of the "waffle". It was painted with two different colors of Lumiere paint. I rubber stamped embossed the shell design on some purple velvet and stitched it to some water colored paper that had been salt treated to give it spots. I beaded the shells (what I've dubbed 'dragons tooth') and beads to the top left corner then lined the inside cover with some awesome purple and green batik. I then bound the pages and cover with purple braiding cord that I knotted and decorated with another dragons tooth and beads at the ends. I've made dozens of these books and each new one becomes my favorite. :-)
To heat embossed velvet simply select a simple deeply etched rubber stamp. Place your velvet nap side down on the rubber stamp (note you can NOT use gel stamps with these). Spritz back side of velvet with water and place your iron (set slightly below the cotton setting) on the stamp being sure that there you use the flat side WITH-OUT holes over the stamp. Hold iron in one place for a short while and remove, allow stamp to cool slightly before removing the velvet. Obvious these can not be laundered or reironed.

Words for today are: Bird; Quilting; New technique

Well it's about time that I opened that new package of Shiva paint sticks! I bought a beautiful bird stencil from Interweave a while back and used it with the paint sticks on some muslin. I liked it so well that I cut it our layered it on a quilt sandwich and quilted away. :-) What fun to experiment. She measures 5"x7" and I'm quite pleased with this quick and easy project.

Last night I joined a knitting group with my friend Dee Dee. It was so much fun because not only do you sit and knit you get acupuncture! WHHHHHHAT'S THAT YOU SAY? Yup that gal that hosts the knitting night is holistic healer and hosts right in her facility. She calls it "pins and needles", too cute aye? She asks you what body parts you want addressed, puts about 5 needles in each ear at different points and you sit and knit. It was wonderful company, chat and the acupuncture really, really made my back feel better! I convinced and I'm definitely going back for more. I call it 'soul swaddling', ahhhhhhmazing! So I made a tiny little hat for the NICU unit at our local hospital.

Words for today: Holiday, blue, paint.
Water colored the card, attached reindeer, covered with ultra light weight lutradur, added cut out trees and some "snow", ribbon at the top and paper lace at the bottom.

Up early this morning so that I could recreate the card that I made yesterday for submission to 'Somerset Studio'. The new card is my art for the day along with writing the directions and making the envelope. It goes off in the mail today after my 1:30 meeting. :-)

Word prompts for today were: Paper; punch or cutouts; shiny. My choice was to make a greeting card. This one is going to Take Ten Studios. I love the "green" theme of this card.

OK I'm ready... I'm ready to begin this year with gusto and more art. If Oprah can have her own TV network I'm sure that I can find time to make art everyday. It's time and I'm ready! Good-bye 2010 it was tough but I'm ready to begin again and find time for me. My plans are to find time to create art, art just for me, art with my own prompts, art that I keep and perhaps art that I share in my writings. I work best within a set of rules so that the art becomes a challenge. I've set up the prompts so that I randomly pull one from two different bags that I've made up. I can decide what I will create but I have to work within the prompt guidelines. Before I go to bed each night I will pull the prompts for the next day so I can come up with ideas and the next day I create the object. I'll see how this goes, I think that it has great potential, we'll see. So here is my first set of prompts and the finished project. I enjoyed making this little plus size inchie pin and it will serve as a reminder to seek art every day. :-)