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. :-)

Well hello there fellow bloggers. I'm happy to say that 2010 is almost over. Phew it was a doozy for sure. Loosing one parent is hard enough but loosing both mom and dad in the same year is too much. I don't think that it has all sunken in yet and I have my good days and bad but I'm looking forward to a new year. Come onnnnnn 2011!

It's time to get back into my art again and devote more time to it. Time is not always my friend though and so I've come up with a plan that I call, Art Almost Every Day. Let's face it art everyday is daunting but I think with less pressure and short projects that come complete with art prompts is the way to go. I will be sharing my process with you all right here and I hope that some of you will be inspired to create along with me. So join me tomorrow and see what I have up my sleeve.

Happy New Year everyone!!!

I'm delighted to announce that I will be teaching numerous soldering classes in Westbrook, CT in November. Here are just two samples from class' 1 & 2: collage pendant (1); Shell Shard Collage People (2). Hope that you can join us for a fun filled time. For dates, times and sign ups go to:
Beautiful Impressions Rubber Stamp Store
30 Westbrook Place ~ Westbrook CT 06498
www.beautiful-impressions.com 860-399-8855

I'm thrilled to pieces that my seaglass and shell soldered pendant was chosen to be in the July/Aug 2010 issue of CPS.

It's here, it's here! Sew Somerset summer 2010 is here! Two of my PSI (plus size inchies) fiber art trading pins (called, "Gifts of The Sea") are in this issue.

"Pretty As A Picture" My entry for the 2011 Cloth Paper Scissor Magazine Calendar and it's a finalist!!!

Meet Alice Through The Soldered Glass nicknamed Amorous Alice. I used text and photos to collage under the glass bubbles then foiled and soldered her. I used Artgirlz http://www.artgirlz.com/ pewter legs and arms to complete her. Isn't she sexy? Gigolo Jack thinks so. She's for a special friend in a collaborative project that we are working on. She's retrofitted into a page for the project that we are working on.

High Fashion and High Fiber Handbags pattern giveaway!

Tiny art is my passion. These are tiny 1 1/2" squares that I dubbed "Plus Size Inchies". I wrote and article and directions on how to make these in Quilting Arts Magazine.

My Artist Trading Cards (2 1/2" x 3") that appeared in the book, 1,000 Artist Trading cards.

Three of my journal quilts (8 1/2 x 11") published in 1,000 Journal Pages book.

A few of the Magical Card Case Wallets that I created for my pattern and article in Quilting Arts magazine. These are slightly larger then the business card itself and has a magicial little twist to get the cards to rise out of the holder.

A few Artist Trading Pins that were created to trade with Fiber Art Traders. These vary in size from 1" square to 3 1/2".

Here are a few samples of fiber art post cards (4" x 6") that have been exchanged in the my Fiber Art Traders Yahoo group.

Godess doll made for Fiber Art Traders and appeared in Cloth and Soft Doll Magazine. (Apx 6" long)

Please join me in helping the American Cancer Society stamp out cancer in our life time. My collage titled, "98.6 IS Normal" is dedicated to my dad who is undergoing cancer treatment. The piece reflects normal body temperature which we watch so carefully throughout his chemo treatment. With luck and the grace of God he will beat this deadly disease. This piece is needle felted roving in varying degrees of color intensity. It was then reverse appliqued under black wool felt and then beaded in colors of varying degrees of color again. I've added a charm with my artist initials and additional beads. The piece is mounted on bristol board and signed and dated on the back.

Three winners will receive and Egglet starter kit which includes: 6 hand painted watercolor eggs punched with spring designs, backings and yummy ribbons for tassel. All you do is paste, add the words, embellishments and grommets then bind with a wire ring and tie tassel. Good luck to all who enter.
Hugz, Normajean

Ahhh Sping at last and what better way to celebrate the season then with a Egg-ceptional EGG Egg-stravaganza. The photos to the left are my little Eggs-tra special book. It's a half dozen hand water colored paper and punched with a large oval punch. I've added a bit of Liquitex Iridescent/Pearescent Medium to my water colors to give my eggs just the right touch of Easter. I punched through the eggs with other small paper punches that I have, added a colored paper backing and added Spring insiped words cut out from a quilting catalog. I hope that my F.A.T. friends (you know who you are LOL) will join me in a fun challenge/trade of these tiny egg booklets or should I call them Egglets?

Here's the challenge (Begins on Monday 4/6/09 and ends Friday 4/10/09)

We will be creating a tiny Spring egg-booklet (Egglet) with contains a half dozen (6) simple pages (paper or fiber) plus a cover of some sort. You must include some type of Spring inspirations on the pages. There are no restrictions on size but they must be egg shaped. Mine is an egg shaped page that measures 2" long x 1 1/2" wide. You do not need a paper punch to make these, they can be cut by hand and embellished with any Spring inspired embellishments, text etc.

-You will have until 9AM Wednesday (EDST, New York City time) to;
...create your 6 page (or more if you want) plus a cover, Egglet (booklet),
...post your photo's (one close up and one full view only please and make sure you include your name in the photo file so we know who's it is) and
...sign up in the database. One entry per member please.

-Wednesday morning I will set up a voting poll for all contestants with their pictures in the album. You will have the opportunity to vote for your favorite entry until
-Thursday evening when the polls close.
-Based on the voting we will have a 1st, 2nd and 3rd winners.
-Thursday evening the partners will be announced.
-Friday these need to be mailed! Please make time in your day to get them to the
post office on Friday (and YES the US Post Office is open on Good Friday but I
don't know about the rest of the world). I will be mailing the prizes to the
winners on Friday also.

I hope that you will join in this Egg-ceptional fun event.
Hugz, Normajean

Mom is stuffed and Pop is too,
the turkeys not and what about you?
The kids are tired the house is a wreck,
for four solid days I broke my neck.
To fix a meal enough for twenty,
my gosh the left overs we have plenty!
So now I think I'll open that wine,
and on the left overs we will dine.
I told my kids as I raised my glass,
mom's checking out, she's otta gas.