My favourite flowers!

I wait every year until these come into bloom! They are my absolute favourites of all the ones we have in our garden. I love single poppies of any variety, but these are just so spectacular!!
When DH and I had our sanity day last week, we found a delightful painting of poppies and spoiled ourselves (well, me actually...he doesn't care what's on the walls!). It's residing under the bed until our 30th anniversary in the fall OR until the bedroom gets repainted, whichever comes first. I can pretty much guarantee the anniversary will happen before the painting!

Ouch!!

Of course my camera needed recharging or I could have taken a better photo of this! However...this afternoon that big yellow 'thing' demolished the house across the street. It took less than an hour until it was completely flattened. We've been suspicious since the house became empty about three years ago that it was a grow op and now that has been confirmed. Nice to have it (and the perps!) gone, but still a shame to see a lovely old two story house have to come down.

Abundance of beauty

These are just a few of the flowers currently blooming in our garden. These are such low maintenance and give so much beauty. So far even the earwigs haven't decided they're tasty enough to eat. We used to have some lilies too, but there's some sort of beetle that cleans them right off. With the current law here in Ontario, we are not allowed to use any sort of pesticides so what flowers we have need to be able to fend for themselves.

brown blob you say?

I know, I know...it looks disgusting doesn't it. However, in my defence, the picture isn't doing it justice. On one of my groups this technique came up in conversation and, because a friend was here for the day, we thought we'd have a go.

It's a faux leather technique and surprisingly enough it looks quite authentic and SO easy to do. Here's what we did:
Layer 1 - a piece of scrap fabric (in this case I used a piece of muslin)
Layer 2 - torn bits of masking tape stuck down randomly all over the fabric (being sure to ultimately cover it all with tape). We decided at this point it would be wise to use a brayer to ensure all the tape was well adhered.
Layer 3 - we used a water base wood stain in Dark Walnut (Liquitex Acryclic Wood Stain) which we brushed on fairly thickly. We let it sit for about a minute before we blotted it with a sop cloth until it reached the look we wanted. (Initially I wiped the stain off, but the effect wasn't realistic enough so I reapplied the stain and blotted it off).
Layer 4 - after it dried, we used water base varnish to seal it.

Great fun, easy, and best of all...cheap, cheap, cheap!!
(Thanks Gail & Yvonne for the idea)

Randomness on a dull day

Sorry folks, no pictures today. Too dull outside to take any and what's happening in my studio is just as dull!! I actually have one whole year of the old diary typed up (it took 20 pages of typing, averaging about an hour & a half each). 29 more years to go.

Random Item - Spent the afternoon with a good friend. No work got done, but we had fun talking about anything and everything. Found out that her husband is a descendant of the family where Black Creek Pioneer Village in Toronto is situated. The family donated a ton of historical artifacts to the Village. We have a road trip planned!

Random Item  - If anybody is interested in seeing more of the quilts from our local quilt show, there is a video on their blog.

There, I guess that's enough randomness for one day!

The tree peony is in bloom!

We planted this last year and have had our fingers crossed that it might bloom this year. Here is the very first flower (and there are more to come). We wanted a red one, but pink will do just fine!

Today Jack and I had a 'sanity' day whereby we just get in the car and go where the whim takes us. We've had a rash of thefts in our neighbourhood and have managed to lose over half of the new solar lights we had just purchased for our front yard. So...we got an on at dark, off at dawn attachment for our porch light today and hopefully that will save what's left of our solars once we move them into the back yard. However, NOW the rotters will be sure to see my three planters that are out there...can't win!

Jack was nice enough (or foolish enough, depending on your point of view) to let me stop at the bookstore and I managed to wander out with new new Somerset art quilting magazine, the new Sew Somerset AND the Cloth Paper Scissors Studio magazine. Sigh. I have NO will power. None. Zip. Zilch. I had promised myself most severely that I would ONLY ever buy the Sew Somerset and leave all the rest of them alone (other than maybe one Art Doll 1/4ly occasionally). However, how can I resist buying the art quilting one when there's a lovely article in there about Jude (who, by the way, is one of my worship-from-afar people)? AND, it's the first they've published and it's SURE to become a collectors item (isn't it??). As for the Studio magazine....well....it isn't half as expensive as the Somerset equivalent....no, I guess that's not a good excuse is it. Well, it's all Jack's fault for taking me in there in the first place!!!!

Quilt Show - final installment!

Above is one of the jackets that caught my eye. Of course they weren't made from denim so they weren't my style, but pretty anyway.
These two pictures struck me as being the closest to being art quilts and were quite eye catching.
Finally, this doll. Although I'm no longer a member of the quilt guild, this doll is one I made for one of my friends who is a member and she put it on display in one of the antiques they had for atmosphere. The pattern is from an old one my mother made for me when I was little. I found the pattern in her stash when she passed away.
There...all done. Now it will go back to your regularly scheduled drivel. Hope you enjoyed the show!

Quilt Show - part five!!

I promise, only one more day after this!!
I thought I'd do two posts today so I could get through this week. I don't want to bore you totally to tears!! This set of pictures show some of the ones I particularly liked the colours of.

Quilt Show - part four (bored yet??)

Quilt Show - part three

Here are some more of the lovely quilts. There were a number of nice bargello ones. It seems that bargello is making a comeback, at least in quilting. Perhaps it will return in needlework too?
There were also a number of black and white entries. This one caught my eye.
A sampler quilt, in my favourite colour!
This one was intriguing. It's some sort of stack and whack, but a very different application.

Part four is on the way tomorrow (hope you're not getting bored!!).

Quilt Show - part two

Here are more of the lovely quilts. I really liked the leaf one (seen above). It was very subtle, but also very striking. Unfortunately I couldn't step back far enough to get a better picture.
This one was also spectacular. A lovely log cabin, but with a twist.
I could not get a good focus on this one, but I loved the painted trilliums, surrounded by the green just like you'd see in the forest.
This is a crazy log cabin and I fell in love with this pattern. I really would love to make one, provided, of course, I could embellish the seams with embroidery!

More to come tomorrow.....

Quilt show - part one

Some highlights of our local quilt show:
This quilt-covered car greeted us outside the door and set a nice tone for what was to come inside!
Of course I had to take a picture of the one and only crazy quilt in the whole show!! This one is a particularly lovely example. If you click on any of these pictures they will embiggen and you can see the details (and, hopefully, be able to read the history of this quilt).

This quilt was one of the first beautiful creations by the quilt guild members. There were over 90 full size quilts on display. Over the next few days I will be showing you a mini tour of some of the ones I found particularly beautiful. (no, I won't be showing you them all!!)
Part Two...tomorrow!

Joy and Rupture

I know, the proper expression should be 'Joy and RAPTURE', however I nearly ruptured a gasket trying to shorten eight (count 'em...EIGHT!!) pairs of curtains today. The lump in the picture just shows a portion of them. My creativity knows no bounds at the moment...these had to be the ultimate in boredom. However, the sunroom gets way too hot and if we can cut down on some of the sun pouring in, it will be used more.

Oh yeah, and to add even more joy to my life, I also shortened a pair of jeans for DH! Yep, an absolutely PERFECT day (not!).

More from yesterday

Here's the promised picture from yesterday. On the upper right you can see the cheap 'rubber' stamps I made (so simple...a block of wood, glue on a piece of that cheap craft foam you can get at the dollar store, let dry. The image is simply cut from another piece of the craft foam and glued on...cheap, cheerful, and they work great!).

On the upper left you can see the atc Irene made (utilizing a worn embroidered cloth) and the lovely little beeswax flower she made. The bottom row are the other atcs I received (left one from Sue, and the other two are from Kym). Of course I forgot to photograph the ones I made...duh!

Flowers - of a different sort!

Today we had our CQTeers meeting and had a fun time making a couple of projects. One was these roses made from coffee filters (instructions from Martha Stewart.com) . These were a learning curve for all of us because we had never made them before, so we have learned several things for any we might make in the future. They are coloured with watercolour paints which gives them such lovely shading. I will be making a few more of these so hope to perfect the how-to as I go along.

We did our usual exchange of atc's and also made our own (cheap!) rubber stamps, which I will have to show you tomorrow. Fun day with good friends!

Gardening Time!

These are round one of the plants DH is putting in our gardens. We have a fairly large property and a lot of it is either flower beds or the vegetable garden out back, so it takes quite a few plants to fill in the spaces. A number of our perennials winter-killed, so we have to replace those. Of course this doesn't include the seed packets that are also being planted.

The above picture is a close up of one of a pair of hanging plants I got to put into my urns at the front of the house.
The fuschia hangs beside the front door in a metal ring mounted there for the purpose. There's a honeysuckle vine that will be planted just outside the sunporch where we have the dog pen...hopefully it will give shade for the dogs and bring us a few hummingbirds. The red plastic 'bucket' is holding some veggies, including leeks and some peppers.

Today we went out and bought some more perennials (mostly iris') to fill in the empty spots. Trouble is, there are altogether too many nice looking plants available right now and only so much space and money!!

Winnings from Jackie!!

Here, as promised, is a picture of what came from Jackie . It's not a good picture because, of course, my camera decided to need to be recharged at the wrong time. Hopefully clicking on it will show it better for you. The lovely beige paper in front is tea bag paper...also from Jackie. I can't wait to play with it to see what it will do!!

I already have a frame to put my picture in and it will enjoy a place of honour in my house where I will see it every day and remember how lucky I am to have internet friends like Jackie...thank you SO much!!

Unbelieveable!!!!

Isn't this absolutely unbelievable? And it's not all of it!!!!

I received a box in the mail from Arlee and these three pictures just show a miniscule amount of the wonders that were inside! Click on the pictures to embiggen them so you can see the detail. See the green piece in the upper left of the top picture? It's a purse! See the orange piece of fabric below it? It's handpainted and oh so perfect for the cover of a journal. See the red bag beside it?...full of beads (mmmmm, sparklies). See the absolutely beautiful face? And the doll? And the cat (SO much more fun than the one I made!).

The other two pictures are of the art she included. There's postcards and some pieces of her metal work. I'm in total heaven here. AND.....AND.....this isn't even a dent in all the other goodies that were in the box!!!

Not only that, I received my winnings from Jackies draw today AND I found out I won this month's draw on Mary Corbetts site too!!!!!!!!! I will post a pic of what I received from Jackie tomorrow.

Thank you so very much to my internet friends! I'm a lucky, lucky girl!!

Shoveling and Designing

Today pretty much the only creativity that happened was a whole lot of shoveling in my studio. The piles were teetering and threatening me bodily harm and, besides, I'd managed to lose a book I was looking for. It was time. Boring, boring, boring, but SO much better now.

After that I worked on my design for a ring bearer pillow I've been commissioned to make (which is what you see in the picture). I will embroider the initials of the bride and groom in the centre. The fans will be appliqued on after I piece them using various tones of white/ivory/cream and do some embroidery on them. I have some pretty bead trim to go along the outside edges of the fans.

The bride isn't a frou-frou type of person (according to her sister), so I want to do a minimum of over-the-top embroidery on this. Simple and elegant is what I'm going for. I have four tassels for the corners which I will tack on so that they can be removed after the wedding. I will also just tack on the ribbon to hold the rings in place. The whole thing is 9" square.

Garden beauty

I love this plant because the foliage is just as pretty as the flowers! Last night the weather report was calling for possible frost so Jack put a large plastic barrel over this plant because it was so close to blooming. This morning the sun was hitting the barrel and probably the heat inside helped the blooms to open.
I think it's some sort of peony, but don't know for sure. It's another 'inherited' plant in our friendship garden. Isn't it pretty?

One of THOSE days

...where nothing gets done that I planned to do. ARGHHH!!! Why, oh why, when the Lord created the earth couldn't He have made days have more than 24 hours. Better yet, why did He create man with a need for sleep?

I've started typing 'THE DIARY' and am finding that my goal of one page a day is not so good. I know, I know, I had originally said 20 minutes a day, but that's just plain frustrating. I thought changing my so-called goal to typing one page would be do-able, which it was whilst I was typing from already typed pages! Now I'm on to transcribing from the original diary, which is huge and cumbersome and hard to read too. Sigh. I am refusing to cut back though, because I have a goal and want to get it published so that it's no longer hanging over my head as a huge 'to-do' project.

Another question (while I'm pondering life and its problems)...why does society expect us to have clean houses anyway? Better yet, why can't I win the lottery so I can afford to have someone clean for me? Oh, and while I'm at it, why not throw a cook in too? And a chauffeur so that I don't have to waste time doing mundane things like grocery shop and run errands? Someone to bring me coffee and bonbons while I spend my entire time creating?

Oh to live in a perfect world!

Art journal

This is the cover for the art journal I have been working on. The bottom picture is the outside front and the top picture shows the two inside covers.

The 'base' for the book was fun to do. First I saturated a piece of cotton fabric with a water/white glue mixture and wrung it out really well. I flattened it out somewhat and hung it to dry (I wanted to leave the wrinkles in as much as possible). Next I crumbled tissue paper really well and flattened it out (again leaving the wrinkles in). I attached the paper to the fabric layer with iron-on webbing (being careful to protect my iron with parchment paper). Then I painted over that with acrylic paints...first in green (and yellow for the front cover), then in a blue wash, and finally with a wash of gold. I let the green and blue dry thoroughly before adding the gold, which I blotted off to let the base colours show through. The pages inside are made of watercolour paper and will (I think) be just loose inside the book to make them easier to work on. All I have left is to come up with a method of closure and it's done!

Not the smartest pickle in the jar

Yep, that's me I'm talkin' about. Sometimes my stupidity even exceeds my lowly expectations of myself and this one has to be the dumbest stunt I've pulled in a long time.

I was so excited about getting a copy of the 'Embroidered Flora and Fauna' book by Lesley Turpin-Delport. It's a beautiful book. I love it. I had requested it through inter-library loan and, before it came in, decided that I needed to get my own copy from Amazon.

So.....

the library came through first. I drooled through the book quickly, knowing that my very own was coming in a couple of days. Returned borrowed book to library.

OK, so far?

Well, my own copy came. Read a couple of pages and put it on my dresser to read later.

Still following me??

Well, being the unbright pickle I am, I put the book in the area where I always put the library books.

You guessed it....I 'returned' the book to the library. That, in itself, isn't necessarily a BAD thing...however I do donate quite a few books to the library for other people to enjoy, so they can't be blamed for assuming that was my intention, can they? There's no turning back now.

Darn it, I WANTED that book!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spring is sprung!

These are just some of the tulips and daffodils we have in bloom at the moment. Just before supper tonight we had a huge hailstorm; hopefully it didn't damage them too much.

I have one and a half pages of 'the diary' typed up, which has taken forever. I'm a fairly fast typist, but I'm not so good with learning the ins and outs of a new computer program. Thank goodness for the 'Teach Yourself Visually' series of guide books!! I had to learn to make columns, what font to use, what size, how to number pages, and all sorts of interesting things hitherto unknown to me. It's going to be a HUGE project, but I have promised myself that I will type for 20 minutes per day and sooner or later it will be done. (For those who haven't been reading my blog for long, 'the diary' is a 30 year chronicle of my gr.gr.grandfather's life on his farm, beginning in 1869 and ending shortly before his death). Ultimately I will be having it published so everything I do now is with an eye towards that goal.

I have finally decided on the design I will be using for the ring bearer pillow commission, which is a step in the right direction. Picked up some lovely fabric today which I will use for the centre part. Hopefully it will take well to being embroidered on because I want to do the bride & grooms monograms on it. The four corners of the pillow will be fans, done in tones of cream, ivory and white. I also picked up some really pretty pearl trim for the edges of the fans. Yes, I'll post pictures as I go along!

What in the WORLD is she up to now????

Look what's hanging outside on the line and causing the neighbours to wonder, yet again, what on earth I think I'm doing with my time. It's definitely not laundry, unless I've taken to wearing VERY odd underwear!! (Picture is clickable to enlarge)

I've been experimenting with discharge dyeing (using bleach) on denim with the eye towards using something like this on part of my long coat. I did a whole bunch of stitching in odd and wondrous ways and then plopped it in the weakened bleach solution (then rinsed in water, in vinegar/water, and again in water) for various times. I remembered having read somewhere that ten minutes might be about right. Well, it's not! Bleached almost ALL the blue out, which wasn't what I was aiming for. The three biggest pieces are my favourites...I simply wet them first, then used a clothespin to gather up a little pinch in the centre. Then I just 'twirled' the clothepeg and as it turned it gathered up the fabric. I held the whole thing together with an elastic band and it came out looking like a flower! That one has me excited, but I think it might just be too large for my application on the coat.

The 'stuff' that's further out on the clothesline (sorry, not underwear either) is some fabrics I dipped and scrunched around in a solution of white glue/water. Wrung them out real well and tried to leave the wrinkles in as much as possible. After they're dry, I'm going to iron them (leaving the wrinkles) and see if they might just become the base for my doll journal book.

I'm having a wonderful creative (and messy) day and I'm lovin' it!! Hope you are too!