Odds and Ends form 2023

Hey, 

Still here. Been awhile. No problems, just staying busy, but not feeling very chatty.  But I'll catch you up on some of  other things I did in 2023.

My last post was in July 2023 and I had posted an update for 2022/2023 in  February 2023. But what did I do in the other 9 months of 2023?  Well, that's a bunch of stuff to write about and a lot of it was hobby activities I don't usually mention. Basically 2023 was a random collection of small new craft projects, unfinished older projects and several all digital projects, things like photo archive management, digital fabric designs, and formatting and printing photo books. 

In February I was sorting, organizing and cleaning up stuff in my craft room and got completely side-tracked on a spur-of-the- moment mixed-media project to use up an overabundance of collected security envelopes and some painted canvas.

 

 

And while I was at it I made a few more books.

 In March I finished a collection of Mixed Media collages that I'd neglected for a very long time.

 

In April I finished the Plaidish Quilt I started in 2022.  I love the colors, it makes me happy every time I see it.

 

By May I'm busy with gardening and digital projects, continuing to do acrylic painting in sketchbook every day and doing a few other bookbinding projects.

These are painted canvas paper thin sketchbooks.

 

And my last "big" project for 2023 was another spur-of-the-moment project that took about 6 weeks and also came out of a "cleaning things up" effort with all my art supplies.  I call it my Palette Paint Transfer project. You know all that excess paint that ends up on palette paper, or in my case also on big pieces of freezer paper that I put under artwork and I save all those papers. ... just because I might find a way to use them... well, I used them.

And this is what I made:

Thanks for reading.

Aileen

So Many Charms

It's been awhile.  But I've been busy. Sitting down and writing about what has been keeping me busy seems like one task too many, even if it's something I want to do.

Working backward from today seems easier than starting in March.

So most recently I've been making charms. It all started with one little pack of evil eye glass beads I got for no specific reason at all.  One thing led to another and a few weeks later I have a dozen+ Charms hanging in my house presumably protecting me from every possible 'thing' out there. I've got 9 different color evil eye beads, gemstones for all the Chakras, and various medalions all hanging out together doing whatever they are suppose to do. 

I really just like them because they are fun and easy to make and pretty.

 

That's all for today. More later about fabric designing in June, gardening in May, quilting in April, and bookbinding in March.

Thanks for reading.

AIleen

Happy February!

It's 71 degrees here today and it shouldn't be. It should be between 30-40.  I miss winter. 

But it is still February so instead of painting Christmas trees and snow I painted a bunch of Valentine Hearts.

 

And now It's also 2023 and I haven't posted an update in a long time so this is a quick bullet summary of what I did in 2022, besides grow marigolds.

So what did I do last year?

Some crochet: Another Project Linus Crochet Along blanket.

Some more crochet: This time tiny baby aliens with my own mods. I ended up making 4. They are a lot faster to make than their big brothers.

 

Started a new quilt: I saw these Plaid-ish quilts all over Instagram and loved them. The pattern is free and I have more fabric than any one person ever needs. I did finish piecing the top but I still need to quilt and finish it, hopefully this year.

 

Gardening: Lots of porch gardening, in addition to the feral marigolds.  The Celosia is my new favorite flower. They bloom and they stay 'bloomed' for months! I named this one Groot. It's just too obvious. Right?

Lots of different color Coleus, several Celosia of different types, Red vine, Morning Glories, and a Poinsettia.

Lots of watercolor art: Experimenting with paints, brushes and methods.

 Swatching all the watercolor paints I have.

 

Some bookbinding: Call it an art journal or a junk journal? I'm not sure? But it is just a collection of papers I'm painted.

 

 

But almost every day just filling this giant book with abstract acrylic art.

This is the first 100 pages of that big book of acrylic painting experiments.  There are also videos for the other 200 pages on my YouTube channel.

That's it for today. Not sure when I'll be back.

Thanks for reading.

Aileen

A Month of Bookbinding

After spending more than a year buried in quilting projects I decided to switch gears and catch up on a pile of unfinished bookbinding projects.

These are pocket size notebooks with hand painted canvas covers and several different types of  papers for pages.

And a few mini notebooks with painted canvas covers.
 

 A pile of mini long stitch leather books.

I spent some time learning how to do a French Link bookbinding stitch in different sizes using some heavy drawing paper.

And made a couple map paper junk books just for the fun of it, also with painted canvas covers.

Finally I had a couple more leather projects that were a little larger to finish and I wanted to do something different for the binding so I tried this neat criss-cross stitch. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, I just had to map it out on paper and in my head before I started.

Thanks for reading.

Aileen