Still having fun with Arts and Crafts

I'm still here.
Still finding time to do arts and crafts.
I've filled spare hours with painting, artwork, sewing and bookbinding.
But I just haven't stopped to write about it.
So, to start with...
 
I find myself sitting down and playing with watercolor paint a lot. Unlike acrylic painting with the constant fear of permanently ruining something with the paint, I can do watercolors virtually anywhere. All my acrylic painting projects are done in my craft room, usually with old cloths on. But I do most of my watercolors sitting at the kitchen table.

In January I was thinking about Valentines and set out to make some watercolor heart art.

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In February I was busy making a watercolor mixing chart with the different watercolor paints I have been collecting over the past year. I just buy colors I like without any goal or plan in mind. This is the first time I've made one of these charts. It's a little messy.  I'd like to do three different charts; yellows and blues, yellows and pinks, and pinks and blues.

By March I was thinking about Shamrocks but didn't spend much time on that and moved on to just playing with watercolor paint in the form of colorful abstracts.  I've been doing a bunch of these, experimenting with different color combinations.

 

I often go back over the watercolor with some pen or marker embellishments. 

It's all just doodling to me.

In April I stopped long enough to make something for the monthly ArtSnacks challenge.

But I can't seem to make a really symmetric butterfly freehand.  If I'm trying to be a perfectionist I draw an outline of one side of the butterfly, trace it on to tracing paper, flip that over and transfer the mirror image outline to the other side. I didn't do that this time so I can't look at this without seeing all the asymmetric differences. 

So I scanned in the drawing, split the image down the middle and with some help from Photoshop created two different perfectly symmetric Butterflies from the original drawing. 

Thanks for reading.
Aileen

Plans for 2017

Wait! 
Is it already February? 
No, worse...  
It's almost March!

So much for my 2017 plans.  I just lost two months and I haven't started on my goals yet!
But I did write them.
And I have been doing some random little projects.

How many reading glasses do you have scattered around your house? I got tired of trying to carry one pair around with me just in case I needed to read something so I got multiple pairs to leave in different rooms and made these little eyeglass cases to put them in.

I did manage to take notice of Valentine's Day and finished making a few little Valentine quilted hearts like this.  It could be a coaster or just a decoration.

And I made some little Valentine notebooks that have a fabric cover that is bonded to paper. These little notebooks are 3 1/2" x 5 1/2" with 48 pages.  The covers are stiff enough to hold their shape but flexible and have some give.  They won't fray because the fabric is bonded to a backing paper and you can stuff them in your purse or pocket for random note taking. I'm thinking of doing a blog post just on how I make these little books.

And I finally got around to trying out some new art supplies I got for Christmas. I'm a big fan of watercolor pencils and these muted colors are an interesting change from the typical rainbow colored set.

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen 

Patchwork Hearts and Cookies

Well, Valentine's Day is over and I didn't do much for it but I did make heart shaped cookies. 

And I continued working on the heart patchwork project. As usual, these new placemats won't be done on time for this year but I'll have them for next year. I have two more of these heart patchworks to piece, then some quick machine quilting and the binding. That's actually still several hours of work spread over a few more days. That's a lot more satisfying than spending several weeks or months on a project. 

Problem is I have more than enough cut pieces to make four placemats. Do I put the leftovers back into storage for some future project or just sew them all together in some random way an see what happens? Around my house every surface has some size quilt thing on it. I change them out throughout the year and have some made specifically for holidays. I suppose a couple more pink table quilts could be used someplace. But I suspect I'll be itching to move on to something else by the time I finish the heart placemats.

And I finished the bead project I was working on. I ended up choosing pyrite, amazonite, serpentine, turquoise, a copper penny token, and a bone arrowhead for the charms. I added in some jade, goldstone, marble, rhodonite and agate, as well as for interest and more good energy.

This has been a good week. Thanks for reading. 

Aileen

All Clear

Yay! I finally got all those miscellaneous projects off the wall. 

I ended up with seven completed quilt tops, which is one more than I started with. The problem is I can't stand having leftover quilt scraps hanging around. I'd rather sew them all together into something scrappy then leave them in a pile someplace. So I ended up with an extra 'leftovers' quilt from the trimmings of my on-point quilt experiment. Those two are shown below. 

Of the next four, two are also mini leftovers quilts. The green Christmas tree block (lower left) was an exercise in sewing 60 degree triangles. And the white with green vine block (upper right) is a test of painting on fabric. 

Most of these design wall orphans were leftovers or just little projects using up odd pieces of fabric or testing an idea. Only one was a drawn out and planned quilt top that got sidelined along the way. I'm very happy to finally have my Valentine quilt square sewn. 

And the puzzle heart block.

This one is small enough to be hand quilted and possibly embroidered in some way. 

Now I can move on to new projects. Next up, Halloween fabric. 

Background Wall Art

This is my third attempt at creating a mixed media canvas to be used just as the background for something else. I'm trying really hard not to like it too much otherwise I won't want to cover up any part of it with other collage elements. 

Let me backtrack.  This all started one day when I was straightening up my art work area and sorting through some scraps of collage papers and materials. I came across a bunch of heart shapes I'd made or cut out of various papers or collage scraps.  I decided a pretty simple quick project would be to paint and embellish these hearts with reds and collage them to an interesting canvas background to hang on the wall someplace.

I had an in-progress (for two years) canvas that I had already covered with fabric scraps but grown bored of, that I decided to grab and paint, stamp, splatter, etc. to use as a background. Easy, just do something quick without much thought because most of it won't show anyway after I put the hearts on it. Problem is after I did all that random stuff I liked the results. I liked it so much I didn't want to put the hearts on it and it didn't really look like the background I was thinking of originally. It wasn't the right colors and there wasn't enough contrast.

So that background morphed into an art project of it's own.  I changed my approach and added some more specific paint elements and eventually called it done. Now I enjoy seeing it on the wall without red hearts.

After I finished that I still had those red hearts to put on something so I started another collage canvas. I put a bunch  random scraps of fabric on to another canvas with clear acrylic medium. The fabric doesn't show through the eventual paint layers much, if at all, but the cut edges and overlap of the fabric adds texture to the canvas. I decided to go with a different color scheme, yellow, this time because I wanted more contrast. I tried to keep it simple, but interesting, but boring at the same time so I wouldn't mind putting hearts all over the top of everything. That still kind of became a problem but my real problem was now I had too much contrast and when I auditioned the hearts on the new canvas all I could think of was Pepperoni Pizza!

That wasn't going to work at all. I didn't like it with hearts so I again added some extra splashes of color and haven't really decided what I'm going to do with it next, if anything, so I just hung it on the wall as well.  I may take it down at some point in the future and add something else to it, but for now this is what it looks like.

They say three's a charm so this is the one I will use with the red heart, I think, maybe....
I started with a larger rectangular canvas (I had too many hearts for the smaller canvas) and covered it with paper collage elements of maps, text and patten paper. I thought a pale blue and white mix background would give enough contrast but not be too glaring like the yellow "pizza' version of background.

I like how this looks but I like the collage canvas without the hearts as well.  It has a lot of interesting texture, color and patterns in it. I plan on scanning it because I think in can use it as a background in digital collages. I'm working on a fourth canvas now that is mostly white textures and patterns. You know what they say, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). That will be the one I use, definitely...