A Sad Time

The last few months have been very sad around here. My step-father had cancer and things took a definite turn for the worse.  He died, peacefully and at home on November 6, 2008. He was cremated exactly 28 years after my father died (who also died of cancer) and his funeral was exactly 28 years after my father's funeral. My mother, who has never lived alone in her almost 80 years, is having to make great adjustments. It is a very sad and lonely time for her, even though I am trying to be there for her as much as possible. So, I have not be blogging, or doing much of anything else recently.

Haiku a day

I am still plugging away at various exercises from Sharon Boggan's Studio Journals class. I have lots of pages of wonderful design "seeds" and am having lots of fun.

Yesterday in one of the forums for the class, someone mentioned Virginia Spiegel's daily Haikus, she writes five of them each day about ordinary things she sees from where she sits to have her coffee each morning. She tells how examining the object (whatever it is) helps one to see. I thought the idea was great, but I am only aiming for one Haiku each day. Click on the link above to see her process of writing Haiku. I did not use her method exactly, but did borrow the idea of thinking about the bar from all five senses. Today's Haiku is about a mini O'Henry Bar sitting on my desk.

Bright yellow wrapper
Nutty sweetness in the bar
Conquers my hunger

Yesterday's Haiku about my mini tripod:

Orange, silver, black
Strange three legged bird stands tall
Holds digital eye

OK, a poet I am not, but I think this is a useful daily exercise -- sort of like stretching the noticing (focusing and seeing) muscles. It helps me to focus and see that which is around me, to notice it and focus on it in more detail. Perhaps with a start like that to each day, during the rest of the my day I may notice more and more richly.

Going Around in Circles

Just let me say, I am glad I did not get arrested this week. I have been going around in circles or at least in search of circles (one of the assignments in my Studio Journals class with Sharon Boggan). So here I was walking around photographing circles. They are everywhere and it was fun. One of the multiple examples that Sharon had in the class notes was hub caps -- well you know, there are an endless variety of hubcaps out there and I got a little carried away.


Shocking, I know. With every cool hubcap I saw (and had to photograph) I felt like a thief staking out these cars. I was sure that at any moment someone would call a cop and I would have to explain. Of course I did have a camera full of circle photos and only circle photos to back up my story (plus my course notes, but they were at home). But even had the police been convinced by my camera full of circles, there was no way to guarantee that they were not going to haul me off to the loony bin. So, over all I had a blast taking all these circle photos, but am hugely relieved that I still have my freedom!



I had great plans of taking photos different shapes each day, but life got in the way. Also, quite frankly, I am now a wee bit obsessed with circles. I may just have to go with that for a while. I want to take the hub caps further (no pun intended) and play with the other circle photos too.

I painted some beautiful papers last week and some not so beautiful papers (grin). I used watercolours and I used acrylics as well, both artist grade and those lovely, cheap bottles of craft grade that I still have hanging about and am trying to use up. I feel very virtuous.

The first photo shows the whole stack of papers. Though there are a few rosy pink pages, there are not as many as appear in the photo. As always, the notorious camera is showing colours that are not really there. Many of the rosy coloured papers are actually golden and quite lovely.

The next two photos show the same papers up a little closer.
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The last two photos are of some of my favorite papers that I have painted. Yum! Again, there is virually no pink in these at all -- trust me.

Many of these papers are really thick and rich and wonderful. I almost want to frame them as abstract pieces of art on their own. But, I won't. They will mostly be used for various backgrounds for my sketchbooks.

Postcard swap

In my last post, I mentioned that I made a box with layers of various materials. I made a similar background for eight postcards that were sent out in a postcard swap with some of the other students in the class. After creating the background, I cut it up so that there would be interesting bits on each postcard.

The postcards did not look finished to me at this point, rather they looked like exactly what they were, chopped up bits of background.

I let each piece speak to me and added hand stitching where the background told me to. That was fun and mostly successful.


I really enjoyed creating these and have enjoyed receiving the postcard from the other swappers, I am still anxiously awaiting the rest of the postcards. I love the feeling of anticipation that comes from knowing great mail is coming into my mailbox any day. Of course, that thrill does occasionally get me into trouble when I longing browse some of the wonderful products that are available in on-line stores. I just have to remember how difficult it is to clean out my studio and make room for the things I already have -- I keep hoping that thought will make it easier to say no, but it is not easier yet -- I will let you all know the minute it gets easier.

I have been busy with classes and with cleaning up my studio. Everything is progressing slowly, some things are even progressing surely!
The items in this post were created in Sue Bleiweiss's class "Mixed Media for the Fibre Artist". I really enjoyed working many of the techniques and making them my own. The orange vase shown is gossamer thin silk -- a little too thin, on a really hot and humid weekend it totally collapsed! Oops. I inserted a glass cylinder vase and all has been well since. The dark green vase is a little thicker (a full layer of silk cap) and sturdier, but I miss the beautiful translucency of the orange one.






























The box shown below was fun to make and will be useful to hold small sewing notions.














It has three drawers and a top storage area as well. The cover fabric is a rich combination of painted cheesecloth (I love painted cheesecloth and hoard the bits I have made over the years -- thins time I actually used some!), bits of silk roving, bits of yarns and Angelina fibres. Yum!

There were other projects in the class, but those are still works in progress.

I may not have been posting a lot in the last two months, but I have been doing some creative things. I have taken more of SueB's classes. I was not able to keep up with the first one completely and do need to finish up a few items for it. The second class, Creative Mixed Media Journalling Techniques started just as the school year was winding down and I have had little time to really get into some of the great techniques that have been covered so far.

In other news . . . I was involved in a book swap. Coincidentally, the person to whom I was to be sending a book mentioned that she had seen some of SueB's books and really liked them. Therefore, I used some of the techniques from SueB's class and created a book with the theme "Our Town" -- my town happens to be Ottawa, Canada's Capital.

The cover is made of a stiff stabilizer that was painted red. Then I used a added printouts of photos that I took, mostly of famous building in downtown Ottawa, including our Parliament Buildings. I covered the first layer of photos with a sheet of white tissues and used gel medium to hold it down. This also made the tissue more translucent. I added some focus photos of top, to highlight them. The whole was then coved with fusible web and a layer of off-white tulle. The first photo shows the cover opened up with some of the photos being more prominent than others. The second shows the book closed with hand made cord to keep it closed. I searched everywhere for red maple leaf buttons to make the closure, but could not find them.

The last photo shows the inside of the book with the sewn in signatures.

Week 5 journal

This is journal 5. I pretty much made this one as instructed. I love this journal because it has interchangeable signatures, which is one of the things I really seek in journals and sketchbooks because I tend to not work linearly. I am always jumping from one thing to another and like flexibility in my sketchbooks.

I also really love this book because I am able to use lovely, premium 8 1/2 by 11 inch papers and fold them along the grain. I used three different colours of thread to hold the three signatures in. Then I added beads to weigh down the ends of the threads.

Week 4 Journal 2

This is the second leathery journal I made. This one is made from a large paper grocery bag. The folded pages measure 8 1/2 by 11 inches. I used a five hole pamphlet stitch to attach the three signatures to the cover.

I used a coppery elastic to tuck the flap into for a closure. I discovered that the thicker paper of the grocery bag does not work as well as the thinner paper of the lunch bag, though it does provide a much larger surface area so I can make a larger book.

It is also essential to really flatten the paper after crumpling and painting. It looks more leathery if it is really flattened as opposed to highly textured.

Week 4 Journal 1

This leather look journal is based on Lesson 4 of Sue Bleiweiss's Journal Making for the Fiber Artist class. I added gold flecks of colour to the red leathery journal. I had made this leathery paper before and I had forgotten how much fun it is.
I stitched the signatures through the cover using a long and link stitching. Each of the long stitches went through the long red bead on the spine. I think the gold colour thread complements the specks of gold that you can see on the back of the journal. A gold colour elastic holds the jounal flap in place.

Lesson 3 Journal

This is the journal I made using the Lesson 3 instructions. The twig I am using inspired the fabric choice in this case. The colours on the cover are brighter in real life and the fabric has an autumn woods feel to it. Inside pages, accents and tags are decorated with walnut ink.










I made three different sized tags with my Sizzix die cutter using the walnut ink coloured papers. These are attached to the journal in various ways.

Small tags are tucked into a pocket made from the same paper.

Medium tags are hung from a paper strip glued at each end to the sketchbook paper.

Other tags are tucked into a strip so that the strings hang out the side of the journal.

Some pages are merely decorated with a strip of the walnut ink paper.

Yet another sketchbook

This is another sketchbook I made. This one is for meeeeeeee!!!! I loved the fabric on the one for my friend so I made another one. This one has various yarns couched to the edges and tied to the rings. I made all three sketchbooks larger than the original design because I want to be able to use standard 9 X 12 pages in them. Here are the two sketchbooks that are still living with me.

Second Lesson 2 Sketchbook

This is the second sketchbook I made based on Lesson 2. This one has been given to a friend who loves blues and greens and is a marvellous artist.
The inside has decorated papers and lots of pockets for supplies.

Journal Making Class -- Week Two -- Sketchbook Journal

The second week's journal that I made in Sue Bleiweiss's on-line class is a sketchbook with removable pages. Instead of using a single fabric for the outside of the journal, this sketchbook is made using parts my son's old outgrown and holey jeans. I used lots of pocket portions so that he can keep treasures in them (he is 9 years old). The closure is a snap from an actual pair of jeans. The inside there are lots of pockets for holding pencils and other art supplies. Strips of fabric decorate the outside of the book rings that are used to hold the pages in the sketchbook.

I did muck up and put the holes for the rings in the wrong place. The two outside ones are fine, but the center hole is nowhere near the center. Ooops. The holes are not standard distance apart anyway, they almost have to be made using a single hole punch so it is not a big deal.

Journal Making Class

Starting on March 31st, I started Journal Making for the Fiber Artist, an on-line class with Sue Bleiweiss. As an avid bookbinder and fibre artist, this class really intrigued me. So far, I am having a lot of fun and creating some journals for myself and for some as gifts. My first journal from this class is pictured here. It is made from strips of silk, frayed at one edge and stitched down. The clasp is created from a fibre button made in the motif from a project from my City&Guilds course. The machine made cord is made of strips of silk stitched with the same thread as the satin stitching on the edges. Beads were added to the ends of the cord.


Beads were also added to the spine as I was stitching the signatures to the cover using a pamphlet stitch. Can you tell that I am a magpie?
The inside has two pockets, one on the left and one on the right. The pocket on the left was made using a similar method to the cover, but the lining was stitched to the cover fabric and then stitched to the Pelmet that I added to give the pocket more stability.










There are various pockets and interesting pages throughout the journal. Some of these are made from card stock and others are made from translucent mulberry paper. As you can see there is also a pen loop to hold a pen and keep it handy.


The journal in these pictures was completed on April 2, 2008. I am slowly learning about posting photos and blogs. I will post other photos of other journals in the next few days.

Fibre Woman's Blog Beginning

There are some amazing blogs out there and I have been perusing several of them over the last few days. I have finally decided to start one of my own. So, here it goes . . ..