About my Unscheduled Blogging Break...

Just popping in to say that my life has taken an unexpected but very exciting turn which means that I don't have any time for blogging. We are moving back to Perth early in 2010 so we are using every spare moment to de-clutter and prepare our house of the last ten years for sale. Joseph has a job transfer and Zach is starting uni in February so it is suddenly up to me to find a job in Perth too! I am really hopeful that I will be able to arrange something (quickly!) with my current employer but I am of course looking at all the options. What we are discovering is that you suddenly "see" your home differently when you know it is going to be seen by a potential buyer's eyes - we have a lovely home but suddenly the backlog of maintenance seems so obvious!

So you can guess how I have spent the last couple of weeks - firstly packing up my art/craft rooms so that I can get in there to re-paint and then of course the actual painting. I had forgotten how much it hurts my neck to paint above my head height and guess what else - I had forgotten just how much "stuff" I have accumulated and how it very quickly translates to an enormous number of cartons!! If I had more time I would try and thin it out but unfortunately I am going to have to try and do most of that at the other end. The whole exercise of packing it all up has made me really want to streamline and to establish some focus in my art - it is crazy to want to try everything and to buy supplies for every style and technique that appeals to me! I need to face facts - I would need another five lifetimes, at least, to do justice to my acquisitions to date and I certainly would need to give up my day job and that is not going to happen in the short term!

So exciting times ahead - I am so looking forward to living in Perth after our 16 years plus in Kalgoorlie - to be close to friends and family (and the coast!!) again but of course there are also moments when I think of what we will miss here - this place has been good to us and for us!

I'll pop in occasionally to provide updates but there won't be any art to share for a little while (but can you imagine just how hungry I will be to get my new space set-up and functioning!!) The only blog I am reading at the moment is this one!!

Happy 2010 to you all!!

December Calendar Girl Postcard

This month the image we are using for the Calendar Girl Postcard inspiration is a fractal chosen by Neki - see below. For some reason I just couldn't get inspired by it - all I could think to do was try and reproduce the effect using my embellisher but several of the other participants had already done that (and done it really well) so I decided to go for a very "loose" interpretation.

I've concentrated on the blue, black and red colours and not worried about getting a result that looked anything like a fractal! But I am really happy with it - I hand needle-felted some silky fibres onto black commercial felt and then machine stitched the rays in black and then metallic blue thread. The little square sequins are iridescent blue and I've added a scattering of tiny clear sparkly seed beads as well. It is very glittery and pretty in real life although as usual it doesn't really show up that well in the scanning! My postcard goes to Sandy this month.

This week I received this gorgeous fabric ATC "Strata" in a trade with Sally Westcott. My ATC for Sally was the one in my last blog post.

I've really slowed down with my blogging (and my creating!) as I am away from home so much these days but I noticed today that I am slowly getting closer to my 500th blog post so I guess I should do something to celebrate that milestone...my thinking cap is on and I'll let you know what I decide! Bye for now...

Rusted Fabric ATC

Just a quick little post to share an Artist Trading Card (ATC) that I've made recently for a trade with Sally in Tasmania.

I've used some of the fabric I had previously rusted (heavily rusted actually!) and added some hand stitching, a bit of stamping, a strip of dyed muslin and some seed beads. I've used more of the fabric as a background when I scanned the ATC.

On a more general note, I just can't believe Christmas is SO close - I think all the travel I am doing with my job means that "normal" weekday life doesn't happen so weekends become a little over-crammed with activity and so I have the sense of time passing extremely quickly!! For a range of reasons we are not going to Perth and Margaret River for Christmas/New Year this year and it feels really strange as it will be the first Christmas we have had at "home" in Kalgoorlie for the 16 years we have lived here.

Anyway after being in Wiluna last week, tomorrow I am off to Esperance first (the coast!) and then to Laverton, and will be back Thursday afternoon. Lots of driving involved - four hours down to Esperance and then seven and a half to eight hours up to Laverton before the drive back to Kalgoorlie but at least I get to see the ocean if briefly. Even if it is blowing a gale, I am going to walk on the beach before heading back to the dusty inland scrub!!

I love arty mail!

Look at the wondrousness (makes me want to add some more nesses, just saying that word) that has recently blessed my letter box -

These sweet ATCs from Jenxo (above and below)

These extra goodies from Jen (thanks!)

A Calendar Girl Postcard for October from Jenny -

and this Calendar Girl Postcard for November from Neki -

There is more but I need time to take photos!! Off to Wiluna again tomorrow
(for work, of course) - be back by the weekend.

Heart Pins & Calendar Pages

It feels as though I haven't blogged for weeks (and that is because I haven't!). First off our internet provider had a hardware crash and we couldn't access the internet for days and then I was away all this week with work. Amazing how frustrating it was not being able to read blogs or emails all of last weekend! But I did get a fair bit of reading and mending done instead so it was probably good for me...

This week I have been making my five brooches (pins) for the small monthly swap group I am in. I decided to do bright needle-felted heart pins. I've needle-felted bright pink and orange organza to the same colours of commercial felt and then added some wool roving on top. The organza really makes them quite sparkly but it is amazing how much organza gets gobbled up by the needle-felting! I've used a lovely variegated embroidery thread to add some stitching around the edges of the hearts etc and then added some beading for a bit of extra sparkle. To keep the pins robust I have backed them with pelmet vilene plus (the strong iron-on one) which I have painted pink and then they are finished off with a brooch back. I "sort of" want to add something dangly to the base point of the heart but I am resisting as I can't think what would look good.

Below are the pages I recently made for a West Australian Calendar Swap - my pages are for January and I originally intended to do a beach theme (January being one of our glorious summer months) but somehow they turned into a "new beginning" theme. I did a painted background that is then "polished" with distress ink. I should be receiving the calendar back in the next few weeks so I will post all the other participating artists' pages then. The hostess for the swap (Genevieve Payne) is mounting all of the pages on black cardstock so that is why mine don't have a black border and look a bit "unmounted"! The first picture is a bit blurry because the metal embellishment that I used on the gate is quite dimensional. I should have taken a photo really but I am a bit slack and the scanner is sitting right next to me!

Today we have a glorious sunny day and I feel as if I should do something outside to make the most of it but I am travelling a lot with work these days, so my creative time is pretty much limited to weekends and I have some ATCs I want to make!

I have received some lovely art (ATC, postcards and my altered book) recently so I'll post about that as soon as I get some pictures taken. And about the books I've bought - my Christmas present to myself - six (!!) wonderful creative books and a packet of Leslie Riley's TAP (which has yet to arrive but is hopefully close).

A Blog Award & New Stamps

The wonderful Bevlea bestowed (isn't that a magnificently "old" sounding word!) me with a Kreativ Blogger award this week which was a lovely compliment - thank you Bevlea! The way it works - (a) thank the person who gave the award (b) copy the logo onto your blog (c) link the person to your blog (d) pass onto 7 others and (e) list 7 things that no-one really knows about you.

This time I am not actually going to pass it on as I always find it very hard to pick and choose when I read and love SO many creative blogs but this is my list of 7 "unknown things" (for what it is worth!):

1. I've lived in 20 different houses/units etc although I spent the first 17 years of my life in one house and have lived in our current house for 10 years.
2. I really dislike routine but have forced myself to have some important ones so that I can be part of the workforce and a reasonably capable parent!
3. I love lots of clothing styles even though I wouldn't ever buy/wear them.
4. I love lots of different decorating styles even though I wouldn't actually choose them for my own house.
5. I love cooking but hate cooking for formal type events (which is why I gave up on dinner parties nearly three decades ago!)
6. I love simple things.
7. I have a ridiculous number of ink-pads (too ridiculous to enumerate publicly).

Gosh that was hard - I am pretty much an open book so it is hard to find things that people might not know about me.

I've had a bit of a little splurge lately after a period of "saving" and I have some lovely new stamps - the Funky Flames one below (stamped twice here) from the Tim Holtz collection at Stampers Anonymous and the Christine Adolph Fresh Flowers Giant Cube are the latest ones I've acquired! I'm going to play with them this afternoon hopefully although I have to finish my 12 pages for a Calendar Swap first.

And just so there is actually something to look at, here are the first couple of pages in my article on using Metal Tape in the latest Stamping & Papercraft magazine (Vol 15 No 7) - Metal Tape, the Cuttlebug, Alcohol Inks and Black Gesso - a really fun combination!

Calendar Girl Postcard from Carol McFee

In the Calendar Girl postcard exchange it was Carol McFee's turn to make me a postcard for the month of September but Carol has been extremely busy especially with the latest Fibre in-Form online workshops that she and Lynda are running and so my postcard was a little delayed. It has, however, arrived and it was well worth the wait. It has a lot more "zing" than shows in the scan! Just in case you don't remember the Calendar picture (Hundertwasser's Green Town) that was the inspiration for September, you can see it here.