February = Hearts (of course)

 These are my little fabric hearts made for an Aussie swap with some friends spread across the country.  (You can see what Nic and Jacky have made here and here).

Mine are made with white fabric that has been stamped, masked and sprayed (a lovely heart shaped mask and Glimmer Mist in Coffee Shop both by Tattered Angels) and have some iron-on fleece in the middle to get a bit of "puff".  I forced myself to loosen up and do some pretty random machine stitching around the heart shapes before adding the extra layers and embellishments on the front. 

And this week I received these two fabric ATCs from a trade with Chantal from France. 

 These are my ATCs for Chantal - one has a sun printed fabric base with two overlays of different tulle and some small fabric embellishment rectangles (it is actually a lot brighter than the scan shows) and the other is an extra from an earlier ATC swap and is based on woven ribbons.

Stretching Those Boundaries!

Very exciting news - a couple of weeks ago I heard (via my art friend Julia over in Melbourne) that the wonderful Flora Bowley was coming to Western Australia in March and doing one residential weekend workshop - it is an intuitive painting workshop - "Bloom True"!

For the last several years once a year I have treated myself to an annual art retreat of some sort, usually in the eastern states, although the first one, which was fantastic was organised here in the west by Jo and her mum, Jackie.  No-one was however organising one for 2011 so I figured I'd just save my money, but as soon as I saw this, I was hooked.  I like to play with paint and I love working on canvas but I am definitely not a painter (yet?) but this workshop seems like a great opportunity to stretch my boundaries and to loosen up.  What has made it even better is that I caught up recently with a new"ish" art friend and she immediately decided to go too!

In the meantime I am gradually getting back in the creative swing and I've been working on some fabric hearts for an Australian swap and some ATCs for one-on-one trades.  I've also been "playing" with some paint and canvas too because I got so excited about Flora's workshop - so at the top of this post there is a progress shot of one background (that will be largely covered up later of course)!  PS I am a bit addicted to masks and stencils (as it seems is the rest of the blogging world!)

 

I had some time recently to re-organise my little "bliss box" (aka my delightful but very small paper-craft room) so I thought I'd share some sets of the bedlam.  I was going to say that it looks a lot tidier now but it doesn't really because I have stuff everywhere because I decided to stamp and spray (with Glimmer Mist) the fabric for the hearts I am making.

Finally I have to tell you about my latest book purchases - firstly the awesome Pam Carriker's "Art at the Speed of Life" has been released and recently arrived in the mail,

 
then I bought this one on ebay "Incredible Acrylics" bu Jean-Paul van Boxtel 

 
and finally these two at one of those "remainder shops" - "Nature Inspired" by Tracie Lyn Huskamp
 

and "Playing With Books" by Jason Thompson.  They are all wonderful and quite different.  It seems my art/craft book collection will never reach saturation point...