Merry Christmas

We sketched today at Martha's home, enjoyed her Christmas decorations and ate holiday goodies. It was fun to sketch her tree ornaments in an inchie format. After drawing snow flakes, a butterfly and spiral with a white crayon, I added watercolor. The resist creates a dreamy look. Hope you're enjoying the holidays with family and friends. Merry Christmas!

ArtFiberFest Journal

Preparing a journal is one of the pleasures of going to an art retreat. I've wanted to make a fabric art journal for some time and decided to create one for this conference. I stitched small pillows, hooked a variety of fibers, ribbons and fabric strips onto a canvas mesh spine and embellished it with trades, beads and printed images. The signatures are made of drawing paper.

The first page highlights the ArtFiberFest 2009 theme- Orbs (thus the fabrics with circles).

One page includes the fabric inchies that I received from our swap. Thanks to everyone who participated. I like the different creations all in one inch size.
I add notes, information and handouts from my workshops, artist contact information of new and old friends, future teachers and ideas for projects.

The back cover contains a couple more trades.

Now I have all of my retreat treasures in one place. In upcoming posts, I'll share what I created at ArtFiberFest.

Inchies for ArtFiberFest

Next week, I'm off to ArtFiberFest at Reed College and decided to participate in an inchie swap with an orb theme. It's hard to work this small. I sandwiched two fabrics back to back on a piece of Lutradur. The back fabric is yellow with multicolored polka dots. I cut one inch strips with my rotary cutter, stamped inch rings using a bottle cap with acylic paint, outlined orbs in red ink and sewed on sequin and bead embellishments. The edges are colored with a red Sharpie.

What workshops am I taking? Jen McGahan's soft sculpture animals; Ty & Marcia Schultz's discovering paverpol; and Mary Stanley's charm school.