Saturday, November 24, 2007

Happy Belated Thanksgiving Day

Turkey with all the fixin's and new this year, pomegranate martinis. We had a great day; hope you did too!

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Guardian Angel

Done. And delivered. And here is the final result:

The response ran the gamut from tears to "creepy". This is a picture of my mother as a young girl. She died two years ago last month and never knew many of her grandchildren, (and great grandchildren) including Declan. As I said in the previous post, I wanted to try this technique of using photoshop and rearranging the image. This is what the original photograph looked like:

So I photoshopped out the dog. Of course I then had to figure out how to get Declan in and couldn't so I did it the old fashioned way...I sewed him in. The coloring is much better in the original photo, but somehow when it printed came out too blue. Looking at it now I think I would have tried harder to get the coloring right, but I thought I'd better quit while I was ahead and before my printer started to wig out on me as it often does when I use anything besides regular paper.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Fall Energy

For several years now I've been doing 'guardian angel' wall quilts as welcome gifts to new babies in our family. The first one was Ella Jane's done, well, I guess she's nine? I wish I had pictures of them all, but that was before digital. The last one, the one nearly finished is for Declan. Of course he's not a "new" baby anymore, just turning one. But that doesn't matter. I won't show the whole thing yet because Heidi (mom) and Bridget (big sister) read my blog occasionally and would probably rather be surprised. But I will show a little piece:

I have to admit I designed this not so much with Declan and his likes in mind (though it is reported he does like trucks and vintage trucks can be really cool,) but more with trying out some new techniques, having been inspired by Susan Lewis Storey and her work. The tiles are made of Fimo and stamped to spell out Declans Guardian Angel. They are my attempt at work similar to Laurie Mika.

I've also been putting gardens to bed, painting a new wall in our hall, which led to another wall that needed paint and a new laundry room that needed paint and making floor cloths on canvas as gifts and I continue to ask myself where this spurt of creative energy has come from. Like the bears getting ready for winter, could it be that soon I'll crash and wake up in the spring?! Or perhaps the level of energy that runs my friend Sarah Smith has finally rubbed off on me!