Having New Eyes

OHNO - another JJ quilt!?

I can't resist.  My boxer, JJ (aka Jada Jarhead), is an available and free, and dare I say beautiful?, model for my photos and quilts.  LOL.  I've just finished this small wall quilt.

I've actually had the picture of JJ printed out on cotton fabric and pieced together for nearly 6 months, and pinned to my design wall, but...  You know how it is don't you?  An idea comes along, perhaps in a magazine article, or a Quilting Arts episode, that really catches your fancy, but partway into the process some voice inside you says, no, I don't like the direction I'm going with this.  So it sits.  In my studio, I pin things like this on the design wall so that I think about it whenever I happen to glance that was.  Originally I was going to make a collage style quilt, with other dogs and summer pics/colors, but it wasn't coming together in my mind.  Only 2 weeks ago I asked that wonderful question "what if...?"  Within days, she was finished.

 

 

This quilt is for sale for 185.00

 

Extracting Images from photos, and Another February Winner!

1st - for the new winner:  KYMBERLIE!  I drew your number using the random number generator at Random.org, so you can go to my photo album and choose what you'd like me to send you. Email me! There have been 3 gifts claimed, which will be in the caption, so you can easily tell which items are still up for grabs!  I'll be drawing one more number before the weekend is over to hopefully finish up February with a bang, so be sure to become a follower of THIS BLOG and leave a comment if you want a chance!

On to my other subject - extracting images from photos.  I just completed an online workshop with Cynthia Powell - it was affordable, and I learned more about tools in Photoshop Elements than I expected, and how to use them effectively.  I made this collage based on an absolutely lovable and hilarious pic I grabbed of my Boxer, JJ, sitting in the car and napping in the sun at the same time.  Here in central IL, we've had a lot of cold, snow, sleet, and grayness, so the warm up last week was really delicious.

Or do you like this version better:

I would love to hear from you - with grass or without?

There are a lot of online sources of free clipart, photos, textures, and brushes, to name a few, and with Photoshop Elements you have a minimum of 8 different tools and settings that you can use, either singly or in combination, to extract a single element from a digital photo to use in a collage like this.  The white daisies are from a photo I took myself, in my own garden.  The blue daisy-like pics, the window, and the background are from some digital scrapbooking embellishments I'd purchased in the past, as are the cartoon swirly centered flowers.  All of the butterflies but one came on a single, free collage sheet of vintage butterfly illustrations - I simply took the time to erase the white background, clean up stray pixels, and cut them apart (by cropping a single butterfly, saving it, hitting control z to back up to the whole collage page and choose a different one to crop).  The window is from a photo of a window, with the panes erased so that I could put a photo of my own front yard 'outside' the window.  The tree and the sun were just free clips I found on the web.  The pillow JJ is leaning on is the one on my couch.  Every item can be individually flipped, sharpened, recolored, trimmed, rotated etc in Photoshop, and when all is just right, all the individual items (layers) are merged to make a flattened image.  That's what you see above.  

I'm seriously thinking of turning the above image into a small art quilt - the Valerie Hearder Landscape Quilt Group that I belong to just announced a quilt contest called "Fantasy".  Can you think of a better fantasy subject than JJ in Dreamland?  LOL

Another collage that I finished:

This is quite different in that all of the elements you see are from real photos, no cartoons.  The hummingbird is from a photo Cheryl B took in her own garden.  The flowers are from some various sites offering free photos, and the fairy, sans wings, is a free image I found at deviant art.com.  This link will take you to the gallery of the photographer with a ton of free model portraits like my fairy above, but you need an account (free) with deviantart to access the pics since many of them are locked for adults only viewing.  The background was the last thing we learned in Cynthia's workshop.  Combining textures in the layers palette to achieve a look that suits you.  I had a free clipping mask that makes the frayed/grungy black frame.  The embossed purple is a combination of a photo of textured glass merged with a photo I took a few weeks ago of the sun sparkling off the snow in my neighborhood, with added sparkles using a free brush called "Star_brushes_by_Moondustdreams".  The wings on my little fairy are also with a free brush I found online called "butterfly_wings_by_Trisste".  Of course, there are other actions involved in assembling the collage, but the emphasis was on extracting images and I must say it's addictive!  

 

I wonder what my next collage will be?

 

 

Winter Color Palette

I tried something that I think will have an impact on my own quilting design - and I got the idea from seeing paint palettes at the hardware store.  I thought, what if I pulled 5 colors from a digital photo to assemble a coordinating palette for use in quilt design, or scrapbooking, or even house painting?  Two of my winter woods pictures provided me with 2 palettes - one is definitely COOL winter colors and the other tends towards the WARM (or at least, not as cool LOL) end of the spectrum:

This picture is of the Embarras (em-buh-rah) River in Jan, 2011.  The palette I pulled from this is:

 

 

My second photo is on the same day, a different part of the river, a different setting on the camera:

That became this palette:

Though it isn't apparent, the fifth color is white.  (:  Almost the same colors as camouflage!

 

Don't forget to enter my February Giveaway!  details HERE.

Playing with images on my Computer

I have a head/chest cold.  That said, you'll understand why I canceled the weekly quilting group that meets at my house every Friday - there's no way I'm going to send any of my friends home with a cold to fight!  You'll also understand why I chose, instead, to play most the day away with some of my photos and adobe photoshop elements - it's something that I really like to do, but never have a block of time big enough to actually accomplish anything!  The way to approach this kind of "goofing off" is, of course, through the internet.  Google specifically.  (How did we survive without google?!?)

I searched

"photoshop elements" tutorial grunge

I'm quite taken with the whole grunge movement, though the name is a lot more negative sounding than it should be.  In the music world, it was an alternative form of heavy metal, gutteral, coarse music.  In the art world it usually means stark realism complete with fade spots and scratches.  It usually isn't simple looking, but usually kind of busy, even energetic.  I ended up with something that perhaps isn't grunge, but it was fun approaching it from that perspective.  The picture I chose to use was one of the full moon rising just above the trees on my street, that isn't particularly inspiring and doesn't do the scene any justice at all.  After looking through the tutorial, I realized that I could change the sky to fabric and actually approach the impact that the scene had for me in real life.  The original photo precedes the result of my experiment, below.

 

 

My next experiment, this morning, was using this video tutorial minus the grunge in the google search.  I chose a picture from earlier in the year when Mark brought our grandbabies for a visit.  I had this picture of Chuck feeding Sam, and thought I'd see how to make it look like a color sketch.  The original is charming:

 

But check THIS out!

 

Newest ATCs

I'm reviewing Jane Davila's newest book, Surface Design Essentials, and when doing a 'book report', I really like to participate in the projects, to get a real feel of the author's perspective.  That, in combination with the surprise ATC I got in the mail, from a friend "just because", motivated me to make a new batch of Artist Trading Cards last week.

(for a more detailed explanation of ATCs, click HERE.)

 

The technique from the book that I wanted to try out involved making a small painting with watercolor pencils and using it in a fabric postcard, or in my case, an ATC.  Here are the 6 I made with that technique, which I rather enjoyed!

 

THEN, because I had 3 pink daisies already printed out on TAP, and because I had 3 more pieces of batting already cut to size, I made these 3:

 

MAGGIE - if you want one - just name it!

What would you do with these?

I've been playing with Photoshop Elements this morning, and have some, I think, rather cool pics.  But what to do with them!?!

 above - originally a photo of petunias in Martha's garden!

above - playing with bird clipart

  For the black lace and roses crowd.  (:  This one would definitely look good on a black tshirt.

Recently finished, Nature Inspired, art quilts

A week ago, I was sifting through my ever changing pile of partially finished, (or should I say, partially started?) projects, looking for inspiration.  One piece that caught my eye was the photo and poem I'd transferred to fabric with TAP transfer paper but had done nothing with.

 The poem is from Feb 2010, and the photo is from my yard in late March, early April 2010.  I'd already brightened and filtered the photo, and merged it with the text, then stretched it horizontally to make a rectangular image rather than a square one.

I just adore the combination of purple and green, which seem to be the prevalent colors in the Midwestern woods and fields in early spring.  I attached the TAP transfer to some hand painted batting with spray adhesive, and then attached THAT to some hand painted lavender background fabric I had just sitting around and that happened to match PERFECTLY!  I used green rick rack and vintage white lace to attach all those layers together and to decorate the "frame". 

 As you can see, the fluffy batting with the purple paint makes an interesting edging and the rick rack decorates the raw edge of the transfer image nicely.  I added a layer of a moderately stiff interfacing and a backing fabric to finish the layers, and free motion quilted with an iris variegated cotton thread on the outlines of the flowers as well as around the border and in the zig zag binding.

 

Rather than using a sleeve on the back to hang it, I decided to attach a piece of the same green rick rack so that this quilt can be hung from a single nail or tack.  If you've ever done something like that, you probably realize that there's a balance issue to deal with - and I could see that I had a right side that wasn't as heavy as the left side and had to figure something out.  Well, you're talking to someone with a bead collection that uses up 2 big boxes of space!  I pulled out my green and purple beads and did some beading, and then a little more, to make the quilt hang straight.  

 

I actually have another Tap transfer of almost the same image - I wonder what I can do with that?  This art quilt can be viewed in my portfolio, under Nature and Poetry.
 
 

Quilted Business Cards?

Every Monday I go to Champaign to visit the grandkids and teach piano.  In between, I like to spend 45 minutes or so at Borders or Barnes and Noble and peruse the magazines, especially the one put out by Stampington.com that are full of mixed media inspiration.  One project I saw which really captured my imagination was one where a lady made homemade business cards.  I've made inchies, ps inchies, atc's - so why not the little 2x3.5 inch business cards?  While I have beautiful business cards for my Simply Music piano lessons, I'd like to teach people to quilt, whether contemporary or traditional, hand or machine, and for local use, I put these together:

These cuties are OFFICIAL QUILTS having 3 layers stitched together.  There is no paper in them - 2 layers of cotton fabric and a batting layer of stiff interfacing. 

A few days of making Artist Trading Cards

We're talking embellishment heaven!  Every year I want to have some new artist trading cards to bring with me to the Chicago International Quilt festival, because there's a trading card WALL in the middle of the vendor area where lots of artists leave their cards and do trades.  It's really fun to put mine up on Thursday, taking some in return, and then going back on Saturday to see which ones were already picked by someone else.  I like to contact the artists, who are supposed to put contact information on the backs of their ATC's, just to let them know I have their cards and how much I like them.  Sometimes I even get a reply!  I've never been contacted by anyone who picked my cards, but I always hope someone will.

Here are the cards I've finished so far:

this card was an experiment with digital ground, on a sheet of ANGELINA!!  It worked!  I did use 3 coats of dg, and printed a black and white image, then did some quilting and embellishing.

This is a simple photo, taken on a backpacking trip a few years back, printed on digital ground.

Microsoft clip art printed on digital ground and then painted and quilted.

Printed with dig.ground, and then pulled out my scrapbooking supplies for the sticker and border.

digital ground photo with scrapbooking sticker!

Fused fussy cut flower, ceramic button, seed beads, black embroidery.

The word Mother, and the flower image are printed on digital ground.  The black 'seeds' are embroidered.  The word 'loves' and the yellow lines are quilted, with velvet ribbons and a ceramic button added.

 

If you're interested in learning more about embellishments, I'd like to recommend a website/blog.  Linda Matthews' site has tons of information and instruction about embellishing, and she's released a instructional dvd called Titivations.  As a matter of fact, she's hosting a giveaway of her dvd during the month of April which, if you are a blogger, you can enter.  Details here.

If only... the hippie bus art quilt

She's got a name, too.  I really wasn't thrilled with calling her the Hippie Bus Quilt, though I imagine that will be the name I use to refer to her.  Her official name is "If Only...".  If you are interested in seeing the process I went through to make her, click HERE.

Hippies were, essentially, the first environmentalists. They dreamed of peace on earth, living in harmony with nature, and wild, big, generous love. I was only 8 yrs old during the Summer of Love, but I dreamed with the flower children I saw on the tv, and heard on the radio. If only we could have all the good stuff and none of the bad stuff. If only, when I drive my hippie bus across the country, as Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters drove 'Further' cross country in 1964 did, the exhaust coming out of the engine was as fragrant as flowers, attracting butterflies and birds, life and love. This quilt ended up a bit larger than I'd planned, 'cause I needed more and more room for the flowers and butterflies. It measures 75" long by 52" tall.  She's full of the message from the 60's and I really am fond of her.

 

You might wonder about the smiley faces or the piano keys.  Music, and it's many symbols, are usually present somewhere in a lot of my quilts, because music, and my piano, have been one of the spices in my life that kept me whole and intact.  The smiley faces?  that's another story.  I've recently been evaluating "my space" for positive and negative energies, or influences.  I believe that creativity flourishes when we have a space to work in that lights us up, and energizes us.  As I looked around my space, which is my dining room where we never actually dine, my eyes and heart kept returning to a small collection of cheap ceramic cups, vases and mugs - all bright yellow, with smiley faces on them.  They make me happy, somehow.  Each one, once upon a time, contained a small flower arrangement from my husband, and everything about them speaks of love and acceptance to me.  I discovered this while I was making the "If Only..." quilt, so the smiling tires are the memorial to that discovery.