New Year's Resolutions, Goals, Guidelines

Happy 2017!  Sorry for the long gaps in posting. One of my goals for January is to post on a more consistent basis. It may be more along the lines of a guideline rather than an actual resolution!

January 2017 Intentions in Composition Notebook

I no longer make New Year's Resolutions.  It seems like a great idea to make plans to live a better life. So I try to do this on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.  Because I am 'goal oriented', my list is usually formatted as goals or intentions.

Here is an overview list that I made. It is in the back of one of my art journals and I can refer to it when I make a new page of resolutions.  From this big-topic list, I make specific goals.  For example, on my January 2017 Intentions page posted above, I am choosing to be more mindful about my level of exercise.  This is stated with the goal of increasing the difficulty of my exercising throughout the month.  The time that will be spent on the exercise did not change from the previous month but I stated it just so I'd know what I am expecting of myself.  It may sound silly to have to write it down.  However, this helps me to stay focused.  And when it comes to exercise, every bit of focus helps!

Even though this isn't a goal or intention, I thought I would share my meal planning page for the next two weeks.  It is in the back of my regular planner so it is very handy. Meal planning is an ongoing thing that I do and it helps me with shopping and health goals.

Wishing you the very best in 2017!
Beverly

Painting on Fabric Using Pigment Powder

Lately, I have been working with fabric. It has provided a great outlet for me to play with my stash by dyeing, painting, quilting, incorporating surface design techniques, and anything else which I can think up. Today, I decided to try using Colourarte's Primary Elements pigment powder to paint on some fabric that I had dyed a few months ago.

Hand dyed denim on left and cotton scarf on right

The original fabrics were white or off-white and now they are beautiful shades of blues and a bit of pink/magenta.  These seemed like great choices to paint upon.

Obviously, blue is a first choice for me when it comes to adding additional color! I used several different colors of Primary Elements but chose to stick with a cool palette. (Maybe even a 'cold' palette, as in sherbert! *See note below.) At the time, I was thinking of a tone on tone effect.  But as I was painting, I realized that more contrast would be more interesting so I grabbed some solid fabric to paint, too.  Those pictures are below the scarf.

Stargazer, Bolivian Blue and Green Pearl Primary Elements on tie-dyed scarf

In order to see how the rich colors of the pigment powder would work with a colorless extender I mixed about a teaspoon of the pigment powder with about a tablespoon of medium.  This is what I used:

It was fun to mix the powders and see the results. Sometimes paint colors change quite a bit when they are dry, so the anticipation of the end product was part of the fun! I decided to add a bit of white Brusho Colourcraft powder to the pigment powder to see if it would change the opacity much.  It may have been that I did not add enough but it wasn't a very noticeable change.

Forest Green Primary Elements is most noticeable on the top left piece

The pink denim fabric was left over from when my 11 year old daughter and I made an apron together several years ago. She wants me to make a book bag from today's painting experiment!  I love how the large stencil from this month's Stencil Girl Club collection made this project even easier!  The colors of the fabrics and the paints remind me of summer days with ice cream and sprinkles.

The lighting is wonky, but this is actually an intense pink color!

*Colourarte is having a "sherbert challenge" and I thought of Raspberry when I pulled out the fabric. The painted colors showed up a lot better on the solid color fabric.  And the picture below is a better representation of the background fabric!

The large piece of blue dyed denim in the top couple of pictures was painted also. But I will share the outcome of that on another day when I have sewn it into something!
I hope you have a wonderful, warm day with a cold treat! Thank you for stopping by today!
Have a wonderful day!
Beverly

Steel Die Storage Update for Spellbinders, Sizzix, etc.

Wafer Thin Die Storage

As my collection of tools grows, so does my need to find new ways to organize and store them.  Today's post is about using steel dies as artwork for the wall.  No, not really.  It is about the latest evolution of my storage system for dies that are used with die-cutting machines.

The video below explains this and shows examples of how I've stored dies in the past. I wrote about this in 2011 here and here. The first link has a video explaining my initial storage method at the time and the second one has some photos of the systems I used.

Here is a link to the magnetic sheeting that I hung on the wall which is shown in today's video:


   

Thanks for visiting!
Bev

Stencil Storage Ideas

My stencil collection has been growing and it was time to find a new storage system to keep up with it!

Here is a video that shows you the evolution of my storage system for stencils of all different sizes.

Several months ago, I bought self-adhesive hooks on ebay. Unfortunately, I can not locate the seller at this time. Here is a link to the same type of lightweight hooks that I bought to hang the stencils:



Here is a link to the 4-pocket page protectors that hold 6" stencils mentioned in the video:



And this link is for the single pocket pages. I stored 12 x 12 and 9 x 12 stencils back to back with a piece of cardstock in-between the stencils.



I'd love to hear how you store your stencils.
Thanks for stopping by!
Beverly

Creative Roundup - Lots of Photographs

For lack of a better post title, the following is some of what I have been doing the last few months.

Dyeing scarves

Chenilled a puppy quilt from hand dyed flannel

 The puppy quilt was for the little fellow pictured below.  We got him from a rescue and he turned out to be sick.  I spent several weeks tending to him and cleaning up the evidence of his tummy troubles.  I am happy to report that he is doing great, now. 

 

New Puppy

 It has been a long time since I dyed fabric, maybe more than a decade! The process is really fun.  It was nice to ease back into it with some scarves and a little bit of cotton yardage. Because of the dyeing success, I decided that I would like to try painting on fabric. This shirt was very plain and off-white is not a very flattering color for me. Jacquard paints to the rescue!

Fabric painting with Stencil Girl stencils

Front of shirt was done with a tiny stencil from the March Stencil Girl Club set that I moved around a lot to make it into a flower-like shape. The back was from another stencil from March's Club set.

Back of shirt painted with Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow

There isn't a lot of continuity in my workflow, but here is some more evidence of how I spent my time since the start of the year.

 

Art quilt bed topper for my mother's 80th birthday

 The bed topper pictured here was a work based upon what I thought were important moments or objects that formed part of my mother's life. Like so many things in life, it isn't the entire story, but hopefully part of a good story.

Freehand cut orchid applique for the quilt

3 dimensional aspects to the quilt include this little pillow

Photos printed on fabric make up part of the background

 

My helper needed to pre-fur it 

 For the most part, I feel the time was well spent.  It is nice to be able to spend time following creative pursuits.

And playing with animals.

 

Happy Puppy

House cat playing with daughter

 
Thank you for visiting!
Beverly

What I Do While Creating Art -

My number one thing I love to do while quilting or papercrafting or doing mixed-media work is listen to audio books.
If you are interested in subscribing to Audible, here is a link to get you started:

 Otherwise, I check out audiobooks on cds or through digital downloads with my local public library. I have used Overdrive and One Click with equal ease. I love that my family can listen to them together. We always get books for long car trips. Rick Riordan, Jonathan Stroud and Cornelia Funke are some of our favorite authors.  Let me know if you have any favorite family-friendly titles to share.

I hope to be back posting some art soon.
Bev