Nanoo Nanoo!!!

A spacegirl from another planet???? 

A budding photographer??? 

Dada at it's finest????

Nope just my girl Zoe & her little creative outfit she put on the other morning. This is why I still pick out their clothes. If I didn't my kids tend to look like they've escaped from the orphanage. Really in truly though, how cute are these dress up clothes? I love them. They are made with a nice heavy cotton & it looks like all the stars & spaceships have been hand printed on the fabric. It's hard to find quality dress up that lasts, these are made for heavy play. I know they will be around for the grand kids to play with one day. I actually found them at a yard sale with the tags still on. The hat $1. The pants $1. Wish I had snagged a few more (there were tons of them) so I could give them as gifts at parties. My kids love them & I know little Oblio will enjoy pretending he's a spaceman someday. You can find more amazing Wovenplay goodness ::here::

4th Finish

"Happy Birthday Love"

I have had so much fun creating all of these "Love" cards for Simply Sweet Marriage. I'm almost sad to see that I only have one more to finish. I have learned a lot from this project. I will never take on another project unless I know I can get it done in a timely manner. If I'm to progress in my talents & dreams I really do need to become more professional when it comes to time lines. It's been a hard lesson for me to learn & an embarrassing one at that. 

Hard to believe that the weekend is already here. I'm super excited. Weekends are filled with lots of family time these days. We usually head to the skate park with the girls. Zoe is trying to learn how to skateboard (love this!!!) I love being surrounded by family, mountains, blue sky, & fresh air! 

I have a couple creative things on my list this weekend & promise to share pictures as I finish each project. What are your creative plans for the weekend? 

4 down 48 to go

Home A Work in Progress

BEFORE 

During..............

I promise to show you an after picture as soon as Dean is done. This entryway is a work in progress. Remember ::this:: post? So things take a while to get done around here. The point is they do eventually get done. I think it makes the space look so much better. Dean also added the two can lights & took down that hideous light fixture that was there before.  Tomorrow he plans on patching, mudding the walls & then adding texture. I just adore him for doing this project. I really wanted this archway & he was like, okay. How lucky can one girl be? The tile will eventually come up & be replaced with something better. The people who did this ahhhhhhmazing tile job didn't know what they were doing. They tiled over vinyl. As you can imagine the tiles are cracking & coming up little by little. The floor is next on our list of things to do in this space. Oh that & a new front door. They will both have to wait because they are big ticket items. I think it's shaping up pretty well don't you?

B Pop Arty

Merris made these all by herself. She made necklaces pretty much all day long. Necklaces for me, for sissy, for herself. She was a necklace making fool. It's one of her favorite things to play with.

I think they are rather stylish don't you?

Santa brought Aris her B Pop Arty Beads but I hear you can find them at Target. 

Halfway

I gave a little sneak peak of this project a few posts back.

 I'm happy to announce thar I finally finished my giant log cabin quilt top! Now all I have to do is buy the fabric for the back. I'm thinking I might need to add some outside strips to the top. I'm just not quite certain how I want it all to look yet. I have a couple prints bookmarked on etsy & will probably buy the fabric this weekend. I just have to map it out in my head first. Well I'm off to work on those last two illustrations for Simply Sweet Marriage. Dean should be home from work in the next hour or so & I can hardly wait to see him. Hope you are all having a great weekend.

Ramblings

Downtown River Walk

My friend and partner in sewing crime (teehee) came over tonight. We talked & cried (just a smidge) but mostly laughed & sewed at my kitchen table. It was therapeutic. I love having her over once a week to sew. It motivates me to keep working on my sewing goals. I wish more of my crafty friends lived closer so you guys could come over & join us. It's a lot of fun. I really do understand why women from days gone by used to get together to sew & quilt together. I'm accomplishing something while having a fun conversation with a friend. How often do we allow ourselves such a guilty pleasure? I'm being silly here but some days I do crave the conversation of someone over the age of 10. Thank goodness for telephones and dear friends. Oh and quilt nights too ;)

Speaking of good conversation, I now have 4 little ones in the house that officially call me "momma". Yes my sweet little Oblio woke up this morning saying momma! He started saying "dada" a few weeks ago. The girls could hardly stand it. Aris comes up to me all the time saying things like, "Mom, Omri just said azdogoveldoff. Did you hear him?" I'm like, oh yeah that's pretty amazing! Haahaa. Now that he says momma the girls are in heaven. Sloan is in the process of teaching him how to say "sissy". He'll be talking our ears off soon.

I have a confession to make.....I didn't get to send in my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project. It made me very sad but I couldn't send it half finished. It was a hard lesson for me to learn. I really need to work on follow through when it comes to projects & starting things on time instead of waiting until the last minute. Such a bummer but, it won't go to waste. I'm sending it to a very dear friend as a belated birthday gift. I promise to post pictures when it's officially finished. In the mean time I have a couple projects on the table right now. First:: finish up the last two cards for Simply Sweet Marriage. Second:: work on some sketches for a commissioned art piece a dear friend asked me to make for their baby to be. I feel so honored to work on this project. I can't wait to share the process with you. Even though I haven't posted any finishes in a while, I am working every night on something creative. It is the best feeling ever.

I hope you all are enjoying your week as much as we are. It's flying by & I'm okay with that. Thanks for all your sweet comments on my blog. They really do make my day. If you come by often but haven't commented yet, please say hello. I love to meet new people & I'd like to get to know my readers a little better. It allows me the opportunity to drop by your blog & say hello too. Hope you all have a happy day.

First Swing

Can you tell he loved it?

Sketchbook Project (part2)

"Blankets"

The second theme of my sketchbook was "blankets" So I decided to draw some of my favorite quilts from one of my favorite books, Treasury of American Quilts. I found this book while working at Barnes & Noble oh so many years ago. I have checked it out from the library more times than I can count. Why I don't own a copy yet is beyond me. It's filled with beautiful quilts from years gone by. All the quilts included in the book are ones I'd love to snuggle up in. Quilts are my favorite kind of blankets. I thought it only fitting to draw them and add them to my sketchbook. All the blankets drawn above are contour line drawings. They aren't blind contour because I wanted them to actually look similar to what quilt I was drawing from the book. However I still wanted them to flow with the previous set of drawings & that's why I used one continuous line to draw each sketch. They were stinkin fun to draw. The one with all the little people in it is probably my favorite so far. It took a little over an hour from start to finish. I live an exciting life huh, lol :)

I have one more "blanket" sketch to finish & then I'll be working on the "sheets" part of the sketchbook. Oh, I think I forgot to mention some great news! Due to the holiday weekend sketchbooks don't have to be mailed until Tuesday. Yippie! I might actually finish. I'll be sharing more sketches soon. You'll be sick of line drawings by the time I'm through.

Sketchbook Project

Last of the blind contour line drawings for my sketchbook.

The sketchbook project gave us themes we could choose from. So I chose the theme "Jackets, blankets, & sheets" I figured what I'd like to do is split the sketchbook into 3 parts and address each one separately. This is the last of the "Jackets" part of the sketchbook.

Sketchbook Started

These are the first 8 sketches for my "Jackets, Blankets, & Sheets" themed sketchbook for the Sketchbook project. It's due Friday & I'm scrambling to get the 30+ pages finished up. My only saving grace is that I have a clear vision of how I want it to look. If not I'd totally be in trouble. I'll post more sketches tomorrow & the finished pictures On Friday. Just in case you are wondering, these are all blind contour line drawings. I look at the photograph I'm using as reference & don't look at the paper while I draw. The photographs are from a book called "Many Are Called" & it's filled with photos by the amazing Walker Evans. These sketches are so much fun to do & I wanted to have fun with this project. I'll be adding color, text, & numbers before I'm completely done. You can find out more about the project ::here::

Rub-a-dub

Two bugs in the tub.

3rd Finish

January's Card

for

Simply Sweet Marriage 

3 down 49 to go 

Sisters

Finding the balance.

I'll be back tomorrow to share some more art.

2nd Finish

First illustration of the year!

I am almost too embarrassed to tell you how long it took me to do this. This illustration is a year overdue. It didn't take me a year to make it, just a year to get it started & a few hours of working on it to finish. Totally unacceptable. I'll be sending this off later tonight to the lovely Heidie of Simply Sweet Marriage. As always you will be able to download it for free & give it to your sweetie! Look for this card & all my other cards ::here:: Thanks for being so patient with me Heidie!

2 down 50 to go

1st Finish

1st Finish

To say that I've been inspired by Dana of Old Red Barn Co. & her loverly blog would be an understatement. I don't even remember how I ran across her blog but I was hooked. With her down to earth personality & love of family, home, & crafty goodness how could I resist? She made quilting look not only fun but dare I say it, easy? Something that always seemed out of reach for me became an attainable goal. I have attempted my own version of "quilting" in the past but it was laughable. I knew I really needed to get back to basics to figure it all out. Although this is my first official quilting project & full of imperfections, I had such a fun time working on it. Thanks Dana for sharing your talent!

My garage is full of several bins of unused fabric. It's sinful. I have all these amazing fabrics & even memo samples of luxury fabrics from when I worked up at Lake Tahoe for an interior designer. I decided that I really need to do something with all this fabric I have. If I don't then it feels a little like hoarding. So I dove into my stash & put all the pieces together. The Nativity toile that I used for the top has been sitting in a box since Sloan was a baby. Sad huh? The cream cotton on the back I bought in college, gasp! The two squares on the back are from Bernhardt & Cowtan & Tout I've had the pleasure of working with both companies on several projects . Their products speaks for themselves. It felt good to use what I had sitting around the house to create something. The table runner measures 70"x17". I used a free motion quilting machine for the top. It was a little tricky to get the rhythm down with the pattern but once I did it went pretty quickly. I chose to hand sew the binding on. It took two tries & a visit to a local quilting store in San Diego to get this part right. Silly me, I'd forgotten how to hand sew. It's been years people! I worked on the binding over several evenings while watching movies with family over Christmas holiday. This project has motivated me to keep moving forward with my new found love of quilting. It's a total challenge for me & I like a good challenge. If you are interested in buying it you can find it in my shop!

I'm so excited at the response I'm getting for this "52 Finishes" challenge. I have a few kinks to tinker out with the Flicker page & Facebook page but once I have them up (hopefully this weekend) I will let you know. My hopes are that this challenge will encourage creative living on a daily basis. That maybe you will view this world we live in & the life you live with new eyes. Don't let things, people, or circumstances hold you back from following your dreams. Life is short & sweet & I choose to live it to the fullest. Can't wait to see your 1st Finishes!

1 down 51 to go

linking ::here::