Morning Glory Memories

this morning i went for a visit to see what Bonnie at Pixel Dust Photo Art was up to. i like her artistic style and today she was offering two of her beautiful textures as a freebie to play/test out. they were irresistible and this evening i've given them a little workout.

this first photo is one that was taken while i was in Honduras this past Christmas. i didn't think it was a great shot for a variety of reasons but i wasn't ready to totally give up on it either. so i tucked it away for possible future photoshop play and today while i was looking through my photos it popped out at me as a possibility for using with Bonnie's textures.

so this is what i did:

• cropped it square
• duplicated it
• added the Silent Memory texture at 40% opacity - hard light
• added the Fleeting Memory texture at 30% opacity - overlay
• flattened it

i'm very happy with the results. thank you Bonnie. i hope to play with these textures again very soon.

Morning Glory Memories

it's interesting how seeing and experimenting with this shot brought back so many different memories from this special trip. it was the first time i had seen my daughter in over a year and a half. not only was i happy to see her again (all whole and happy and oh so freckled) i was also pleased to be able to experience the country and people that she had been involved with during that time. while there with her i realized that she was a young lady with extraordinary discipline. she's tough as nails on the outside and amazingly resilient but inside she has a heart/spirit that aches to make the world a better place. what a winning combination (!!) and such a blessing in my life.

today's gifts included:

• a visit from a close friend
• trying out the newest kitchen gadget: a handy dandy cherry pitter.
• smelling the fresh lemon that i sliced for iced tea ~ lemons smell really good~!!~

i'm going to try to join in on the next upcoming challenge on sunday postcard art which is "vintage children". i think. something along those lines anyway. i chose one of my previously "backgrounded" bases. i liked the one with the words Golden Age down along the bottom as it seemed to be a good beginning point for this challenge. i found an old photo of unknown origin featuring a young girl playing with her dollies. i burned the edges of this photo. i also used a napkin with antique silverware printed on it and cut out the spoon. while glueing on the spoon i sort of messed up the bowl of it . . . no worries, though because i wanted to put something in there anyway. after considering some possibilities i decided to print the words mud pie on skinny masking tape and set those words into the spoon. quite happy with the look of that~!!~

before i decided to quit for today i went over the edges of the card and blotted some bits in the center with a rust colored ink pad.

i don't think this one is finished but i want to "let the dust settle" before i decide what more it may or may not need . . .

this is becoming quite fun and the paper art works along a lot faster than my fabric postcards usually do. in some ways i felt like a child making my own mud pies while i was working on this card today~!!~

i've been invited via a flickr comment to enter this card into a weekly challenge done on


http://www.sundaypostcardart.wordpress.com/


i have no idea just exactly how it works but am intrigued by the idea of a weekly postcard challenge and may have to further investigate . . . after all, i have been looking for a new creative discipline to involve myself with~!~

was out amongst the flowers this a.m.

and found the sweet peas clambering for attention . . .
as well as some of the first hollyhocks.

these are a wonderful shade of bright pink~!~



and some purple clematis flowers.

this is today's collage effort: i cut apart my large watercolor paper based background piece into four postcard sized (4" X 6") pieces.

i also took some time to begin snipping out various things that i may use to create the individual cards. not much accomplished, i know, but still progress forward . . .

one tall stalk of thistle is slyly growing in between some other bushes where it thinks it can't be seen . . . but, it was spotted and because i thought it photogenic with a strong future in more photographs, i've left it to grow (for now). the wickedly spiny fat stem offers many of these large globes with only one of them beginning to show some purple flower . . . so pretty and such a pesty prickly weed~!!~thistle was my dad's favorite flower, so i have a soft spot for it . . .

the daily collage work continues with an additional layer of glaze applied over all. i was surprised to find that the paper i added yesterday dried almost completely flat . . . it sure didn't look like it was going to and i had decided to be happy with it and play with a peeling paper technique that i found in a book called "Collage discovery workshop" by Claudine Hellmuth using masking tape. i figured that the extra bumps would just pull up with the tape and ta-da~!~i'd be back to a smooth surface. this was last night when i was still thinking i would have a lot of bumps and lumps in my paper.

even though it was fairly flat this morning i decided to give this technique a try anyway . . . this is a detailed shot of the only bit that i could even get to tear up. i think that this was due to my having applied glue to the top of the paper as well as the watercolor base paper yesterday. (Ms. Hellmuth does say not to apply glue to the top of the paper for this technique; but what was done was done.) the top layer of glue wouldn't let the masking tape "grab" the paper, thus no great effect. this one little spot was it. since that was pretty unexciting, i also did the wash of sunflower colored glaze for today's experiments. after all it was "The Golden Gazette"~!!~

this is a bit of pre-washed muslin i have set aside to wipe any excess paint off of my brushes. who knows what sort of wonderful painted cloth i'll eventually end up with for future use in other projects. and, best of all, no wasted paint~!!~and now, i'm off to "the big city" to do some shopping and see the new Harry Potter movie.

string pieced tulip tutorial

my photo daily discipline is yet another selectively colored image. my begonia against that magical little dress that i love~!~ SOOC

i have had a request for more information regarding the construction process of the tulips. first i would like to recommend the book by Gwen Marston called "Liberated String Quilts (20 Foundation-Free Projects)". Gwen has many good books and a great website well worth looking at: http://www.gwenmarston.com/

although i have chosen to use foundations for my string piecing this is where my original pattern came from. Gwen does a great job of explaining the basics of string piecing and there are some wonderful ideas in her book for other string pieced applications.

i have put together a rough step by step of my variations on her process while making these tulips. i hope it is helpful.

for this project i am using a very light weight muslin for the base. i had at one time made curtains out of this particular muslin and when i no longer needed the curtains i cut it up into base shapes for string and crumb piecing projects. the fabric was probably somewhat light damaged but as it is the base piece it doesn't have to be a heavy or quality piece of fabric. in fact, it should be a very light weight fabric.

i have used the standard 1/4" seam allowance

three finished tulips; two with "matching" petal pieces and one with "unmatched".

as you can see, sometimes they turn out more wonky looking than others.