Here's my little adventure of the week:
I wanted to try my hand at needle felting. I don't have an embellisher machine, but I have the little needle puncher and brush mat. The base of this piece is part of a thrift store wool sweater that was shrunk/felted. I have been adding a little bit each day, and I suppose I will keep adding to the piece until it tells me it is done. I hope you can tell that it is a beach scene. I just added the "lines" to separate the water from the sand and sky, and next I'll fill in more water colors to give the ocean depth and (hopefully) dimension. It's been a fun experiment, in spite of the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing!!!
And I made this cake today - we are celebrating the 19th birthday of Pablo, our Guatemalan high school student who is living with us during the school year. The recipe is below ... delish!
Strawberry Fudge Cake
1 box chocolate cake mix
1 can strawberry pie filling
2 eggs
1 tsp almond extract
1 tub chocolate frosting
(note: you can use whatever flavor cake mix and pie filling you want - apple spice is very good! and you can substitute vanilla extract for the almond, or you can omit the extract, if you want)
Mix all ingredients and bake according to directions on cake mix (about 40 minutes for a bundt pan). Let cake cool, melt some frosting in microwave safe bowl for about 15-20 seconds. Drizzle over cake. Enjoy!!
As I worked along, I wasn't sure how I was going to finish the edges. I finally decided that I liked all the raw edge pieces going on and wanted to leave them. I backed the whole piece with a bit of hand dyed scrim that was just the right size. I think it was a good decision.
Here's a close up. The whole piece is hand needle-felted, hand stitched, and hand beaded. It's about 12" x 15" not including the hanging parts. Now I need to figure out what to call it! This is one of the pieces that will hang at Eye of the Eagle in Clayton in August.
