Earth Day Auction

There is an auction coming up to benefit Greenpeace. It is being organzied by the listowner of the Surface Design yahoo group (Joanna). I have donated a covered journal and handmade bookmark. Please check out the wonderful artwork that will be available! The website is: http://2007earthday auction.blogspot .com/ Thanks for taking a look.

Recycling Part 2

I've finished up the rest of my recycled postcards. I keep getting ideas, though, and I think I am going to have to work in a larger format as to actually use some stuff up! The above card uses: paper towels, dryer sheets, wallpaper sample, and images/words transferred onto packing tape.

This one uses paper towels, dryer sheets (where have you heard that before??) and the flower center is from a floppy disk. The flower is outlined with hot glue, sprinkled with embossing powder.

This one uses a dryer sheet (background), wallpaper sample, can tab, and leftover elastic.

Here, I chopped up some old crayons and melted them to the background. The circles are paint chips, and the metal twists are paper clips. The red and purple ribbon around the edge is the rescued (and taken apart) handle from a gift bag.

Finally, I used paper bag (background), dryer sheet (rays), grommets from the above mentioned gift back, an orange juice concentrate can lid and a wall paper sample (in the center of the lid). Working with these things has been challenging, but the results have been fun and rewarding. There is so much potential in the every day stuff we throw away.

Recycling

This weekend I made some postcards using recycled materials. It was a lot of fun and I think they came out great! The one on the upper left has the most materials in it: paper towels, dryer sheets, wallpaper sample, paint chips, paper bag, and the floral image is from a catalog, transferred onto clear packing tape. The others have various combinations of these same components. I've got a few more in the works and I'll post them when they're done!

Journal Cover

I made this journal cover for a woman in Ohio. She is also making one for me. It fits a standard size composition notebook and is removable. The center square is made from some pieces of sheer fabric and leaf skeletons, all fused together. The fibers along the outside of the journal act as a place marker. It is in the mail to her today and I hope she will like it. My kids both want me to make them one - and I'm thinking they might make good teacher's gifts.

Finished, Again!

I did it again - finished something! This is my piece for the latest lesson in my "Self Expression" class for Quilt University. Success with each lesson is measured in finishing the assignment, not in what the thing looks like. This week, we had to start with a fabric that we did not like, for whatever reason, and make an 8.5 x 11" piece with it. This piece is actually 9 x 11.5" - oh well!

The fabric I picked is the background of the vertical stripe, and the lighter triangles. It's not bad, but the colors are very muddied and it looks like someone threw rice all over it. I decided it would make a fair background, and off I went. I added some gems and handmade tyvek (the stuff priority mail envelopes are made from) beads to give it some interest.

The funny thing is, when I finished it I thought - well, it's fine, but it's not really me. Of course, it is completely me, because I designed and created it from start to finish. So I'm not sure what I think of that...

Detail

Here's a detail of the piece, and a look at the inspired fabric!

Stained Glass

I joined a postcard swap with a Stained Glass theme. It took me the longest time to figure out what I wanted to do. I finally chose 5 hand dyed fabrics and stacked them up. I cut through all 5 at once, until I had 5 separate pieces of each color. I used each color once on each postcard, fusing them down, and finally I satin stitched between the colors with black thread. I think they really do look like stained glass - and they look kinda nice all put together. I might use this technique again in the future - maybe for a background.