New ATC's With A Theme That Is Right Up My Alley! and Blessings to The Armed Services On This Memorial Day!

One of the two ATC swap groups that I enjoy participating in in through RosesOnMyTable.  The next swap is about cats! How perfect could that be for me?! These are painted with acrylic and ink on fabric, and backed with a batik - with my favorite Fast2Fuse in the middle. I'm happy with how they turned out and may make another set just to have on hand for fun 1 on 1 swaps that happily pop up from time to time.

My next challenge theme for ATC's is cracked .. cracked up, cracked open, cracked eggs, tectonic plates? I have not come up with a good enough idea for these yet.... so I have to spend some more time mulling it over before I get to work. Tomorrow I want to play - have paint on my hands and thread and fabric clinging to my clothes. Ah! A good day it will be.

 James Odell, John Blaise and William Hoyt Ellery WWII

Happy Memorial Day to all of us in the US . My prayers are offered tomorrow to all of the men and women who serve in every country's armed forces. Although I am in no way a supporter of wars I do respect the service of these very brave men and women who all work tirelessly and unselfishly to make my wish for having a day to play possible. I pray that that they will all return to their families soon and that they will all enjoy many days to play in the near future. Namaste.

My maternal, much loved, grandparents with my uncles. The youngest Billy in Grandpa's arms, Jack between the adults and Uncle John (Jack) Blaise Ellery is  in uniform

This reference is about my Uncle John Ellery ...who was a Sergeant on Omaha Beach on D-Day. With this invasion, the last days of the Nazi Third Reich were at hand. Ellery described his ordeal in his own words:

"Weather had been bad. The invasion had been delayed 24 hours…The Seas was rough and when you got to the beach, you still had between 300 and 400 meters of ground to cover and when you got through that you were at the bottom of a bluff that I estimate was 50 feet high. You were under fire from the time you were within a mile of the point you were going to drop the ramp of your LCVP [landing craft]. To this day I don't understand where the men got the courage. I suppose we'll never know the total number of casualties. In my assault section, we had eight men killed and 17 wounded out of the 32 men by the time we cleared the high ground."

He was a hero to me - and to out country. My uncle is also mentioned in books about D-Day, including 

"The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of World War II by Stephen Ambrose  and also "D-Day, June 6,1944: The Climatic Battle of World War II" by the same author. My other two uncles, were also in the services. Billy in the Air Force and my beloved James in the Army. Thankfully they all came home. John (Jack) had two purple hearts that I am aware of and my grandmother never liked telephones - since she always feared the bad news that sometimes was carried by them. I can really understand that too.

More Magic With Golden Digital Grounds

I've been continuing my playtime with Golden Digital Grounds and am finding them utterly addicting. I keep thinking about new things I want to try making with them. I am also having a fine 'ole time experimenting with using 'skins' & 'no skins'. This is a playground I may not ever want to leave I fear!

"Be Peace" was made by using two coats of Golden Digital Ground For Non-Porous Surfaces on a layer of silk organza. I printed an image of a photo that I had taken some years ago. I hand- lettered the words, layered the organza onto a piece of vintage kimono silk, added a post card back & then sewed around the card. I used a 30 wt thread on this card . My favorite thread for this purpose is Sulky Blendables 12 wt thread. That being said I am going to go on a hunt for something similar weight from my fav companies, Superior Threads & Wonderfil threads. Maybe I just love this specific Sulky thread and that's a good thing too!

One of the interesting things about this method - not using an acrylic skin underneath - is the organza has an almost holographic effect and changes colors depening on the way the light hits it!

These are my next experiments - ready for printing. Top is cotton voile coated with Digital Ground For Non-Porus Surfaces on a skin of matte medium, the piece in the middle is bleached harem cloth with Digital Gound Matte White on a skin of self leveling gel medium & the bottom piece is silk chiffon coathed in Digital Ground For Non-Porus Surfaces on a very thin skin of clear tar gel.

Go here for Golden digital ground information.
Go here for Golden acrylic mediums information.

In the photo above you can see how sheer the chiffon will be (front)- and the voile not far behind (on the top) in sheerness. The harem cloth (middle) with white digital ground will be opaque rather than having a transparent quality.

Up close on the cotton voile - double click for up close look

Here (above) you can see chiffon over voile

How thin this skin is with the chiffon!

I have to go and print now! I am also trying some other light fabrics with the Digital Ground For Non-Porous Surface - which has become my favorite of all! Hopefully tomorrow I will have some more experiments to share with you!

PostCard Mania I Think!

I love making the cats in an array of colors.
Painting them has been a very meditative thing to do for me.
The cat face is a personal favorite of my drawings.
I guess that must be pretty obvious huh?!
Reminder: All of the photos can be clicked on for larger views

This week ended well. We are on our 25th consecutive day of dry, warm weather. Not great for the garden and lawns - but wonderful for the psyche & body! This week Apple performed it's miracle of swift, excellent Customer Service. My beloved MacBook Pro is home and as good or better than new. What really astounded me this week is how much my life has come to revolve around computers. Much of my "cyber social" life, my communication network & my "fun time" is spent on the key board of this machine! Who would have thought this 20 years ago?Computers then were, primarily, for office use. Few homes had a personal computer. I got my first PC in 1992. Can you spell S-L-O-W? Even then, however, it was a wonder to be able to email and use art ware programs. I don;t think that I would have been as bereft when my computer broke last week if we had an alternate machine in the house. This is our only computer. It is my computer - DH is just not that into them except for the "necessities of life" - a bit of Ebaying & some email that he generally checks at work.

I have been having a great time making cards and these are some of the ones that I have recently finished and mailed off. I am planning to do a short demo about making these cards - a few folks have asked about them & since I have more in the works it will be fun and easy to show you the basics of my methods. Stay tuned.

I have so many things thatI want to do right now that I get scrambled at times. Which thing to do first? I want to do some calligraphy study -this has been something that I have had on my "must do" list for years and I become more and more intriguedwith the possibilities of using calligraphy on cloth for my quilts. I have always loved handwriting , inks and pens - maybe this is time to apply myself! I have two quilts (one art and one traditional) that I want to make. I have paintings that are screaming to come out and knitting that begs to be done. I guess none of these projects will be started unless I extricate myself from the computer huh? Oh yes! I am off to a four day Shibori workshop on Tuesday ! It is, thankfully, on a neighboring island so I get to be home to sleep every night. The teacher is internatioanally known and I can't wait to document some of this adventure to share with you! Today, howevr, and more immediate, is the small matter of the potatoes that are cooling - potato salad on the menu for today with grilled, specially cut, steaks for some and chicken for me!

I am thankful this week for all of the good things in life, for having interests that swirl around my mind, for the blessings of friendship and family and for the peace & happiness that life has brought me.

This card is made from a photo I took during my very first visit to my most beloved home
during the mid 80's. Thankfully, this view is still the same!

This is one of the 'reject' backs - the registration was off -
but it is one of two stamps that I like to use from Terbearco on Etsy.

Art2Mail

I have just finished a very enjoyable postcard swap with 25 great artisitic gals from all over the world. When I first committed to making these cards I was, at first, wondering how in heavens I could possibly make 25 cards - on time. I actually dropped out and then, a day later,decided that I had to give it try because I do want to begin collecting art 2 mail cards. I made these cards in so many variations of colors - I happily painted each one differently - but these are two that I have, so far held back for a couple of friends who I know like this color combination! I may have to get involved in another swap because this one has been so much fun !!