Once upon a Muse

13 Days of Christmas art exchange - Days 11, 12 & 13!

2012-01-02T15:23:00.000-05:00

On the 11th day of our exchange came an amazing assemblage created by Linda! WoW!

This amazing ornament was wrapped in her hand dyed fabric and I know it will be just right for something in my future projects! She created the face using polymer clay and used vintage doll legs and arms. She created the doll's body from a wooden block complete with metal wings and adornments! Thank you Linda, I think it looks great on my tree!

~ Day 12 ~

Terry made this amazing whimsical bird with what I call "Madeline eyes"!!

Terry used water color paper that she collaged for her birds with an amazing textural background on both sides!! The eyes give her bird such personality!! You can visit Terry's blog here!! Thank you Terry - she makes me smile when I look at her!

~ Day 13 ~

Well by day 13 I have to say, I was sad we were at the end of our amazing exchange - I was getting down-right spoiled each day! Day 13 brought a package from Pat Winter who is an amazing crazy quilter! You must check out her blog here! Pat created the most beautiful Victorian pin - I could also call it a broach!

It is surrounded by the most beautiful lace that is gathered and she did lovely ribbon embroidery embellished with beads and a delicate flower. The picture is a Victorian ice skate with a bouquet of flowers complete with a pretty silver snow flake. Thank you Pat, when I wear this at work it always gets attention!!

13 Days of Christmas art exchange - Days 9 and 10

2012-01-02T14:41:00.001-05:00

On the 9th day of our exchange I received an amazing pin from Hope!!

Hope painted this most beautiful face and surrounded it with pretty little pearl beads and ribbon that she carefully singed the edges of so it would curl just so! Thank you Hope, I've gotten compliments at work when I wore it!

~ Day 10~

On the 10th day of our exchange I was treated to a beautifully decorated muslin pouch from Terrie that had the number "10" on an old fashioned candle clip for Christmas trees - it adds such a vintage flair to this package. The muslin was stamped with a Christmas sentiment and stitched up complete with a fabric tree! Terrie is so very talented - here is her Etsy shop. Gosh I couldn't wait to open this up!!

It held a beautifully fashioned vintage wooden spool she found on Ebay. She decorated it with old book text of children's Christmas Carols. It was sprinkled with Diamond Dust glitter and she formed a wire loop embellished with glass pearl and a cristal! It's beautiful and you can read more about it with beautiful photos on her blog!! Thank you Terrie!

13 Days of Christmas art exchange - Days 7 and 8

2012-01-02T13:57:00.000-05:00

On our 7th Day I opened up a delightful snowman ornament from Vivian!! I love the way it glistens in the sunshine with a very happy face that she drew! It was packaged with a lovely label and looks great on my tree! Thank you Vivian!

~Day 8 ~

On Day 8 of our swap I opened up Corrine's most amazing garland of painted papers embellilshed with fibers and buttons - wow it must have taken a long time to put this together!!! Thank you Corrine!!

13 Days of Christmas art exchange - Days 5 and 6

2011-12-10T13:56:00.001-05:00

Day 5 of our Christmas exchange brought a wonderful cone ornament from my friend Patti G! I've known Patti for many years through online art exchanges and her creations are always gorgeous and meticulous!! I just LOVE how Patti created the cloth for this piece. She incorporated fibers, ribbons, sheet music cheese cloth, batting and a beautiful vintage photo and free motioned stitched to secure it all then embellished with lace, pearl beading and a pretty glistening flower. It will hang from beautiful lace and ribbon! She included an additional gift as well! Thank you sweet Patti - this is special and will adorn my tree along with your other ornament from a few years ago!!

Look how beautiful the fabric, stitching and embellishments are!

~ Day 6 ~

Day 6 brought a delightful gift from Martha B!! Martha is from Canada and I have long admired her artwork over the years and was thrilled when I realized she was participating in this exchange! This morning I opened up her precious little package to find a beautiful glass heart with the most perfect of Christmas sentiments on the front and back! Take a look:

13 Days of Christmas art exchange - Days 3 and 4

2011-12-10T12:22:00.043-05:00

Day 3 of our Christmas art exchange brought a gorgeous tussie mussie from our hostess with the mostest, Elizabeth Woodford! E and I go back many years exchanging art through online groups and we have enjoyed meeting each other as well. I have watched her talent just take off and now she is teaching such wonderful classes in her home state. She has become well known for her fabulous sun prints and hand dyed fabric, so I was thrilled when I opened her package to find a beautiful christmas cone ornament that she made with vintage damask from old table cloths that she hand dyed and sun printed! Her beautiful cone is lined with a gorgeous velvet trimmed with lace and buttons - my favorite things! She has silver trim adorned with beautiful clear crystal beads, I love how she has sewn on the buttons in a cluster at the top. She filled the cone with candy canes and mints. Thank you E, it is gorgeous and I love having something that you created!! To see more of Elizabeth's creatiions go here!!

~ Day 4 ~

Day 4 brought a wonderfully whimsical ornament by Leslie Brier! The little cup holds the most adorable scene of vintage stickers of snowmen and bells, a gllittery bottle brush Christmas tree and the most pretty tiny glass balls and jingle bells - and it glitters beautiful when the sun hits it! Thank you Leslie!

13 Days of Christmas art exchange - Days 1 and 2

2011-12-10T11:47:00.000-05:00

This year I am participating in a 13 Days of Christmas art exchange with 12 other so very talented artists. It has been so much fun opening up these beautifully wrapped and crafted gifts and I wanted to share them with you as well!
Day #1 is from Barbara Burkard. Barb's wrapping was scrumptious with a hint of the loveliness inside!!

Inside was a magical snowman ornament in a clear glass globe - Barbara had such a beautiful photo of it on her blog - so much better than I could photograph - this photo is courtesy of Barbara Burkhard ~ and in addition to this most beautiful ornie, she made a gorgeous fabric cuff with all my favorite vintage embellishments ~ beautiful lace, buttons and pretty snow flakes! Thank you so much Barbara, I love it all!!

Day #2 is Moi ~ I made a collage inside a watch case using one of my most favorite image of two little girls with angel wings. I added a couple of stars one of gold thread and one sequin and "Peace on Earth". It is topped with a lacey ribbon baub and pearl on top with a velvet ribbon to hang. On the outside of the back I used alcohol ink to marbleize and used a "joy" stamp to finish off. To package these, I used paper bags I put through my printer and added a little glitter bling for day 2. Leslie Brier has a wonderful photo of the back of my ornament on her blog if you'd like to see here!!

Miniature Books! Love 'em!

2011-06-01T10:44:00.002-04:00

Sharing some miniature books that I've made this past month. Once I got started, it's hard to stop with all the various shapes and sizes - a number of these were done with one piece of 12 x 12 paper cut and folded.

The 2 smallest of the group are 1 1/2 x 2 inches and are star books. I've used vintage photos some from Vintage Image Madness - love those Playful Piernot images - on many of the books and the star book has old family photos, so is particularly special to me. Star book:

Here is the star book open:

I started making the mini books for Lenna's mini book swap and decided to make a variety of shapes and sizes, the largest being 4 x 3 - I'll share that in another post. Now I have to decide which books to choose to send to Lenna to swap out! I may list one or more on Etsy, we'll see! Thanks for checking them out!

Vintage Note Cards for Lenna's swap

2011-01-23T13:43:00.000-05:00

I haven't been in a swap for awhile, but my friend, Lenna was holding a Vintage Note Card swap and I couldn't resist to get back to some paper cutting!

I decided to dust some stamps off and use glossy paper and permanent ink to create the photo-like look. This was done with black india ink.

On this card, I used one of the graphics that Lenna included in her PDF instructions. I printed out and mounted on bookboard and used inks to colorize it!

This is the same stamp as above but artist brown permanent ink
was used for a more sepia-tone look.

and with this lovely lady once again, I printed on glossy card stock and colorized with inks.

These will be making their way to Lenna early this week! Looking forward to seeing my returns as there are many wonderful artists in this swap! Thanks for looking!

2010-12-05T22:57:00.001-05:00

I can share this with you now! This was a piece I did in collaboration with 11 other artists. My friend and fellow artist, Terrie Lightfoot and 10 other mixed media artists got together to create a 2011 calendar to benefit Go Red for Women & the American Heart Association. Riches of the Heart 2011 can be purchased at Terrie's Etsy shop $15 from the sale of each calendar will be donated to Go Red For Women, an initiative by The American Heart Association to raise awareness and provide support and information regarding women's heart health.

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-05T15:31:00.000-05:00

It's getting cold and we are having periods of flurries - starting to feel a lot like Christmas!
Hope you are having fun creating and decorating.

Of Towers and Turrets

2010-10-13T20:11:00.000-04:00

Well the jewelry pieces are made and the resin poured - I had lots of fun finishing up these pieces and learn a lot about torch soldering and working with metal.

The picture in the second to the left is a painting I did from a photo of my daughter Lea as a little girl - all of the images in the jewelry pieces are various "sweet spots" as Sharon calls them from the Towers and Turrets collage that I made and showed in my previous blog post. The collage was scanned and then various bits and pieces were cropped in Photoshop Elements and I made a collage sheet which I printed out. Once I had the shape of the bezels, I chose various cropped sections of the collage to put into the bezel and then placed various glitter and tiny pearl embellishments to complete the mini collage piece. Resin was poured over top to seal it in. Since these are a bit large for necklace pieces, I'll make pins out of them. As for the workshop, there is one last project - an open backed bezel piece that I'll be working on within the next couple of weeks. Thanks for stopping by!

Of Towers & Turrets

2010-09-17T23:11:00.000-04:00

I have been doing a wonderful online workshop, Of Towers & Turrets, with two terrific artists, Deryn Mencock and Sharon Tomlinson. I have long admired Deryn's jewelry and when I saw Sharon's enchanting faces I knew I must do this workshop which they describe as "an exquisite fusion of mixed media and mixed metals". We were going to create artwork that we would then use in the jewelry that we would design and make creating one of a kind jewelry pieces! First I needed to create my artwork to use in my jewelry pieces - making a paper collage on canvas I first created my background~

Next I created the towers ~ I stenceled colored cardstock and security envelopes (yes that's correct!) and built my towers on my background ~

then I inserted faces that I painted ~ I had a couple of favorite faces from the past that I wanted to use, one based on a photo of my daughter, Lea as a young girl. I added embellishments and now I had my collage! ~

Now on to the jewelry making part of this workshop. I have wanted to learn torch soldering and now finally it would happen. Our jewelry theme OF COURSE is TOWERS, so using brass & copper sheets we cut our towers and soldered filigree pieces to them. We also created rivets from silver wire - oh I love it - and made bezels to solder - I have all my pieces cut out and ready to solder bezel to - I have one piece I've done so far to share ~

and more to come...........

"Featherin' Our Nests"

2010-04-25T15:15:00.004-04:00

Today I completed my birdhouse for the Habitat for Humanity NW CT Birdhouse Auction. On 5/30/10 the entire collection will be auctioned off to benefit Habitat for Humanity. Wooden birdhouses were available to be embellished by local craftsmen, artists and architects to share their imagination and talent for this fundraiser! The birdhouses could be functional or fantasy. What fun I had gathering materials inspired by nature to "feather" my birdhouse!

First I covered the birdhouse with birch bark and then I gathered all types of moss, tree trunk growths and lichen as well as young spring sprounts coming up that looked like little mushrooms to create a woodland inspired birdhouse.

This should be a fun event to benefit a worthy cause!

Nature's Relique

2010-04-18T11:30:00.011-04:00

Last Sunday I treated myself to a wonderful pendant & chain class given by Terrie Lightfoot at a great stamp store, Beautiful Impressions in Westbrook, CT. Terrie is so incredibly creative I jumped at the opportunity to spend part of the day making art with her and meeting some great gals who were there as well. All the necklaces came out fantastic! Terrie did a great job leading this two part class so that by the end we completed a comprehensive book and chain - what fun!

The book has oodles of interesting bits. We started by distressing, metal stamping and coloring a piece of copper for our front and back covers.

Then we stamped and colored the pages of our book, which included resin paper that we made with old text and broke into bits and pieces as well as mica chips and card stock that we stamped, colored and distressed.

These were all bound into our book. Then for the second part of this workshop, we created the chain. For the chain we made a number of rosary links of our fancy and connected pieces of chain and included embellishments of our choice and finished it off with seed beads to go around the back of the neck.

When you have beautiful material to work with you can create a piece that you will love and Terrie's mixed media supplies were perfect for this project. Thanks Terrie! I had a blast and lots of compliments on this piece and I'm sure there will be more to come!
Now I'm off to work on a piece I'm donating to Habitat for Humanity - a mixed media birdhouse that will be auctioned off along with many others end of May to support the work of Habitat! Will post a picture of it once I've completed it! Thanks for visiting!

2010-02-14T16:09:00.011-05:00

I just completed a tag triptych with the Paper Whimsy Group.

trip·tych (trip′tik) noun :an ancient writing tablet

of three leaves hinge as a set of three panels with pictures, designs, or carvings, each on a separate leaf, but hinged together. (Taken from the Paper Whimsy project description.)

The collage is cut and paste - not a diggital collage and I enjoyed working with the wonderful Paper Whimsy images - they are so whimsical and lend themselves to such whimsical fantasy! I hope my swap recipient enjoyes this as much as I enjoyed making it - I will miss this one as I put it in the mail! Click on the picture to see it in more detail!

2010-01-18T21:11:00.001-05:00

These ATC's are for a LAC ATC swap - the theme was metal - had loads of fun using copper screen, metal sheets, metal plates and hardware and charms. Terrie who owns Lost Art Creations (LAC) always comes up with the most creative themes

2010-01-18T20:59:00.001-05:00

Today I finished a fabric wall hanging for my brother & SIL which I think they'll enjoy. They took this photo while on vacation awhile ago. It is in sepia tones and goes perfect with the vintage trim. Sometime things come together quickly - don't you just love that! I just need to make a sleeve for the back and find a piece of lattice to slide in and add wire for hanging then it will be on it's way to them!!

A Gem

2009-10-25T15:48:00.006-04:00

The Internet never ceases to amaze me when it comes to art and the amazing things you "bump" into. The world wide web is such a perfect nomenclature for this. I recently stumbled upon a most amazing blog, "Tumble Fish Studio". Marsha Jorgensen is a wonderful artist that just makes me SMILE. I find her work refreshing and a little bit of this and a little bit of that and she makes it her own. Her blog is so refreshing and I got so excited about it that I'm blogging about it to spread the word. Check it out, I bet it will bring a smile to your face!

Mixed Media Medieval Manuscript Workshop

2009-10-18T12:56:00.008-04:00

Last Sunday I had the good fortune to attend Lynne Perrella's Mixed Media Medieval Manuscript Workshop in NYC through "The Ink Pad". It was held at The Westbeth Community Center on the lower East side. The Community Center had wonderful accommodations to spread out and there was an interesting and diverse group of artists in attendance. I enjoyed meeting Lynne who is a lovely woman who loves to share her techniques and amazing artistic talent and a born teacher! I have long been intrigued by medieval life so this workshop sparked my imagination and to top it off, Lynne Perrella was leading the way!

The assignment for this workshop was to come prepared with black and white and some color prints of the medieval period including castles, turrets, ancient calligraphy, illumination, architecture, gothic windows & doors, medieval gardens....you get it. We also brought our favorite acrylic paint, gesso and a variety of brushes as well as any favorite things we would want to incorporate into this project. With these, we created a collage that we then turned into a medieval manuscript book. This is the mostly finished collage, since taking these pictures I did more work on it to embed the pictures into the background better and add glimmer mist and gold highlights:

Lynne encouraged us to add lots of texture using corrugated cardboard, cheese cloth, crumpled tissue paper, stenciling, etc. to create a background. From there, we slit and folded our collage to create a book. Here it is closed:

Below is a couple of views of the interior pages:

It was a truly inspiring day and I encourage all who have an opportunity to take a workshop with Lynne to not pass up the opportunity, you will not be disappointed! This workshop was filled with so many amazing and talented women. I was so intent on working on my project that I missed the opportunity to take pictures of the workshop itself. Susan Sager Brown has a wonderful blog entry about Lynne's workshop and I encourage you to visit her blog to read further about it. I have linked her blog entry - just click on her name! Susan has pictures of the work she did on her amazing piece and while you are there, check out her artwork!

Fun Sunday!

2009-06-15T20:53:00.007-04:00

Yesterday I went to Celebrate West Hartford and had the pleasure of meeting Terrie Lightfoot, owner of Lost Art Creations. Terrie was a vendor at this event. Terrie is such a lovely person and her art is magnificent - it was such a treat to see her work close up and be able to touch and marvel at her artistic talent and we quickly started chatting all things mixed media. She makes one of a kind books, collage, beading and fabric art to name just a few things using a mix of techniques and the elements she incorporates into her designs (and sells on her Etsy shop) make them unique and beautiful! I couldn't resist purchasing one of her journals - it was calling me! After meeting and chatting with Terrie - I made off to find some chow and decided to stand on line for some delicious Pad Thai and grilled chicken - it was absolutely delicious and worth the stand in line! I finished my stay there with a Whole Foods Strawberry Shortcake!

Lea for Taking Flight

2009-05-26T18:31:00.002-04:00

As I continue my way through Kelly Rae Robert's workbook, "Taking Flight", I had fun using a childhood picture of my daughter for this painting. The background is a collage of personal note memerobelia and brayered with a wash of paint. The heart is made from paper clay that is covered with lace and painted. I got a bit too happy with the glitter - if anyone knows how to remove glitter from gel medium, I'd love to know - and remove some from the face area!! I was hoping I could flick it off but gel is great for gluing things down!!!

ATC quickie!

2009-04-26T21:07:00.008-04:00

I had picked up this fun atc kit from Donna Downey - it consisted of white canvas, bits of ribbon, text, die cut journal cards, rivets and bits of material. What attracted me to this kit was colors and materials that were out of my normal realm, things I would not normally "go" for when creating, so I thought what the heck......let's see what transpires! I also liked her message of "campaign for creativity". After painting the canvas, it was fun to assemble each ATC picking out text from book pages and printing out some thumbnail family photos and taking it to the sewing machine. There is another piece of canvas on the back with some batting in the middle. I did feel like I was cheating being it's a kit, but had fun none the less!

Taking Flight - Polymer clay dress form project

2009-04-19T15:11:00.005-04:00

This is the latest project I have completed from Kelly Rae Robert's "Taking Flight" book. In this chapter, the contributing artist, Laurie Mika does amazing things with polymer clay. It was fun playing with clay and I know I'll play more with it. I also experimented with painted textures and stamping with a plastic cap - they look like bubbles to me! The vintage photo is of my great Aunt Mae who, back in the 1920's was in Broadway plays. I think it was risque to show your knees back then, so she was quite the flirt!!!

LAC Charm Swap

2009-04-04T21:59:00.008-04:00

Bird's Nest Charm

It seems I can't get enough of charms lately especially making bird nests - such a spring thing to do as I see more and more song birds making it back to where I live! These charms are for Terrie's LAC Yahoo group. There are 8 of us in this swap using at least two of Terrie's wonderful bronzed brass jewelry findings for each charm. I used the bronze melon spacers for the 3 eggs and a bronze jumpring. On the single charm I used a beautiful filigree bead cap - I'm in love with these caps - they are so elegant! These are available through her Etsy store. The single charm is a gift for someone!!

12 x 12 Fabric Techniques Quilt

2009-03-22T15:33:00.003-04:00

When Lenna announced her 12 x 12 fabric techniques swap, I couldn't resist!! There are 40 participants in this swap where we create one 12 x 12 mini quilt using various techniques. My quilt has at least 11 techniques, from fabric paper to using paintsticks on fabric using a stamp rubbing plate as well as ink jet transfers to silk and printing on transparencies and distressing the edges of the transparency by burning it with a candle. The fabric paper I made while visiting my dear friend Patti in NH - and I've saved this fabric paper to use in special projects.

Elaina

2009-03-14T13:50:00.009-04:00

I am working through Kelly Rae Robert's book "Taking Flight". In Chapter 1 you make a journal out of old book covers by collaging, painting & stamping the book covers. This is the front and back covers, I also did two book "pages" that I bound into this book. My dh has named her "Elaina" - I was thrilled to experience that while I painted her, she took on a life of her own and by the end, I let her go to be who she wanted to be!

Charm swap

2009-03-06T21:51:00.015-05:00

Oh my, I knew I needed to update my blog, I hadn't remembered how LONG it has been since I've posted. I have a few projects that I should have posted, primative pumpkins and christmas ornaments, but at this point.....I won't go there! I'm participating in Belinda's Charms 2009 swap - it is a 5 for 5 swap and I've made charms in two categories - the beading category and the wire category. The bird's nest charms are inspired by Deryn Mentock's work and I wanted to do some bird's nests with the anticipation of spring! I enjoy working with wire and this swap got me going again!
Here they are all packaged and ready to be mailed off to Belinda!

T'is the season to be JOLLY!

2008-11-28T22:02:00.004-05:00

and I will try to remain jolly this season leading up to that big day......

Here are some Xmas ornaments I have made for a small swap - started with making Xmas themed fabric paper and added vintage pictures printed on tissue.

The Pebble Collection Jewelry

2008-10-31T09:52:00.006-04:00

This stunning smokey quartz and sterling silver necklace was created by my daughter's friend, Ella, from Vermont. She designs jewelry and has a wonderful collection on her Etsy site. There is one beautiful creation after another and they make wonderful gifts. I love the way she uses organic shapes and stones to create her pieces! My daughter came home for a visit wearing the piece shown above and I just fell in love with it!!

Felted ATC's

2008-10-26T14:17:00.004-04:00

Ooh - two in one day! I thought I'd add another project, a felted ATC swap that was hosted by Terrie for CC. When Terrie suggested felting and this was on my to do list, I joined in and played around. I had fun not knowing what I was doing, which is probably a good way for me to have fun since I don't get bogged down with doing it "right"!

The Pumpkin Cottage

2008-10-26T13:42:00.008-04:00

Well finally I will make a new entry! This is a punchneedle piece I completed recently and framed. I have wanted to do punchneedle for YEARS and finally got the supplies I needed to start one and had wonderful help from my friend Patti whose studio is home to beautiful needle work pieces that inspired me! Thank you for your help, Patti, you are amazing!

I have other artwork to share in the near future. Today is a gorgeous fall day!

2" x 2" metal pages

2008-06-05T20:30:00.003-04:00

2 x 2 Metal Pages

2008-06-05T20:14:00.006-04:00

These 2" x 2" metal pages came about through a mixed media art exchange. The hostess will punch a hole in the corner and place an eyelet so we can create a booklet with the metal pages we receive when they are swapped out! I had fun rummaging through my husband's endless supply of metal objects and he let me cut up a vintage copper sheet that was from an old box liner! They aren't quite finished YET but I thought since I scanned them I'd upload them onto my blog. I think I'll add a bit more metallic paint here and there. There are 10 in all.

3 x 3 Collage Swap

2008-05-24T20:50:00.003-04:00

Here are a few of the 3 x 3 collage I did for a swap with a very talented group of gals. These were the first for this size and are a very fun format! I had been working with fabric a good deal of late so switching back to paper left me blank for a bit but soon was able to create some fun 3 x 3's. I really should get back to using all my stamps and supplies and look forward to doing that this summer. Also will be working on a China spread with photos that my SIL took of her China trip.....more on that later!

Fabric Gothic Arch with Paper Whimsy

2008-05-24T20:04:00.011-04:00

I haven't posted new art lately....have a lot of catching up to do, so will start here and fill in the gaps as time goes on (I hope!!). I participated in a fabric gothic arch with a charm swap with the Paper Whimsy group. I was excited to do a charm as well because they are so sweet and I wanted to try some resin charms. About the same time I had an opportunity to take a resin charm class at The Brookfield Craft Center and was able to apply what I learned to make these charms!

Gothic Arch Swap

2008-01-13T17:23:00.000-05:00

There has always been something captivating to me about the gothic arch shape – as far back as I can remember, I’ve been enthralled with everything midieval so this challenge scratched my muse!!! This art exchange is with the Paper Whimsey Yahoo group and it is the first exchange I've done with this group! Paper Whimsey images are beautiful and when you look into the eyes of these children you can't help but imagine what was on their minds at the moment their picture was taken. I decided to associate these eyes with the concept of peace on earth.....cultivating the seeds of peace.


	These are the gothic arch pieces for this swap.