Meet Rei

This kitty has been appropriately named Rei, which is Japanese for "gratitude" since Rei is a gift for a special friend and will be a sign of my gratitude. Rei was using the techniques I learned in the class I took with Katie Kendrick. I printed my painted cat face (posted previously) onto fabric and then the whacky little cat doll came to life! Rei is made completely of vintage kimono fabrics from Katie. Aren't they just to die for? You think they are gorgeous to look at, you should feel them! I'm posting not only the front of Rei, but her back since she has a little tag on her back and to show you my own method for doing the back of the dolls. Because of their necks, they are a pain in the you know what to try to turn for stuffing. So, I came up with my own easier way to do them making the turning really easy. The back is actually a base of TWO pieces of muslin. The back is in halves with a 1 inch overlap in the center. I pieces each side individually and then stitched them together a few inches on the top and bottom leaving a larger space in the center open. This is the turning hold. Once the front and back pieces are stitched together, you just turn the whole thing right facing through the hole and then hand stitch the hole closed after stuffing. It worked like a charm! I plan to do all my dolls this way from now on! Anyway, I'm in love with this cat and will have a hard time giving her away! I need to make one for myself!

I know I haven't posted much lately but will catch up maybe later today or tomorrow.

Fruit of the Spirit

Well, I finished the cover for the "Fruit of the Spirit" LFB so I can now pack them to mail. Thank God I only had to do 11 because it has not been quite the breeze I thought it would be. There was a lot of re-doing, however, from looking at this, it looks so simple, you can't tell what I had to redo! Anyway, they are done now. For the front cover I used my fig painting and printed copies on photo paper. Then added the words and covered it in clear vinyl and stitched it on. It was then added to book board which has the edges all covered in black handmade paper to act as a "frame". The inside is a photo copy of the painting I just did in Katie Kendrick's class last week. I added the verse printed on a transparency and stitched it on with french knots. The photo is sewn to black cardstock and then added to the book board. All I can say is "Thank you Jesus for Xyron.

You Are 4: The Individualist

You are sensitive and intuitive, with others and yourself. You are creative and dreamy... plus dramatic and unpredictable. You're emotionally honest, real, and easily hurt. Totally expressive, others always know exactly how you feel. At Your Best: You are inspired, artistic, and introspective. You know what you're thinking, and you can communicate it well. At Your Worst: You are melancholy, alienated, and withdrawn. Your Fixation: Envy Your Primary Fear: To have no identity Your Primary Desire: To find yourself Other Number 4's: Alanis Morisette, Johnny Depp, J.D. Salinger, Jim Morrison, and Anne Rice.

What Number Are You?

Well, ok then... I have to say this is pretty accurate EXCEPT, I am NOT an envious person at all so I don't know where that came from. And, these other #4 people... well, I know who a couple of them are but know nothing about them so this little list doesn't do much for me! LOL!

New art

I just finished a small piece on canvas using the technique I learned in Katie's class... but instead of a human face, I did a quirky cat face! I like it! The kitty piece says "sweet allure".

Speaking of kitties, I have to get one of mine to the vet this morning and I just looked at the clock and have 15 minutes to eat something and get out the door! Gotta' get off this computer!

Rockin' girl blogger

OK, Karen and Fran have both nominated me to get a Rockin' girl blogger award and now I have to pass it on to 5 other gals... but so many already have been awarded I need to think on this...

I'll nominate:
Nina Bagley
Kelly Rae
Maija LaPore
Deb Trotter
Katie Kendrick

these are 5 blogs I check every day first thing in the morning.... I have several but these are a few and I did check to see if they already won an award... several of my daily reads already have the award for sure. Anyway, these are my 5 yet I don't think they read my blogs so they won't know they won! LOL!

My doll class with Katie yesterday was fantastic although my doll isn't finished and looks totally different than I expected. I'm not terribly attached to her but I LOVED the process. I will be making more for sure. I'll post a picture when I finish. I was in class all day, didn't get home until 5:00 and then had to be at school with my kids by 6:00 for a "meet the teachers" night. We didn't get home until 7:30 and was in bed by 8:30. However, I woke at 2:00 from a weird, bad dream and a headache. I couldn't get back to sleep. I stayed in bed for 2 hours and finally got up at 4:00. Then I fell back to sleep at 5:00. Max woke me up at 7:00, 7:30, and I finally got up again at 8:00. I feel like I have a hang over. Now I"m trying to catch up on cleaning in my house and laundry. I have to be down at church around 2:00. After having our two weeks of non-stop prayer in Feb., we are now having one Friday evening set aside so people can just come and be with God. We set up prayer stations for this too, although on a smaller scale. I have to set up one of the stations for our prayer night tonight.

Tomorrow, I'm attending a Women's day retreat with the guest speaker being a potter. She will be working with clay for us and speaking on what it really means to be clay in a potter's hands as in us being clay in THE Potter's hands. It ends at 2:30 and then I'll be running over to Art Unraveled's vendor day to see what everyone is selling. My neighbor, Jane, will be attending the entire day's events with me and she's very excited. Jane is a funky woman close to 70 years old who was a total druggie/hippie in the 60's and 70's and still uses the phrase "far out!" often. She cracks me up. I wish you all could have seen the look on her face when she found out I'd never done drugs of any kind. Her mouth fell open and she just stared at me and finally spoke saying, "Wow, I don't think I've ever met anyone that never tried drugs."!!! Her facial expression was priceless. If only I'd had a camera with me! But gosh, I didn't know I was such a novelty either! LOL! Jane is a writer and has been a playwrite in L.A. and she also enjoys painting and beading. She's quite a character. She'll enjoy herself tomorrow emensely.

OK, so back to cleaning...

Art Unraveled

Art Unraveled is well underway and has been great! On Monday, I took a class with Bev Brazelton called "Journaling with watercolor/ink". I enjoyed the class and got to really find out what can be done with hot press watercolor paper. I've always used cold press so this was fun to play with. It is used for a totally different application.

Today, I took my first class with Katie Kendrick and it has been one of my most favorite classes I've ever taken. First of all, I just LOVE Katie. but the class was amazing. It took me out of my comfort zone but not to a place of fear or just being lost and uncomfortable. We learned to do intuitive face painting using sketches done with our non-dominant hand. I finished two pieces in class and am happy with them both. I really, really loved working on these. It was so interesting to see how drastically different everyone's pieces came out. Here are my two. The one with the trail of falling leaves, I think needs the words "She listened with her whole heart" added on down toward the bottom of the canvas. The words kept coming to me while I was painting her face. I'll see about adding those soon. I love the red on the head scarf of the other one. I tried to keep the original sketches exactly as they were drawn with my left hand in about 5 seconds each! WE did several on phone book pages and then collaged them on to the canvas. The trailing leaves piece is the face I have now printed out onto fabric and will be using this face for my folk art doll class tomorrow. I"m excited to have my own doll with one of my own faces on it! It will be fun to see how she changes.


I also made a little moo card holder for my sweet friend, Maija. For those of you who don't know, moo cards are like mini-business cards and the latest craze amongst artists.




You can see the holder with the card by it to show what the cards look like. This one is a card from Theresa Hall of Tucson, who does totally cool fiber art. There's also the back side of the holder as well as the card tucked into the holder. I like how it turned out.

Well, I can barely keep my eyes open and tomorro will be my most brain and eye draining day although much fun! Gotta' catch some z's.

VERY beaded prayer pillow

I just finished this beaded prayer pillow for a very special friend of mine who is moving to Denver next week. I will miss her tremendously. Many of the beads have symbolic meaning to them. On the back, I added a small metal tag with the word "remember" and then signed the back of it. It attached with a tiny silver chain representing our hearts always being bound as friends just as chains bind. I will be giving this to her tomorrow at church as I see her for the last time before she leaves. I'm really sad.

last houses

I just finished up the last houses I needed to make for the skyline swap and here they are. Now to pack them up and get ready to ship!