A weekend away at Menucha

The Portland Art Collective spent the weekend away in the Gorge at Menucha.  The weekend was filled with lots of laughter, conversation, art making, friends, food and fun.  I did just shy of 70 postcard sized pieces of art.  At times, I tend to be a production line artist.  I started on Friday night painting one side of the former PAC art show postcards.  I did 3 color ways.  Blues, Greens and oranges.  Then I started to compose my collages.  The subject matter ranged from waterlilies, palm trees, houses, daisies and more poplars.  I used a lot of different handmade papers and old paintings that I cut up. I used solid papers, a Japanese rice paper, a scrapbook paper, and old sheet music.  Collaging took all day Saturday.  Saturday evening I did some embossing of birds for the nest pieces like those I posted earlier.  Sunday, I used my sewing machine with the free motion foot and stitched on each piece.  The stitching acts as calligraphy.  As an exclamation point.  I still have about 25 pieces to stitch. Maybe tommorrow!

A Plethora of Poplars

Collaged Daisies and Palm Trees

Stitched Waterlilies

July Picnic Portland Art Collective Swap

Every July the Portland Art Collective has a picnic.  It's always about beautiful weather, good friends and good food! We also hold an art swap.  Last year we did a cookbook where each artist brought a front and back page with arted up recipes.  Other years we did Prayer flags and Equisite Corpses.  This year we decided to use our old show postcards as a surface and the rules are you make one piece of original art for each person in the swap. The pieces will all look similar by artist. Notice mine are similar but definitely different.  In the end we will go away with a pile of original pieces of art.  No two alike!  I am sure many of these pieces of art will be framed!  Here's several versions of mine.  Notice I incorporated my new found freeform stitching into it!

Wedding Cards

My niece is getting married soon and I decided to make several card prototypes to be able to key into the one I like the best.  I practiced my new stitch caligraphy after collaging.  I got a lot of practice!  What do you think?  Which do you like best?

I've been working on something new!

Collage and paint with machine freemotion stitching!

I purchased a sewing machine 4 years ago and took a class at the time but for some reason, I did not feel comfortable working with paper and freeform stitching.  I wanted to try using my handmade papers and fabric and stitch onto a piece of art.  There were too many roadblocks with the machine clogging and thus making the projects move slowly.  I decided that I either need to learn how to use it and give it a try or sell the machine.  While participating in the Prosperous Heart Book by Julia Cameron Yahoo Group, I put it out there that I wanted to take another lesson or class.  Sandy Keating, Master Fiber Artist, volunteered to help me!  Last week, I took a lesson with her.  In just 2 short hours I felt comfortable to make a go of it on my own.  She gave me a lot of great pointers and showed me how to solve many of the issues I had originally been experiencing.  On top of all that I was able to spend time with her and get to know her better.  It was really a treat for me and I really appreciated her generosity!  I will be posting several different looks that I have created in the past 4 days...  These are all made card size so I will try working on bigger surfaces next!