My First Knitted Garment!

It fits! I've spent the last two months knitting the pieces of a sweater from recycled silk, hoping I knew enough to adjust the pattern for my long body and arms. Here are the pieces when they were all done:



And here it is all put together!



I'll be making more sweaters for myself. It's amazing to have one that actually fits.

Nona's Journal

Now that she's received it, I can post photos of a journal I made for a friend in New Zealand. She inspired me by admiring my doodle-sketch borders, so I made her a journal full of them!

Here's the cover:



And here are some of the inside pages:











I scanned all the pages before sending it to her, and I'm working on finding a way to reproduce the pages so they're on high-quality paper, but the copies are not too expensive, so I can then bind the copied pages into handmade books to sell. If I find a way to make it work, you'll hear it first here!

Postcard Exchange Display

I finally decided on a way to display all the postcards I'm receiving in the monthly exchange (thanks, Jean!). Here's the whole display so far:





January's theme was black & white. Here are all the cards:







Here are the red cards from February:









March was turquoise and chocolate brown:







Can't wait until the entire wall is full of these gorgeous cards!

Colors of India Postcards

This month's postcard swap colors were "the Colors of India." Yum! I had been hearing about this red rosin paper on a Yahoo group, so I got some at the hardware store and went to town collaging delicious paper all over it, then turned them into cards, with the help of my mom's fancy schmancy sewing machine. Here are the results:


(I kept this dragonfly for myself!)






Everyone in the group got various different paisleys.

Here they are all together, before I sewed them onto some sturdy paper backing with a zigzag stitch around the edges:



I've posted a complete tutorial of all the steps involved in this project on one of the Yahoo groups, so if you're interested, send me an e-mail and I'll point you there.

Lori's Lexicon

Okay, so I've been working on this sort of artist's journal for a while, and I think I'm ready to share. I made a book using watercolor paper, with enough pages for a spread on each letter of the alphabet. On each spread, I'm including images and words starting with that letter that I'm drawn to. It's been very therapeutic, and I'm starting to like the outcome. Here are a few finished pages:







This one's my favorite so far. If you click on the image, you can see a larger version:









I've finished the pages up to G, and all the others are painted and ready for me to start adding images and words. Here are some of the painted backgrounds:







I'll continue to post the finished spreads as they emerge!

Emma's Recycled Sweater Purse

I mentioned in a previous post that my friend Melissa came over and made a purse for her daughter out of recycled and felted wool sweaters. She had sewn very little before and was able to finish it in just a few hours.

Emma loves it; her new journal (see post before last) fit right in and the pockets are perfect for pens and pencils, so she's going to use it as her art bag.



Here are some close-ups:





Great job, Melissa!

Mexican Primitive Postcards

Here are my March postcards for the postcard exchange group. The colors for March were chocolate brown and turquoise. I found this picture of a Mexican sculpture with turquoise mosaic across the face, and I just had to try to continue the mosaic look.





I used modeling paste to create the primitive-looking tiles, then painted the "grout" and embossed the color onto the top of them. Different, huh?

My First Art Class (as a Teacher)

I taught my first art class today with a delightful group of kids and one mom/friend who got the group together. The kids made wonderful journals with painted burlap covers.

As always with kids, I was amazed at their natural artistic abilities. How do we lose that confidence as we become adults?

Here are the kids (and Melissa!) hard a work:











And here they all are with their beautiful books:



















Working outside in the sunshine helped to make it a truly enjoyable day.