Peony Inspiration

My beautiful peonies! 

Fledgling A Stitched Story!

Available: Machine stitched free form style (thread drawn) fledgling bird on natural dyed silk organza fabric! Learn more here in my shop! 

Many Hats and New Adventures!

In the past year or so I've been working on sorting out my ""art"" life, i.e what direction did I want to go, and how did I want to get there because yes contrary to popular belief we do get some choices in these matters!

With that in mind I decided to close the Natural Surface Academy and focus on writing and creating art instead.  Really all I want to do is focus on what I'm really interested in and yes this still includes Natural Dyes!

What I'm really interested in (aside from getting this crazy keyboard fixed) is hand and machine stitching, exciting surface design, and taking these two elements and combining them together for storytelling.  Yeah, I was surprised to find out that storytelling was one word as well!

So sometime around June 1st (2015) I will be rolling out my vision for this journey that I have named:  Almost Stitched!

Also starting June 1st is Round Three of The 60 Day Bird Journal Challenge (60 Days of Birds).  Click the link to sign up for the newsletters! 

I will be posting more information this holiday weekend about how to participate in Almost Stitched!  

Inspiration Monday

Dandelion happiness.

Art Licensing Show Round Up for Surtex

Revealing the Prairie One Stitched Story at a Time!

Proud to be participating in the Art Licensing Show Roundup for Surtex!!!

#artlicensingshow

Hacks on a Shipping Tag

L-R Life Hacks, Pattern Hacks, Business Hacks, Photoshop and Illustrator  Hacks in front.

Back when I was subscribed to Alsyon Stanfields tribe she had us write down daily affirmations onto cards or tags, which I dutifully did and placed said tags onto a ribbon.

Then on day I noticed that Jamie Fingal had her pattern tags she was creating and she had organized them onto a metal ring.  Bingo, I have a ton of those, and I had a ton of these tags laying around that I was leaving notes on for Photoshop, Illustrator, and the like.

So I reorganized them, and I'm in love with this method of note organization.  Yes I still keep a daily journal and sketchbook, but it's super convenient to have all of my patterns on a ring on my table, or my life hacks on a ring and not have to dig through a journal from way back when to see what inspired me that day.  Yes I still put my life hacks/inspirations/affirmations into my sketchbooks and journals, doing so allows me to see where I've been and how far I've come!

Studio Rehab

Oliver, my studio assistant.

Well now that the solo show has been hung, and a few items cleared off of my desk it is time to take the studio completely apart (remember I started doing this at the beginning of the year) and rearrange stuff so that it works better for me now.

I'm tired of the piles of stuff laying about, and as I was looking for some tools this afternoon, I came across several drawers in my storage chests that are essentially empty.  Why they are empty is beyond me but this must be rectified and soon.  I shall be going for better flow in my space and adding two additional work stations while also removing two incredibly huge shelves from my work area.

More later and with photos... rumor has it I'll have a formal dining room again once I get this mess taken care of, and that would be a good thing!

Vignettes Hung

The Solo Show has been Hung!!! 
Yay Me!!!

So last week I was bemoaning the birth of a new series for me, vignettes of sorts that I've tentatively dubbed "Prairie Studies", and today after having hung the show yesterday, I've come to the realization that these pieces are a series of short stories that I've grouped together in a way that hopefully makes some sense.

When Wednesday night came around I was hating everything I had created, by yesterday afternoon I was like "meh", and after having hung the show thinking to myself "okay it's not so bad after all".  Honestly the Mary Greeley employee, who came by while I was away for a few minutes signing contracts and getting end dates for picking up my work in June, who inquired about purchasing one of my pieces made me really happy!

So all in all maybe I did manage to pull this one off, it was quite the in process journey of deciding how it would all go together. Oh and there's only one piece that I truly don't like and it's because the color on one of the items in the grouping is all wrong, but I'll fix that when it comes back home.