The Silence Will Fall #16: First Roses of the season

Day 287  Such a divine smell.  Love having vases of roses all over the house and oodles to give away!

What will you create today?

Scenes from My Sketchbook # 14: Women & Creativity ATC

Day 279  This month I have been participating in the Women & Creativity 2012 Sponsored by the National Hispanic Cultural Center here in Albuquerque.  One of the activities was an ATC (Artist Trading Card) swap that anyone could sign up for and apparently they have artists of all ages from all these places
AZ, AK, CA, CO, GA, LA, IN, MA, MD, MI, MN, NE, NM, NY, OR, PA, TX, VA, WI and British Columbia
seriously how amazing is that?  We were given 11 cards, 10 to trade and 1 to keep, and basically just allowed to create.  I mailed them this week, it will be so much fun to see which ones I got back!

Since it was 'Women & Creativity' I decided that I wanted my daughters to also participate.  I sketched out the design and discussed what I wanted in the basic design.  My oldest loves to paint so I asked her to mix or choose a blue for the background which are representing the blue cloudless skies common to New Mexico.  Yes we do paint in our living room, in fact we do all our crafting in there or the kitchen and no I don't cover up furniture~it might get a little messy sometimes but we clean up real nice and I would love to see the kids creating.

Then I worked on the gold, brown, red acrylic mix for the background to represent the Sandia Mountains here in Albuquerque.  Over the top of the acrylic I used oil pastel crayons in reds and browns.

Whether moon or sun over the mountains they always stand stark contrast against the bright blue skies.  Using a yellow oil pastel crayon I colored a circle to represent either of those celestial bodies.  

Next I took an old large metal sewing needle and punched holes around the orb.

Last I gave my youngest daughter a ball of leftover threads from various sewing projects and asked her to sew them into the orb.  Since the threads were scraps there were long and short lengths, she just kept on sewing swapping in new colors chosen at random.

They turned out very simple but they do represent the women in our family, the place where we live, the sky and mountains that we see every day and the sewing that I do.

What will you create today?

The Silence Will Fall #14: Beautiful Handwoven Cloth from a New Mexican Artist

Day 262  Aren't these amazing?  Made by a customer with whom I am currently working with on a project.  They are so much more vibrant in person.

What will you create today?

The Silence will Fall #6: Coyotes don't need an excuse to party

Day 200

Credit 

I love listening to the coyote parties go on at night~they don't need an excuse to sing loudly for all to hear.  There are way more in the pack that lives behind our house, so imagine this video but with more and lots of different ages, so cute when the little ones get going.  The moon coming up over our mountains was very cool last night...here are our mountains....beautiful right?  We see this every day...love it

Touch Me Thursday #2: Tumbleweeds a blowin' in the bathroom

Day 177

Tumbleweed green annoying large, prickly, first to pop out in spades after a rain, pretty much the ONLY green on the desert mesa Credit 

Tumbleweed, dead blowing in the wind, iconic symbol of the old west that really does blow down the streets and EVERYWHERE else, sometimes as large as a VW bug, tend to pile up in HUGE piles along fences, doorways and walls... Credit

I am always fascinated by these annoying weeds so I decided that they would be my next texture project.  I wanted to make a hand towel for our downstairs bathroom and so I sketched out a short stitch design in a ball shape on this white flour sack material.  And then I felt the need to add a cheesy slogan...as a friend said "if you're gonna do cheesy do it big and that is certainly cheesy" GOOD exactly what I was going for :) That and it explains the design itself and the tumbleweed decor in the bathroom.

3 colors of DMC floss in a randomly stitched tumbleweed design

These are the very bottom of the tumbleweed, where they would have attached to the ground...the rest of the weed is VERY prickly and when we were cleaning them out of the yard one day I thought they were incredibly interesting shapes.  My wonderful hub thought so too and proceeded to get pricked clipping off the rest of the plant to get to these, never again lol.  The things hanging on them are Devil's Claw seed pods and are extremely cool little structures themselves!

I really like the shapes that they make set together displaying the unassuming bottom of the tumbleweed with the claws of the pods......we have them all hanging on the wall in our bathroom.

Look for a visit from Taichi Tabananica again tomorrow....what will you create today?