Winter Angel

My friend who received an angel for her birthday will get this winter angel for Xmas. It is a Finnanger design - I just love these angels. That snow on the cap and arms is really cute.

Key to success

A friend of mine opened a small gallery at our home town. This collage titled "key to success" was my present for her on the opening day.

Felt purse

With my new embellisher I started experimenting with purses. A friend of mine literally snatched them out of my hands to sell them on the local Christmas market. I made 8 in different colors but had only the opportunity to make a photo from this one.

Tag book

Just realized that I did not show the tags I received in our tag swap - duh! Will have to do that.
This however is the tag book I sewed for those tags I received and sewed for myself since they were so much fun to make. However, I gave it away as a present to a member in the art4card group as a thank you together with some tags. Since I liked the book as it is I will make one with the same picture for myself.

New baby quilt

This is the quilt for Lea Sophie - she is such a cute little girl I would have liked to keep her the first time her mother brought her around. Roses seem to be the right choice for a romantic mother and a beautiful little girl.
Now there is still a quilt to sew for a little boy who is due early December. No roses there although the mother is easily as romantic as mother number 1. I opted for simple rectangles with applied hearts in bold colors and will have to hurry to get it finished in time.

Autumn is gone

Winter really took us by surprise. One of these days we were still enjoying sunshine and beautiful colors, and then all of a sudden temperatures dropped, an awful wind kept blowing for three days in a row, snow set in - imagine, early November! - and all those marvellous leaves were gone.
My view from the dining room door is now bleak, grey and uninviting, the golden sentinel all but invisible having been robbed of its glorious golden leaves.

Happy dance

At last success! This quilt made third place in a challenge titled "nostalgia" by the German magazine "Patchwork-Ideen" that takes place every other year. I have been juried into this challenge four times and finally - bingo! There is not much that could make me happier - except perhaps my new embellisher I have been experimenting with the last two days....

Indian Summer Inchies

The inchies below are the ones I made for the swap in our art4card group. The inchies on top are those I received. Aren't they lovely?

Miniquilt for a colleague

I normally don't work with panels. This one though kind of begged to be done. It was a panel with four houses in the four seasons. They are just perfect as a gift for a colleague of mine. This one was for her birthday, she already received the winter house last year for Christmas.

Tag-Mania

Tags, especially the vintage tags, are all the rage in our art4card-group. Unfortunately, I sent my tags for the group swap off before making a photo - duh. I made these tags for a group member as a thank you for letting me have some of her old photos and even - imagine! - a piece from her mother's wedding dress.

Medieval

Just started on a mini quiltlet-book with medieval themes. This will be a booklet in which I am trying to test several different techniques. Those first pages were a paper on fabric collage. The next pages will be done with transfers.

Link against the Blues

I just have to share this link:

http://svt.se/hogafflahage/hogafflaHage_site/Kor/hestekor.swf

Just click on the horses and see what happens! If this doesn't bring a smile to your face you should seriously consider getting professional help...

Skinny book - more pages

There have been quite a few new pages for the skinny book swap - I am nearly done! This swap proved to be so much fun.

Trip to France

It is already a week since we returned from our short trip to l'Alsace. The weather was splendid, in fact so splendid that after having been to all expositions in St. Marie aux Mines we decided to let it go at that and instead the other day visited Ribeauville, Colmar and a beautiful Burg in the vicinity before heading home.

Thank god for gesso!

This time when I started to make a new background it went horribly wrong. I had wanted to create a moody, mostly blue-green page, but both the colors and the way I tried to mix them were decidedly not what I had intended. I ended up with a background that was way too dark and much murkier than I liked. I rememberd just before I started fuming and tearing my hair out that I could make it undone - just squish some gesso ono the mess and bingo! you have a practically new page to start from. After that I mainly played with yellow and red and later on did a few dry brushstrokes with white before adding a little metallic touch. It was not what I had intended, however, I like the outcome quite a lot.

Vintage pages

Whodunnit

This is so far my favorite page because of it's tongue-in-cheek-character. When I stumbled upon the foto of these two kids, one looking slightly rebellious, the other one very mischievous, I could not help but think of my three kids when they were that age. Whatever happened, the question of who did it was always answered by "not me", "don't know", "wasn't here", "nobody" or "who did WHAT???" It took several years before those kids (we called them the other kids, those that were always lurking under the table or just around the corner) left the house.

Baby quilt

At least a change from the book pages! This is a quilt I made by order from a colleague of mine for a little baby girl.
Within the next three months I will have to make two more baby quilts, one for a boy, one for a girl, since two of my colleagues are going to have a baby. With scans being as advanced as today both can be sure of the baby's gender. It is absolutely fascinating: one of them even had a video of her unborn she could watch at the computer, looking at him grinning and sucking his thumb! When I was expecting my children you could not understand what the scan was showing without your doctor pointing details out to you.
I love watching those two - they could be my daughters, and it is so nice seeing them together discussing the progress of their pregnancy and showing pictures to each other....
Don't get me wrong - I really would not like to become a grandmother yet!

Afraid to repeat myself: More pages...

New background

Since my two very large sheets will not be sufficient for 26 pages I made a new background. This one is very lightly colored and evoces feelings of spring and cheeriness.
With these pages a development sets in which is quite similar to the one I experienced with AMCs and ATCs: There is no limit to experimentation at all. Even if one of these pages would go horribly wrong - so what? It is a piece of paper 4 x 8 inches, and I have been working on it for what? 1/2 hour or 1 hour maximum. Write it off as a learning experience, no harm done. So far, I was lucky. There were some small mistakes that could be mended, some things I will have to keep in mind as for instance not to take a heat gun to a page that was painted with acrylic paints - they blister!

Still 20 to go!

Further pages

While it took me quite a long time deliberating what to do with my first pages ideas now keep popping up. Quite a lot of "what if's" are taking place, too. And what I absolutely love is making the background for the pages. I keep experimenting with gesso, acrylic colors, watercolors, and intersting things like distress ink spray and salt.

Back page

For several days I have been racking my head for an idea how to decorate the back pages for the skinny book. It had to have general information such as name, address etc. and perhaps a personal accent as well. I did not want it to be too selfconcious, rather a little humorous or funny. Now I did something a little crazy. I inserted my face into Botticellis famous Venus - she may be 20 kilos lighter and 30 years younger than me, but my hair is red, too, and my skin is very white... For the general information I made a tag from one of my cards and inserted that into a small pocket.

Skinny book - first pages

These are the first two pages I made for the skinny book swap. I was not exactly looking for a theme but rather trying to meet the images to the mood of the background. Every page has to be an original - and there are to be 26 of them! So the last few days I have been browsing through my stash of fotos and transparencies as well as small charms in order to decide what to put on my pages. It is not easy for me, since collage is something I never did so far. But I like these first pages, they seem to have some kind of atmosphere. The left 1 1/2 inches have to be free from embellishments since that is the part where the book is to be bound.

Skinny book

This is a new field for me. I am going to participate in an exchange for a skinny book (measurements 4 x 8") as decribed in the last issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissor. So for the last days I have been working on my backgrounds with gesso, acrylic paints, watercolor, stamping and metallic paints. By now I am quite satisfied with the results and will now raid my stashes of embellishments, stamps and other paraphernalia to decorate my pages with. Since there are 25 pages to make this will keep me quite busy, I suppose.

Fabric book

This fabric book was made during a class with Christa Rolf. It is based on a short poem by A. Schnitt called "Im Wechselspiel der Gezeiten" (the play of alternating tides). I especially like the small envelope containing a seashell.

Joi de vivre

I made this small wall quilt as a birthday present for my aunt. She is a very outgoing and enthusiastic person which is why I chose very cheery fabric. Everything is freecut and later machine quilted. My aunt was quite happy with it and told me that she changed the decoration of her "wintergarten" in order to fit the wall quilt in. She is one hell of a person to gift with quilts: When presented with a large quilt at her 70th birthday she had a whole room refurnished and redecorated around this quilts and its colors....

Trip to Scotland

This years trip took us to Scotland. BBC informed us that this has been the wettest summer since 1914, and we cannot contradict that. But it made for really good fotos! Rains over the lochs, whirling mists around tombstones and ruins - very impressive.