Happy Independence Day!

Here are some more index cards I made for 1CAD (one card a day). They were all inspired by other artists.

My Favorite June Photos

My camera didn't wander far this month, but it did wander outside of the house to get these photos. Here are my favorite photos for the month of June.

 Clematis bud

Three types of hosta

Birds on a wire

 Wild flowers on gravel

mushrooms!

Requisite sky photo

Showing off new haircut

Lovely porch

Second requisite sky and tree scene

Wet hosta blooms.  This fly posed a long time for me to take the picture.


Linked to:
Wandering Camera

Another Set of ICAD Cards

Daisy Yellow has a challenge where you fill up an index card a day. She provides lots of prompts and inspiration if you are having trouble deciding what to do. I'm not so good with the one card a day part of it, but her are seven cards for your viewing pleasure.

This was supposed to be a mosaic, but the paper (cut from a magazine) was too fiddly. I added a stamp with distress ink which didn't work well on the paper, but I do like the look the pink gives to the blue.

Yes I know I already drew rainbows, but I did another one after watching a video on Daisy Yellow of her painting rainbows.  Not much change except here the background is deliberately colored. I am still using  too much water and the card is curling.

I am using a Traditional Home magazine issue, and this issue in particular is more modern and clean, and not as much textile and bright which I like. It does make it easier to cut up though. I thought I would play with the the black white and gray colors in different designs.

All of the collage cards include some words from the magazine. This one said family ties, but it was too big to fit both words. I was originally going to cover over the feet, but once I put it on the card, I decided to leave it as is.

This was supposed to say "Like No Other" but I cut out the other side without looking so I was stuck with No Other.  So I added it to these words. Since I did do something wrong, I liked the No Other in between those words.

I copied this from another blog. She did a better job, of course.

I got some rubbing plates from the dollar store, which didn't work at all with markers, so I drew the design sloppily with another marker (its a flower). The lace is also from the dollar store. I hand stitched the lace on with the closest thread that was by me, which was light pink, so you can't see the thread.

My Quilt Photobook

In my last post, I mentioned that I had grabbed some photos of my quilts and made a little photo book. Kate wanted to see it, so here it is.  Basically, I let Snapfish choose the layout, although I did change up the number of photos per page and which picture went in each spot if I did not like where it randomly was placed.

It is my hope to make a more official document of all of my quilts with a short description about it, so this was a prototype of sorts.

The elephant will be my quilt model and is helping me hold down the pages.

This one managed to get its own page, and I like the quilt so I guess it could stay. It is the biggest quilt in the set. I did try to get the smaller quilts to have smaller pictures and the bigger quilts to get bigger pictures so there was at least a sense of size of quilt, but they aren't exactly proportional like that.

It is a small book, a little bit smaller than 6" x 8" when it is closed. It is a fun little size, easy to take with you as you go.

I did crop the photos as much as possible so only the quilt showed, but sometimes I left the picture whole if it told a story.

A couple of the quilts got more than one picture in the book. Oh well.

Linked to:
 Friday Foto Fun
Off the Wall Friday 
Finished or Not Friday

Love and Happiness

I told you last week I was working on a quilt for a friend. I called it Purple Smiles. Today, I am calling it Love and Happiness because of the smiles and hearts on it. It doesn't much matter what I call it, since I wasn't planning on naming the quilt for the label.


I am using the design couch instead of the design floor to avoid dog fur, although I did vacuum. This means I haven't been taking a lot of process photographs.

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 25

I have been diligently working on this quilt. It is taking me much longer than anticipated, which I guess is normal. Since the photograph at the top of the blog, I have sewn all the rows together and have joined some of the rows as well. It looks really good to me. Hopefully it won't take too much longer to get the top done and quilted.

15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 130 out of 174 sessions

Success Rate: 75%

Purple Smiles Quilt

For my 15 Minutes a Day update, I am happy to report that I quilted the equivalent of 15 minutes every day this week. It all started with a Shutterfly offer for a free book.  I have ideas about books - a recipe book with my mother's recipes, a listing of all of my travel keychains along with the travel story, more genealogy studies about particular family members, the stories behind all of my quilts, etc., but these offers don't allow for that kind of time to thoroughly write anything,  and as usual I decided to participate at the last minute.


I decided to do what I do with my calendars, throw together all my quilt photos and put them in a book. This time, I limited myself to photos of finished quilts only, with no words or labels. It turned out pretty nicely. I think it is a good start to my quilt story book, and I was able to find photos of about half of my quilts in the short time I had available.

Anyway, I was showing my friend my photo book and she asked me to make her a quilt.  At first, she wanted  the Earth Laughs in Flowers quilt, but after I priced out the batik fabrics, fusible, etc., it was out of her price range, and she decided she would rather design her own quilt anyway.  So I've been working on the purple quilt.

She said she trusted me, and since I like purple, I have been able to make this quilt with a minimum of stress. If I make what pleases me, she should be sure to like it as well. At least right now, I have that confidence.

15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 24

Once again I did not keep track of my work, and I forgot to post last week, so I will say zero for last week. I worked solely on the Purple Smiles Quilt this week. I have 12 of the blocks done.  I'll show you photos next time. It is too dark to take photos now. The photos are of some of my bounty from Connecting Threads warehouse sale. I bought more, but I had put it away before I thought to take pictures. I had given myself a generous budget and I stayed under it.


15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 7 out of 14
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 123 out of 167sessions

Success Rate: 74%

At this time last year, I was at 91%. I have a lot of catching up to do!

Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch with Kate at Life in Pieces

More ICAD

It probably would be better to post these cards daily, but I haven't been so good at daily lately, and there is more pressure for each one if they aren't shown as a group.  This is part of the project to decorate one index card a day (ICAD), which is hosted by Daisy Yellow. I forgot to put the date on some of these.

Wanda told me my yellow flowers were called Cup of Gold Evening Primrose. I like the name, and when I looked it up, there were all these vintage drawings of them so I decided to make one for my flowers.

This was a zentangle but for some reason, I just did not like it. I was going to throw this card away, but when I turned it in this direction it looks somewhat interesting - a cross between a chicken and an elephant. Now I am glad I didn't fill in all the spaces.

If you compare this to the drawing I was trying to copy, this looks horrible, but since you can't see that, it looks okay.

Doodling on a survey.

Zentangle. I used a lid to make the circles and then filled the spaces in with markers.

This was a advertisement and I liked the huge word.

Here are the other ones I have done so far:

Linked with:
Handmade Monday