Art Spirals

I made a fabric cone for Wendy's birthday this year.  My aim was to pack as much glorious summer color in it and whimsy and fun, to brighten up the (occasional) day of gloomy weather in England.  I think it turned out cool.

The curly thing hanging in front of the back is the fringe edge I had to trim away to make it a fringe.  It just curled up so cute, I had to put it on.  I’ve been wanting to use those vintage paper flowers for the longest time too, and I think pom pom fringe is just plain old fun!

 

Another friend called it a "clown in a box".  That's fitting.

 

 

 

There are more wallpockets to see too.

These beauties appeared on the surface of our little pond today.  These plants (water hyacinths) didn't bloom at all last year, in fact they suffered through the year, we believe trying to survive the hot desert sun.  My DH built a lovely sail shade for the pond this year and we're keeping up on enzymes and the like, and fish, plants, and humans are liking it better.  The pic below was taken in early June.  The plants have grown a bunch since then.

View of both blooms and both fish. 

Today my Mother in Law and I went on a tour of five cactus gardens, hosted by the local rock garden/cactus club. Several of them were phenomenal, including the one in Kern Place. When we pulled up to the house, I realized I had sketched the house in the past several months, and happened to have that sketchbook along with me. I haven't had as much sketch time recently, so it's still in my car, waiting to be filled up!

So I took it over to show the owner. What a neat thing! It made our garden tour more special, and I got to see that inside the garden gate is even more lovely than outside it! So I don't believe I shared this with you all, and since I scanned it to email her, I'll post it here:

From Drawing 2008

Inside her garden she also has a dead fruit tree -- but hers is upright and used to hang baskets of flowers and garden art on. Ours is upside down in one of the gardens and I use it to train up Lady Banks' rose vine with an orange bells bush inside the teepee of its branches.

Last week I got a partially constructed victorian balsa wood dollhouse at a garage sale -- for free! The folks were so frustrated with it, they wanted it off their hands. So the girls and I glued it together last Sat night...we had a blast, and this weekend, they and I (well, mostly they!) painted it. And here it is in all its glory!

From Kids' Art

From Kids' Art

Here are two views of the surface of the veggie juice I made last night. It's a combo of beet, carrot, spinach, apple and parsnip, and wow, was it yummy! And artsy too!

From Cool Things

From Cool Things

From Felted peaches

I strip pieced a background from a recycled silk skirt and cotton fabric. I meant to have the lines be more random but they ended up looking uniform, kind of. Now I'm working on samples to figure out how to attach them with thread painting to the background.

And now for the quandry. Here's my yoga tree.

From YogaTree

It started out as a Bead Journal Project 2" square concerning yoga. You can see the square in the middle. I decided to put it on this beautiful piece of hand dyed fabric from Anne Marie and stitched my heart out on the tree and embroidered the trunk. Then I thought I would like to make it as though you are looking through an arch and seeing it. So I added more fabric to it, don't like the seams, but that's what happens sometime, my project gets bigger than I expected. anyway... so then I've sewn on this beautiful vintage trim (from a vendor at IQF) and I've stitched it on several different ways and I'm not happy with any of them.

So I've decided to lay it out and try two ways and see what you think. What do you like, or how should I handle it? I don't want to cut it before I know I'll like it, so that's why I'm trying the trim, but I think seeing the rest of it outside the arch makes it hard to visualize. Hmmm...maybe I could stitch a stucco feeling/looking background and put it on top of it, creating an arch opening in the stucco top piece. hmmm..

anyway, here are some ideas.

From YogaTree

or

From YogaTree

Here's another of the squares done for this project, this one celebrating a winter play day. Shh, don't tell anyone, but this is as far as I got on the BJP project....

From A Year in Beads

From Leaves

Well, here's today's production. leaves done in various ways with the embellisher. one I left the pieces attached so you could see it. It's on a gold/green mesh to which I attached roving and then used a space dyed thin ribbon for the edges...you can see it sticking up at the tip. In reality, the blue isn't so visible at all. These leaves are for a project, to be attached, either with handsewing or thread painting/FME.