Art Spirals

Well, today was a VERY productive day...following four days of massive art supply reorganization and assessing what I have and where I want to go! I was considering renting an artist studio, did a final reorganization to see if I really needed it, and realized with creative rearranging, I can stay right where I am, using my bedroom as a studio, but having places for baskets for each work in progress, and cleaning up after I'm done.

I think this was a suggestion in the last Studios issue of Clothpaperscissors, allow 10 minutes to clean up before your alloted studio time is up. Another trick I did was to include tools with the supply in question. For example: I tied scissors and tape near the gift wrapping section of the closet, the eyelet setting tool with eyelets in the Altered Book section, etc. I also made a spreadsheet with all my supplies and their location so that I can easily do a keyword search or scan the alphabetical list and see where something is. Hopefully this will avoid double buying of supplies (with the extra money I would have paid in rent -- Credit Wendy with that suggestion!)

From Felted peaches

So, my four works in progress are a journal quilt on Carlsbad Caverns, another on the Gila Cliffs, a larger piece on childhood memories of South Allentown, and a "happy" piece of needle felting in yellows/pinks/oranges. So I dragged out the South Allentown piece, of which I have fabric gathered and a study of porch steps finished, and pulled out shiva painted blobs I painted before, with thoughts they would become peaches, and sure enough, it WORKED!

Here's what I started with, shiva paintsticks blobs on a textured type of interfacing. Don't know what it really is, an estate sale find.

From Felted peaches

And here's the reverse side:

From Felted peaches

What I learned from this is that what I thought was the front side (i.e. the side I was working on) became the backside because the fuzziness of having the fibers protrude from being meshed into it was really what I wanted. I used images of how to paint watercolor peaches to help with the lights and curves, and when I attach these to the quilt and add some extra threadpainting to supplement them, I think they'll be smashing! And I using the 'back" as the finished piece let's me use eyelash and other fibers that look too stringy when embellished and the front is used, but if they're the right color, they look fabulous on the fuzzy back. I did the leaves from the finished side, so they don't have as fuzzy a look. one of the stems is a piece of brown/gray velvet.

I'm also pleased with scheduling studio time worked so well for me. I scheduled three hours of time, turned off the phones and the computer, and just had fun (once I got over my initial strange fear of getting back into working). how odd. I even considered puttering more on the reorganization and never starting the actual WORK/FUN of it all. Ever have that happen to you?