THANK YOU CHRIS!

I received my wonderful, lovely page from Chris!  I just can't believe how much these pages are fitting in with each other.  I'm going to have a book to treasure forever and I can tell you that it will be passed down to my creative granddaughter.  She's in high school and has been my art buddy since she could hold a crayon/paintbrush.  She "gets it" when it comes to art and treasures it in all it's forms.  She's first chair violin in her orchestra and they are traveling to Europe next June (2011) to perform.  She's also a talented ceramist, and mixed media artist.  She can bead, but she doesn't have the obsession like I do.
Anyway, thank you Chris.  AND, thank you for the wonderful shabby chic flower pin you made for me.  It's already on my favorite white summer cardigan just waiting for a chance for me to wear it.  I'm absolutely positive I'll get lots of comments!!!
And last but not least... my husband Bill has already made some current scones from the little recipe book you sent.  We love to cook and bake and take turns working in the kitchen.  Since I've been spending as much time as I can with his mom (who has an inoperable brain tumor) and going to school full time, he's been doing a lot of the cooking around here.  I'm so spoiled, but he says I'm worth it.  (He's a great cook by the way!)
HuGGs!
Debi

Preview for Cobi

Hi Cobi, here's a little corner of your May page. I will post it a little early if you don't mind as we're going on holiday soon.

Blätter für Maya II Sneek

Here is a sneak preview of the page I will send to Maya. The first page with leaves I made in March didn't arrived, so I started another one. This one is a bit different. I hope Maya will like it.

Today is a public Holiday, so I'm going to send the page tomorrow. Hope the letter will arrive.

And now I'm going to start the castle page.

art nouveau from Maya

This is the page Maya made for me. It is truly gorgeous. I love art from India, because I love that shiny and colorful style. The colors, the materials, stitching, everything is wonderful. Thank you Maya. Even the back looks great. I brought it along to my art quilt group meeting, yesterday and they all admired it.

Goddess for Johoanna

My plan for Johoanna's page was to do something very deep and thought-provoking.  I should have know I couldn't do that!  LOL!

Once I found out about the Goddess Caffeina, I knew I had to portray her for this page.

I did a fairly simple combination of piecing, applique, and embroidery on the front of the page.

On the back, I used Shiva Oil Sticks and a stamp of the goddess Venus on some batik fabric.  The most fun, though, was learning about Caffeina and some of her "rituals."  Go to my blog for links to some of the fun things I learned.

March page update

As some pages seem to have gone missing or people are running late, I've posted my March page just for reference as I know Carmen said she did receive it. Maybe others are doing what I am and saving a copy of everyone's pages for future enjoyment! Also I hope my coastline has sailed safely across the sea now? We have so many strikes on here in Greece at the moment that I can never be sure what's happening with the post!

Debi??

Hi Debi,

I sent out several e-mails to you and they have bounced back as an undeliverable address. Can you please send me your new e-mail address? I put a comment on your blog as well.

Thanks everyone else for letting me know what's up with your pages. Most of you are staying right on track and I appreciate that. But if you do get a bit behind, please post often so your page recipient knows what's going on.  Thanks!!

working on it

Gayle, I'm stitching on your page. I picked one of my hand dyes that I think is very special. I've started the embroidery and its turning out quite nice so far, also according my family. Still I have a lot to do, but I'm enjoying making it.

Music in the Trees Page

I posted a very small slice of this photo as my tease for Ruth, back in April. The comments and the attention of the viewers was the combination of the bit of sheet music that was included in the background of fabric/paper with the tree leaf bits. I took those comments to heart and began to look for additional elements for the page. I always put sheet music in my collage work, but as Ruth was really intrigued by the combo of tree's and music, I saw the potential for the page in a whole new light.
So...... to begin, I chose a piece of my fabric/paper collage material as my starting point. I had recently carved a new stamp of a tree, partly with this page for Ruth, in mind. I stamped the tree with Staz-On Ink on a piece of white tissue paper and collaged it over the top of the fabric/paper. With a good coat of matte medium both beneath and on otp of the white tissue stamping, when completely dry the white tissue becomes very nearly transparent. I knew that the page needed some dimension so I took a large scrap of green leaf fabric and cut it in half and sandwiched a piece of Misty Fuse interfacing between the two pieces of scrap. I now had double sided fabric and I cut tiny leaf shapes from that bit. I stitched each leaf to the page using a green seed bead to embellish the leaf . The leaf is only attatched at one end so there is some movement and dimension to each leaf. On the border, after adding a cording edge, I stitched leaves in the same manner, with the seed bead addition.
I went in search of a quote to add to the front of the page and had a distant vague memory of hearing things about music among the trees, etc, in the past. I quickly found this wonderful quote that reads: There is always music amongst the trees in the garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear. Perfect, don't you think?? I wrote the quote out by hand aon a bit of my hand dyed linen and stitched it down again using seed beads to embellish the stitches. (can you tell I love to stitch with beads???)

For the back I selected a piece of my Flour Paste Resist Dyed Fabric in green (to read about how this technique works ,go to this link) and stamped one of my favorite tree stamps using Brown Staz-on ink, directly onto the fabric. As the stamping was quite a bit less strong than I had hoped, I used a brown Pit Pen to draw in over the stamping to make the tree come alive. The faint stamping was thus pushed into the bckground and the tree took on even more dimension than the stamping alone would have conveyed. ( as the saying goes,"When you get lemons, make lemonade!!!" I might actually do this again on purpose!!!) I was very happy with the result!!!

If anyone has any questions about how I did something, please feel free to give me a holler either directly or hear in the comments section. Iwill check back in on the comments every once in awhile!

iIhope that everyone has very satisfying and creative week!!!

Mail In and Out

Well, I find I am still using internet at the cafe so this will once again be quick.

Liz, I have received your page for april.  Thank you so much.  It is beautiful and very appropriate.  Coffee is my favourite drink, and I usually have one next to me when I'm knitting or sewing.

Maya, I am mailing your page to you tomorrow.  Sorry for the delay.

I am still waiting for my March page and am hoping to receive that soon.

Many blessings
Johoanna

Tree Page from Elizabeth has Arrived in Montana!

Isn't it wonderful?

I have a lot of tree poems but hadn't heard this one. If you can't read it:
There is always music amongst the trees in the garden,
but our hearts must be very quiet to hear.

And here's the back which is gorgeous too! I love it Elizabeth - thank you so much. I hope you'll post a bit about how it's made.

Thinking about castles

Thinking about castles I saw kings and queens in rich dresses, living in big rooms, celebrating big parties. I saw people riding on horses. And then I thougt: what does castle really mean? Is it the building where kings and queens live or is it the building for public defense.
You can translate castles into German in two words: Schloss (the home of kings and queens) and Burg (the building for defense).

I decided to make a page with a castle which was the home of kings and queens.

In a next step I reflected on which castle I would take as base of the page. I could just take a fantasy castle. But I also can take an existing.

We have a very famous castle in the south of Germany. It is Schloss Neuschwanstein. But I have any connection to this building. More connections I have to buildings in France because my parents took us in a lot of Holidays to visits of the Châteaux of the Loire Valle. When I was young I didn't liked these visits: they were hot and boring and people talked in strange languages ;-). Some years ago I went by myself visiting some of the castles and liked it. In the end I decided that the base of my castle page will be a Châteaux of the Loire Valle.

May is a busy month. I hope I will be ready with the page I n time.

Two for the price of one!!

Today I collected more flowers plus a beautiful card! I hope I've done them justice here. Actually when I scanned the card front in the picture showed a lot more colour and depth than I could see with my naked eye! I am honoured by the page - Ruth says she has done so much more handstitching on those tiny flowers than normal, they are beautiful, thank you Ruth. But the border is scrumptious-layers with sheers then bound with a lovely silky cord. This is a page of many parts; thank you so much Ruth

The sea has come in!

Coming home late last night, I had been to the V&A for the Quilting exhibition (more to come on my own Blog), I found a parcel had arrived. Exhaustion forgotten, I opened the parcel and found the sea.....



Thanks so much Gayle. I love this scene - a diver going down to a wreck. Plenty of detail, with ribbon, beads, lace edging and shells added. If you click on the photo above, it should enlarge to show more detail.



I love the care and attention to detail shown in the mass of small stitched items.



The back of the page itself. The furry trim is gorgeous. It is so hard to resist stroking it. Gayle has bound the edge of the page - a really nice touch which finishes the page admirably. This is making me rethink my own methods of finishing pages............. Plenty to use as inspiration here. The use of angelina fibres really adds a gentle glow to whole piece.

The letter is full of interesting information, with a postcard showing the Shasta Dam, Shasta Lake and Mount Shasta. A lovely scene.

Thanks. A word which really doesn't seem quite enough.

I'm behind

I'd managed to catch up with making pages in March, but then came April with lots of health issues. In April I had to make Gayle's "all creatures great and small". I have the design picked for weeks now. I have decided how to work it out too. It was today that I enlarged the design to the right size and prepaired the fabric to work on.
For May I will be planting trees for Ruth. I'm anxious to work on both pages.
I have to add that I'm still having a low HB so I'm more tired than usual(CFS/ME). We are in the middle of making plans for mom and dad's 50d wedding anniversary. Plus 2 birthday celebrations and mothersday. All these things are exhausting for me and take large parts of my stitching time.
So May will be slow for me, but June will be better. Meanwhile I keep stitching when I can.

Tree's is en route!!

I have put Ruth's page for April in the mail today!! Hopefully you will have it by the weekend, Ruth!! Give me a holler and I wil post and talk about it!
Happy Mother's Day to all who are Mums!!!
Elizabeth

I have yet to recieve a page for March or to hear about a page for April . Is something wrong with my topic? Are people having troubles with ideas?? It would be really nice if we could ramp up the communication a bit , I would apprecaite it. Thanks!

April - Seashore

As Juliette wrote my seashore page arrived. That makes me very happy because the page I made in March is lost in the mail.

Creating this page I first painted the image with acrylic colours on S80 and then stitched with the machine using embroidery thread.

I don't know.... but after I finished the page it remains me of my Holidays in France.

Art Nouveau page for Cobi

I have the page for Cobi ready, a couple of days late but it will be on its way to the Netherlands tomorrow.

A portion of the page which I had fun creating and I hope Cobi likes it.

Vintage chic on its way

I am so sorry Deb that your page has been delayed it will go in the post on Tuesday ( its a holiday here on Monday and the Post Office will be closed), i will put a little extra in to make up for it.
Love Chris

Castles - on the way.

I managed to get "Castles" finished yesterday - just within time, but wasn't able to post it until today. Hopefully it will arrive quickly.