Easter Egg Fortunes

 My small gifts for my Family this year.  Easter Fortunes!  I carefully emptied out all the eggs, cleaned them, painted them with watercolors, then finally put a fortune/Egg related quote inside.  I have to say this was so much fun and relaxing for me!  I wish more holiday’s focused around eggs so I can do this more often :)  I think I am most proud that through all of it I only broke one egg!

For my mom who just came back from The Arctic

Quilting The World

After a whirlwind couple of months, Kyle coming home on R&R, getting engaged, I finally was able to give Kyle his Christmas gift.  I went the homemade route and made him a quilt.  It took a long time to finish, many frustrations (and mistakes) but I made it and I was happy to give it to him as a gift (and be finished with it!)

The quilt in total size is a queen size about 110” x 100”.  I don’t think I realized how much quilting that was until I actually laid it out.  Then I had to think of what to quilt and how, I decided to quilt the world, literally!  Then I would mark all the places we have been together.  I bought a map to trace the world onto.  After a series of tests with iron on ink, and a pen that erases when ironed I decided to trace a huge map of the world I had bought.  As you can see I tried tracing the world on the window, but by the time I was done the window and gotten so hot that the ink didn’t transfer well onto the fabric.  I traced it again on the table, it did transfer a little better but not great, so I then hand drew most of the world onto of the “wanna be” ironed on tracing.

I bought my fabric from Joann, and of course used all their awesome coupons.  Prices will remain undisclosed since it was a gift after all :)  I free motion quilted all of the countries, which was the easiest party of the entire thing.  To make is short and simple the rest of it was.... long!  Again, I made lots of mistakes and found out quilting interlock knit is a wee bit more difficult.  It is much more stretchy than cotton.  I also put the 4 elements in the corners of the map.  You can see all the photos below!

Christmas Present Prints!

True I haven't posted anything in a while... well it wasn't because I wasn't doing anything!  I decided to make some Christmas presents this year so I had to wait to give them away until I could put up some pictures.  Since, I recently finished my printmaking class it felt natural to continue along that path!

I first made a landscape picture of a cliff in Italy, and a flower, which might be my favorite!   Now I can only speak for myself but I love seeing the blocks of other printmakers so I have included those pictures too.   They are below :)  Would love to know what you think of them all!!

After these 2 I was loving the printmaking and I really wanted to keep it up.  I decided to make the following prints for my brother and Krista (his girlfriend/my friend).  This is there awesome chocolate lab, Stanley, seriously probably one of the best dogs ever!

And the final prints I did for the Christmas season were for Kyle's Parents, Craig and Christine.  I have heard two things over and over while being with Kyle, first how wonderfully Chaco and Gracie are.. their dogs, and about the awesome cabin Kyle's grandpa used to have.  They all talked about how great it was and the wonderful memories they had there.  So I thought it was only fitting to attempt both of these things as prints.  The cabin was the toughest print for me thus far!!  You may also notice that I forgot about the reverse image which flipped the cabin around.  For some reason I can't get the edited version to upload so you are stuck with the other, non-cropped, one.    I had to edit this on the computer to reverse the image... again :)    Here they are below!!  Oh one more is the picture of where they hung them in their house after I got them matted and framed.

Third Relief Print-First Multi-Colored

····First post from my phone..ekkk····

Let me just say this print was really tough and required a ton of thought.

For those of you who don't know there are many ways to do a multicolored print, you can have multiple blocks with each block showing a different color.  Some people combine printing and then do some painting by hand.  This particular print was done all on one block.  Which means you print one color at a time and then carve it away.  Each print is one is a kind and can't new printed again once you carve away! So you can understand I was a little freaked out...

This is how it works.  You have to carve from lightest to darkest.  For whatever reason me and my class had the hardest time trying to wrap our heads around this! And why I chose to do five colors instead of two or three, I have no idea!

Step by step:

     1.  I carved out the white clouds and inked the entire block blue.
             · I made about twenty prints.

     2.  I carved out all the blue and inked the whole block green.
             · I printed on all twenty of my sheets that were green and white.
             · Also I just tried to eyeball it to line the prints up to match, way more difficult than I thought!

     3.  I carved out all the green and inked the block red, again printing on top of the other colors. Here is what it looked like at this stage. (The pictures are a little grainy, sorry!)

     4.  Carved out all the red and inked it black (I mixed to make the black, looks like a navy color to me) (Also, for the record, I hate the bloody Farris Wheel)

     5.  Finally took a deep breath because it was done!

I must say, it's not my favorite, but short my first multicolored print I will take it.
Here are a couple of things I will do differently next time.

     ·  Not use so much bloody ink!  I was realizef I was using too much which made some details I wanted to show get muddled in color.

     ·  I am excited to use more line movement-like texture in the grass or sky.  I just did block colors to see if I even had the right idea.

I would love to hear what you think :)

Happy Monday!

Ideas of What to Send Your Deployed Soldier

Every deployment I feel I have to put on my creative cap and think of some great ideas to send my guy deployed.  Surprisingly I have found it difficult and sometimes I find myself stumped standing in a store.  To help others I figured I would post some of the things I have come up with, some that were great success and some that weren’t.

1.    Hand written letter – Nothing is more simple and cheap

2.    Tic-Tac-Toe- We send an on going game back and forth in the mail.  (hand drawn)

        It’s fun, and you never actually know when you get it!

3.    Send a zip drive with downloaded episodes of your guys/gals favorite TV’s.

4.    Videos-  If you have a webcam make a short greeting video and put it on a zip drive.

       *If your soldier also has a webcam they can do the same thing and send it back

        It just makes your day when you can actually see them!

5.      Funny Cards- I have found a surprisingly mix of great cards at stores (thinking of you type thing) ** To save a little money make your own!

6.      Something always nice is to ship some food items for him to share, coffee, tea, package of brownies.

7.       Slow down on the Candy!  I sent so much candy that he actually asked me to please stop sending so much …. Here is where I insert my blushing face…

8.       I write down a few great quotes, from anyone, either inspirational, military related, whatever you think they may like and send it as a letter.

There you have it, 8 Quick ideas that you can send your soldier.  Obviously there are many more but I just wanted to get the tip of the iceberg.  As I am currently in a deployment I would love to hear some new ideas!!  Please share