The Gift of Art

Today is Black Friday in the shopping world, and I am being inundated with sales pitches. I understand that many crave the latest tech gadget, but consider a piece of art as a different kind of gift this holiday season. There are in person craft and gift fairs in many places, and numerous artists have special online offers.

As it’s been a while since I featured my work that’s for sale, here’s a reminder that I am offering several of my pieces on my blog. They range in size from small to medium large, with corresponding prices. For a limited time I am offering free domestic ground shipping. Below are a few examples of what’s on offer.

“Looking At My Garden Without My Glasses” 37.5″ wide by 31″ high

“Crazy Bullseyes” 36″ wide by 26″ tall

“Winter’s Closing In” 14″ wide by 17″ high

“Sur La Table” 40″ square

“Still Standing” 14″ wide by 17.5″ high

Please email me at snarkyquilter@gmail.com if you have questions or would like further information.

I’m linking to Off The Wall Fridays.

Board Book Bonanza

Thanks to Drew Steinbrecher’s free online class I have a growing collection of sketch books made from children’s board books. In the past I started sketch books, but didn’t keep up with them. If you ever started a daily exercise program on January 1, found it became weekly by January 20, and maybe every three weeks by February 5, you know the process.

Drew uses his gel prints, gluing them directly on the book pages, but almost any material, paint, or drawing tool can be used as long as you gesso the pages first. Why board books? Because they’re thick cardboard the pages don’t buckle and warp with glue, and they are cheap second hand finds. Library book sales, online auctions, and yard sales are potential sources of inexpensive used ones.

I got this stack from my local library.

I won’t linger on the technical details as Drew covers them thoroughly, but so far I’ve finished two books and am almost done with a third. My leaf gel prints filled up one book by themselves.

It’s fun to make covers for my books.

Tickets and pamphlets from my trip to Spain combined with paper scraps are featured here. The grid paper lined an envelope our credit card company mailed us.

Magazine pages and collage leftovers

I start a fresh page or add to an existing one whenever I get stuck on my current quilting struggle, and find creating something in 30 minutes or less with paper and a glue stick boosts my mood. Then I’m able to return to the slog in a better frame of mind.

I’m linking to Off The Wall Fridays.

The Wrestling Match Begins

I have one more piece left to quilt, and it’s a doozy quilting-wise. I am enamored of circles and can get carried away when I put them on quilts, not remembering that I will have to quilt them. Of course, that’s not a problem if I take the easy path of straight line quilting.

For “Happy Accidents” I decided to feature circles in the quilting, so easy isn’t likely. It measures 29 by 45 inches,which sounds quite doable until you shove the quilt around 360 degrees a few times. And I plan to emphasize some curves with heavy threads.

Here’s the top after some refinements with Neocolor II pastels.

Color isn’t true.

The copy is pink because my printer’s cyan ink jets were clogged.

Another issue I face is the difficulty of marking the quilting pattern with eraseable markers or pens. Some of the fabric won’t take marks well and the paper resists everything. I may need to make quilting templates with freezer paper and iron them on.

I’ve chosen several threads in different weights so I will be changing colors frequently.

That leads to the last issue (I hope.) I have matched my quilting thread so well I can’t see the previous stitching in the paper areas, where I need to eyeball the new lines from the previous ones, as I can’t mark the paper. Whee!

I’m linking to Off The Wall Fridays.

You Can Print With Anything

Originally I typed “you can print anything,” but that can be misinterpreted. I want to talk about the use of unconventional objects in gel printing. Of course, there are screens, stencils, stamps, etc., sold for printing. However, I like found objects that are free.

Instagram offers lots of ideas for such objects. Margaret Molinari (@margarts) prints on fabric with all sorts of items – pressed glass, reed baskets, fruits, vegetables, etc. Another artist, @giogiocraft, uses leaves in a fast way to get a ghost print from a gel plate.

I couldn’t resist (ha!) gathering and pressing leaves, and then printing with them on drawing paper and tissue. Some of my papers had been through one printing already, so I had a head start.

Another Instagram inspired printing object was blue jeans. My husband handed over an old pair of his, which has found its way into a quilt (“Damask and Denim”) and now prints on paper.

I think we’ve gotten our money’s worth out of that pair.

If you have printed with interesting found objects, I’d love to hear about it.