I Spy My Studio

I was lucky enough to meet the lovely Karen Valentine of My Desert Cottage at The Creative Connection Event last year. I'm pretty sure she was actually the very first person I met and was so lovely and friendly and gracious as I was a bit scared and intimidated being at the event all by myself. This year she's hosting the 3rd annual Where Bloggers Create event and I am so excited to participate! So here goes a little sneaky peek into my creative space.

The first thing you see as you enter my space is my name spelled out using my Bunting O' Greetings fabric. I jazzed 'em up with a little bit of bling, too! It's not a large space as my husband and I live in an old rowhouse, but I love the space and I have made the best use of the space that I could to suit all of my varied artistic pursuits and interests.

One of the most used elements of my studio is my sewing machine. I love my Bernina!!! I've been a sewer since I was about 10 and took up quilting when I was in grad school (which is a very strange time to take up a new hobby as you are so busy, but I did). A couple years ago, I discovered Spoonflower and finally started to turn all the the ideas and imaginings I've had for my own fabric designs into reality. Now there are piles of swatches of my over 100 designs in my space of which you can see a couple here. The color charts I spent many hours putting together are the first things I refer to when I'm designing my fabrics. You'll also notice some more of my Bunting O' Greetings and the Spoonflower swatches that come along with every order. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do with them all!

I can't get enough ribbon and you'll find some nearly anywhere you turn you'll see some. There's the racks of ribbons on the display I created out of the old frame rescued from a vintage shop. There are my handmade ribbons - dyed strips of wide selvage from my fabric orders and then lettered in calligraphy (something else I've been doing since I was 10 years old). Piled in mason jars are my easter egg dyed seam binding ribbons wrapped around vintage wooden spools. And even more ribbon is draped over the wooden rack on the wall under my mini folded hexi and button quilt.

Some of the pieces that hold my plethora of supplies are also fashioned by me. I'd had these two plain wooden trunks that needed a bit of sprucing up so I padded and covered the lids with pieces of an old and tattered quilt that had seen its better days and then painted the harlequin pattern and inspirational words on the bases. Now they hold bunches of my fabrics. My beads and other teeny tiny ephemera are stored in the drawers I created out of foam core and then embellished to sit inside an old CD organizer that was no longer used for CDs. The little flower piece is my CalEndure project created for my boss at Artella as she prepares to publish a book.

There are lots of other little things I love to use and just gaze upon as I'm creating my art of all kinds. My soul journals from my wonderful and amazing Soul Restoration experience are always on my big table so I can go back and remind myself of the lessons learned and those I'm still learning. All sorts of vintage ephemera can be found here such as these paper bobbins filled with pink and yellow thread that I got for a steal at a local antique store. The jar filled with red buttons is another local antique shop find. The beautiful boxes from gifts received and cute little polka dotted egg cups hold more supplies and just make me happy to look at.

I hope you've enjoyed this little peek into my creative corner of the world up by Lake Superior. Now I'm off to enjoy summer while it lasts around here!

Palette Pinterest

I keep discovering more fun ways to use my new iPhone and the latest discovery comes from Sherwin Williams in the form of their ColorSnap app. It allows you to take a pic and convert it into a palette of paint colors inspired by the photo. Here's the very first one I tried out inspired by a pic I snapped of one of the lighthouses near our home. 

You select an area of the photo for your main color and then the app chooses a couple of complementary colors to complete your palette. It also allows you to make some adjustments if you're not happy with the initial suggestions.

While this is a wonderful app for home decorating purposes, I saw its great potential for inspiring creativity while honing down my color choices. I also decided to combine these mini palettes with one of my other passions - Pinterest! If you haven't discovered Pinterest yet, you really need to check it out - it's an amazing way to create a digital inspiration file for nearly anything you can imagine. It's beyond simple to use for yourself and it's remarkable to look at what others out there are pinning. 

You can see my first board combining the two here. So each week I'm going to create a digital inspiration board combining these palettes and some of what catches my eye and have pinned to my Pinterest boards and create something based on this little exercise. I'm going to try not to limit myself to only art; perhaps some weeks I'll feel inspired to prepare a meal based on the colors or choose my dress for the day in the same manner. I feel inspired already just thinking about all the possibilities!

Sometimes the projects I create will be digital in nature as I see great potential for this in designing my fabrics and with that in mind, I give you the digital color profiles in addition to the paint colors.

Georgian Bay   SW6509   Interior

hex code: 306182 

RGB:         48/97/130     

CMYK:      86/58/31/10

Camelback       SW6122  Interior/Exterior

hex code:  c2af85  

RGB:          194/175/133  

CMYK:        25/27/52/1

Navajo White   SW6126  Interior/Exterior

hex code:  eadfc9  

RGB:          234/223/201 

CMYK:       8/9/21/0

Happy New Year!

I'm sorry I've been away so long! The holiday season ended up being busier than anticipated in spite of not traveling anywhere which turned out to be a very good thing as I was under the weather for most of the week between Christmas and New Year's. This month is also filling up with doctor's visits that I hope will get me on the mend!

In the meantime I'm going to busy myself with a fun swap (in addition to all of my regular work and responsibilities). One of the blogs I follow, the Vintage Dragonfly, is hosting a Victorian Paper Heart Swap for a limited number of participants and I made it in. So, I'm gathering up my supplies and getting to work. The participants will each create one handmade victorian paper valentine using fun vintage-y stuff. We'll also create a number of tiny treasure packets for all of the participants. I can't wait to see what everyone creates and sends along in their little packets!

The Butler did it!

I will have so much more to say about this in the coming days, but for right now I just wanted to share one pic from my magnificent trip to The Creative Connection Event in Minneapolis over the last few days. One of the absolute highlights, if not the best moment, for me was getting to meet Amy Butler!!!!! This is the moment I got to meet her and have her sign the books she's authored. This amazing autograph party was jam-packed with nearly 30 amazing women creatives and authors. I did not get books signed by all of them, but suffice it to say I did have to pack a whole extra bag just for all the books of my "she"roes!!!!!

The autograph party was followed by the opening dinner and keynote addresses given by Amy as well as Mary Jane Butters, farmgirl extraordinaire! It was the best way to wrap up an exciting first day of this amazing event. I loved Amy's presentation which included a slide show of the evolution of her life and business. She also shared the influences in her life that inspired her love of stitching and design. Probably most inspiring to me was her message of being your genuine, authentic self and following your passion - something I must remind myself of everyday and the message I will strive to pass on to every one I meet.

That's all I can manage for tonight - unpacking and ooohing and aaahing over all of the gifts we were given during the conference just absolutely took it all out of me!!!! More to come tomorrow and in the following days (along with some giveaways to share my stash of artistic booty with my faithful followers!!!!!)

So excited!!!!!!!!!

I can hardly stand the excitement!!!!! I am not very patiently waiting to hit the road for The Creative Connection event in Minneapolis!!!!! The actual event begins next Thursday but there is a Handmade Market preview on Wednesday evening. I'll be heading down on Wednesday morning on board the Rocket Rider to get checked in at my hotel and get all checked in at the conference. I can't wait to pick up my goodie bag and start meeting face-to-face all the wonderful people that I've only "met" online so far!!! I keep looking over my class choices and panel selections and all the special events like the Pajama Party and the Cupcake Farewell (though I shouldn't be excited for the farewell when it hasn't even begun yet!) and getting more giddy! I've already started packing for the event - I thought I was the only person doing that when it's still about a week away, but then I got an email from one of my new friends that I'll be swapping with at the event and she was packing, too! Now I don't feel like such a dork but I really don't care about feeling so dorkily (is that a word? I just made it one!) excited for the conference!

How can I not be excited about getting to hear and meet so many of my arts and crafts and women entrepreneurial sheroes! Amy Butler, Mary Jane Butters, Ree Drummond, and Kaari Meng are but a few of the incredible women that will share their amazing stories and wisdom with us. The pile of books that I have to be signed by them nearly necessitates it's very own suitcase for the trip! As wonderful and thrilling as it is to meet all of them, I can't wait to be among all the other attendees and form new friendships with all the other creative and artistic souls out there!

I have to be at least a bit patient as I haven't finished all of my items for swapping with others at the event. The main job for this weekend (in addition to making sure there are enough frozen meals for my husband so he doesn't just go out and get McDonald's salads and Subway to eat) is to finish a cigar box traveling art kit (which I'll share when it's all finished).

One project I did finish up early this week is a set of my Dual Duty Coasters. I stitched them up using my most recent fabric designs at Spoonflower called Family Forever (that's a baby pic of my mom you see in the close-up photo) and vintage linen. Once they were all stitched up, I wanted to make them even more vintage-y feeling so I tatted a little edge around each of them. It was a nice little task to keep me busy on the car trip to Iowa last weekend. Once they were all finished, I knew I didn't want to just hand these coasters over to Nan (my new online buddy and I hope face-to-face friend very soon). I discovered that these coasters fit perfectly inside those little rounds Laughing Cow Cheese boxes. I grabbed the box that I knew I had been keeping for some special reason and added vintage scrapbook paper, a coffee filter ruffle, sage raffia and little coffee cuff corrugated flowers. I topped with more corrugated cardboard and an orange juice can lid embellishment with my Family Forever design and mini Scrabble tiles. I can't wait to meet Nan in person and share this little gift and I'm so excited to see what she's created for me!

I'M A WINNER!!!

Imagine my excitement when I was checking out Facebook earlier today and saw in my daily update from The Creative Connection Event to see that I won a prize!!!! And a beautiful one at that. This gorgeous piece was created Debbie Murray and Shea Fragoso, a mother-daughter design team who will be teaching a couple of fantastic classes at The Creative Connection Event. I can't wait until this lovely pendant arrives at my doorstep as a most beautiful and unexpected birthday present - the best kind!!!

At-Home Retreat

I've been feeling really down in the dumps this winter for many reasons which I won't get into here. At one of the very lowest of those depths, I was talking with my husband and we discussed some ways that might help to lift my spirits and help my self-confidence. In the midst of that coversation, I mentioned something about needing to go to a creative retreat where I could connect with other creative people, but money was obviously a concern. As we further investigated retreat possibilities and there were none that were close enough to our home and they were many months off as well. We then moved on to something more immediate and my husband offered to give me an at-home retreat - he would take care of all the cooking and just let me relax and create to my heart's content all weekend!

So a couple of weeks ago, my husband gave me my at-home retreat. He made lasagna and deep-dish pizza, brought breakfast home, ran out for coffee, even gave me a goody bag of Ghirardelli raspberry-filled dark chocolate squares! I got to just create art as much as I could and as long as I could stay awake. I cut and soldered, made earrings, painted canvases, and anything else that I could squeeze in. I also created the fabric ribbons in the picture above. Those began by painting the selvedge edges of some of my Spoonflower fabrics. Once they were dry, I lettered them and added some little accents. Now I've got about 6 yards of totally unique, calligraphed ribbon - what exactly I'm going to do with it I don't know!!!

Hopefully, I can come up with something fabulous by the time I go to The Creative Connection Event!!!! During my at-home retreat weekend, I finally got a chance to look through some of the magazines that I am so far behind in reading. As I was looking through the latest issue of Where Women Create, I came across an ad for the event and got so excited that it was going to be just down the road in Minneapolis (the closest locale to my home along the North Shore). I became a bit disheartened when I saw the cost as I haven't had regular, full-time employment in about four years, but talked about it with my husband. He was so supportive and we decided we were going to do everything we could to get me there!!! I told him that this was all I wanted for my birthday, anniversary, everything - so my deposit has been sent in and in September I'll get to connect with a whole bunch of other creative souls at The Creative Connection Event!!!!

Long story short - I have a honey of a husband!!!