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Archive for December, 2008

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

I couldn’t post last night. We lost 2 of our Comcast services – phone and internet. We received intermittent e-mail and the tv worked. I wanted to show you this. Lisa and Wilfedo arrived!!

meandpeeps

We all look a little weary, but happy to be together. Yesterday, I cleaned up the studio and office and put aside my life as an artist for a couple of days (my brain has not shut down, however) so that  I can enjoy the holidays with the family.

It is going to be difficult. Most of my internet shopping has not arrived. We made our way downtown yesterday. Mr C dropped me off at Pioneer Square to do some shopping for a couple of hours while he opened the pantry at Trinity which has been open only one other day in the past 10. In the afternoon, we did some grocery shopping with tons of other folks. It was grueling. Steph and family will not be able to come over here unless Mr C goes to pick them up and takes them home. You can not drive on the streets here without 4 wheel drive and chains!! Most churches are cancelling their Christmas Eve services. I think Trinity is going on as scheduled, but as of yesterday, the parking lot was knee deep in snow.

And guess what? It is snowing again. Here are the views, taken a few moments ago from the dining room.

viewthismorming

These are pregnant chairs!!

pregnantsnowchairs

Nothing but snow on the deck!

snowforlunch

I prefer the views inside:

christmasrevelers

I just love this creche that the Uber Talented Kristin made for me last year.

kristincreche

So now I am going to finish my coffee, bake some cookies and think positively. We will find a way to gather for a family Christmas celebration.

I am wishing all of you a wonderful time, celebrating whatever holiday is in your plans – Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or Christmas. You know what? I’ve got HOPE!

Say It Isn’t Snow

Sunday, December 21st, 2008

greenchairsandsnowagain

I feel as if I have been transported back to another lifetime in upstate New York. But, wait, that was 31 years ago and they actually plowed and sanded our street. We had studded snow tires, and we just kept on going. We braved blinding snow storms, driving to and from Indiana and my parent’s home. Here we are in Portland, OR and we are stranded in our house. Well, if it wasn’t so darn nasty, we could get on a bus and go someplace. We have had snow and sleet and freezing rain today,  We have been warned by the powers that be to stay off the roads except for the most dire emergency. Mr C has cabin fever. I have been chillin’ in the drafty basement studio, working on my latest creation. This, too, shall pass, right? Lisa will get here on Tuesday, right? We will be able to gather as a family for Christmas, right. At this point, I have my doubts.

I have the quilting done of the Dome of the Rock/Wailing Wall. It needs a bit of fine tuning, but I was getting tired and careless so it was time to call it a day.

juxtiposition

Working in a Winter Wonderland

Saturday, December 20th, 2008

snowyday

This is what it looked like outside today, but I felt like this:

heh

I had so much fun in my studio.

My first item of business was to make a screen for the glue to add foil to the dome. This is the best way to foil, using a stencil or some other method to manage the glue. I wanted to just do some highlights. Here is the screen and the glue test on muslin.

domescreen

Here is the dome photo after I trimmed it and glued it to felt batting.

domeslicesmerged

Here is the test foil:

foilingtest

Looks good to me. Here is the real deal. You can see that I have started quilting the wall.

foileddome

I finished the  Bet Sha’an ruins piece. I decided that I did not want to sandwich it with batting so I painted some canvas for the background.

paintedcanvas

Here is the piece finished: stitched to the canvas with some thread painting.

batshannoncanvas

All photos are clickable. You can see more snow photos on my Flickr site.

Not Much Quilting Done Today

Friday, December 19th, 2008

Here is the print I did today. For this one, I used the Golden white ground. I am really impressed with the quality of the photo on this media. This is a photo of Roman ruins at Bet Sha’an, one of the favorite that we visited.

betshaan

I used some leftover lutrtradur that was only 9 inches wide and sliced the photo for printing. the resulting print is about 17 inches by 14 inches.

I spent the morning finishing my Christmas cards and got them in the mail. I spent some time printing another photo on Lutradur and then Steph called and asked if she could bring M & M over while she and Jack did some shopping. Of course! I did a quick Trader Joe’s run and spent the rest of the day doing what I love, hanging with the grands. We had cocoa and cookies. We lit the fire in the fireplace, played Christmas music and had a couple of games of Uno. Mia was absorbed with her new IPod – her birthday gift from her mom and dad. After Jack and Steph returned, I made burritos with left over pork loin.

Here is our portrait taken with the IBook photobooth.

gramandmm

We are expected to get another dousing of cold weather and snow for the next two days so I will be able to fit in some studio time. If the weather is ok, we may travel across the river and through the woods to Terry’s open house. That would be great!

Loving Lutradur

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

When I had the problem with the printer fabric not arriving, I began to think of alternative ways to print large photos. Aha! Lutradur. For the uninformed, Lutradur is a spun bond web material manufactured by Pellon.  Originally created as a roofing product, its horizons expanded when some enterprising artist realized that you could use Lutradur in mixed media and fabric art.

I did some internet searches and found that some people were getting good results from painting lutradur with Golden’s new Digital Ground. I happened to have some waiting to be used.

I first did a couple of small prints of a photo of the Dome of the Rock as seen above the Wailing Wall.

smalldomeprint

Here is my first experiment with doing some enhancement with Tsukiniko Inks and then sandwiching and quilting. I also added gold foil to the dome.

smalldomequilted

Not too bad. It is a little difficult to do quilting details on a page size piece.

To do a larger piece, which was my goal, I would have to do it in slices. For my first attempt, the right side printed perfectly, but the left side jammed and screwed up my printer.

firstlutradurprints

What a mess and waste of ink! Argh!

Tonight, we went out to see the new James Bond movie. I just love Daniel Craig. I think he is about the sexiest man alive. The movie was a little violent, but did not disappoint. There were only 5 or 6 people in the theater and it was snowing when we left.

I went back to work when we got home and got the printer fixed up and printed the other side, but whoops, I cut the piece a little short so the piece will not be quite as large as I envisioned. It will be about 24 X 26

largedomelutradurprints

Tomorrow, I will do some stitching on this. I don’t think I will enhance it with inks or paints. I bumped up the saturation. I do want to do foiling on the dome, however. I will try to trim these to an exact match and butt them up on the batting. I used felt on the small ones. I like the firm, flatness.

I may become a Lutradur convert!!