This week’s Mixed Media Monday challenge was “Frosty.” Here in Louisville, we have almost completely avoided that concept so far this year. Frost (and the coming holiday) makes me think of snow, so I decided to cut out some snowflakes in fabric, fuse them to a blue background and free-motion quilt the entire piece. Once I finished, and looked at my snowflakes, I thought of the wonderful quiet the world takes on when snow falls and dampens all noise. Consequently, I printed the word “peace” on organza and attached it to the bottom corner. I thought this peaceful scene deserved a little sparkle, so I added some silver-tone leaf charms to fall along with the snow.

This week’s Mixed Media Monday challenge is “just hanging out,” and we were invited to do anything to meet that challenge, including just a piece designed to hang. I had just finished this green-on-green batik, and thought this would be a good way to show it off. So here is my first tree of life attempt, using dye-na-flo and soy wax.

Tree of Life

This week’s Mixed Media Monday challenge was hosted by yours truly. The theme: Bedtime Stories, asked that artists depict a favorite story of childhood or one that their own children enjoyed. I chose the poem “Babes in the Wood.” Not the happiest poem, perhaps, but one I remember my mother reciting to us when I was little. It was probably the first poem I ever memorized and recited (though I fought my mother on the pronunciation of the word “children.”

Do you remember the babes in the wood?

My piece is an applique forest that I scanned and then added the ghostly image of two children and the image of a robin. I think it fits the story well.

This week’s Mixed Media Monday challenge was “I am Woman.”

I started with a primed canvas board, and started writing every word I could come up with that I equate with “woman”: Strong, nurture, love, laugh, cry, warm, mother, etc. Then I added a wash of blues.

Katharine Hepburn is an actor and woman whose progressive attitudes about what it means to be a woman I admire. I just happened to have a magazine image of Hepburn that I decided would be my focal point. I have always admired Hepburn’s casual elegance, the fact that she didn’t conform to what was considered fashionable, but she was always beautiful. So when I found this quote: “Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I’m past that age.” I decided that it was a good one to use to flesh out the theme. So I added southern belles, a lingerie ad, a few more quotes, and then put Hepburn on top — above it all.

This week’s Mixed Media Monday challenge is “Fashion.” Never being fashionable, I wasn’t certain what to do. But then I remembered one of the exercises in one of my favorite books, Mixed Mania, by Debbi Crane and Cheryl Prater. The exercise suggests using paper, fabric or other scraps to dress a paper doll.  I had avoided this one because I am not a “doll” person. However, it seemed a perfect way to meet the challenge.

I dressed my doll in paper from a Hancock’s of Paducah fabric catalog, and I placed her on a background I had been playing with. It’s a wee bit darker than I wanted, and I really wasn’t sure how to dress her feet, so she’s barefoot. but I think she looks happy in her environment, and happily proclaims, “look at me!”

After a brief hiatus, I have returned to silk painting. I took a little more time on this one — to avoid breaks in the resist lines, so my koi are more structured than usual.  I used Jacquard’s Dye-Na-Flo paints and Silkpaint’s resist, both from Dharma Trading Co. While the Dye-Na-Flo affects the hand of the silk slightly, it just seems so much easier and — OK — less scary than using dyes I’ll need to steam set.

So here are my koi, on a habutai scarf, 60 x 15 inches in size.

Mixed Media Monday’s challenge this week is mothers and daughters. For this challenge, I pulled a personal-use Life magazine photo from the Google image search, gave it a sepia tone.

For some reason, the phrase “you complete me” rang in my mind when I looked at the photo, so I decided to break the photo into pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I attached the pieces to foam to give it a bit of depth (note to self: it’s hard to cut foam precisely–at least the curves.)

I added the jigsaw puzzle pieces to a brown and gold background. I added lace, penned in the phrase racing through my head, and here we have my challenge piece.

You complete me

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Mixed Media Monday’s challenge this week is to use pink in your design. I used TAP paper to transfer a black and white image onto a piece of fabric I had painted pink. I lay that on top of some cream and blue fabric with a nice repeating design.  I lay my framed pink lady on some black felt and included three repeats of the cream and blue fabric’s line design. I lay gold tulle over the the top of the entire piece and free-motion quilted the piece, using pink thread on the black. I am practicing free-motion vines, which I found quite pleasing. I hope you do too:

This week I hosted Mixed Media Monday, asking that everyone use maps (or map imagery)  in their piece.

I like using maps. I need to find ways to get more maps in fabric form. Maps suggest travel, distance, adventure, new paths and journeys, connecting, so many things! It’s no wonder I like using maps!

Books also allow me to travel, to experience adventure, to take new journeys. They have been a way to experience new places and new ideas since I was a very little girl, and I love my books.

This piece mixes the two images. I’ve created a collaged map background and added a little girl reading in the forefront.

My books can take me anywhere.

The Mixed Media Monday challenge for this week was provided by Yvonne, who asked that we select a piece of music that has meaning to us and create a piece around that. There are a great many songs that mean something to me. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, the era of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones. Recently, I went out of town to meet my new second cousin, Drew. I have always been very close to my cousins, and his mother, Sarah, was one of my first babysitting charges years ago. As I held Drew, Sarah and I talked about caring for babies and how, at least in our family, we seem to always sing to the little ones. I remembered how I used to hold her when she was fussy, and sway back and forth as I sang Beetle songs. My favorite song to sing to a baby or child has always been “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Of course, I always replaced “Lucy” with the name of the baby I held: Sarah, Erin, Leah, Damon, Shelby. (This always worked well, since our family leans toward two-syllable names. Drew will probably be modified to Drew-bug or Drewbie for my Beetles rendition.)

Because of this nostalgic talk with my cousin, and in honor of the next child I will serenade, I chose to base my art on “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The wall hanging includes an image transfer of a figure from a classic poster imprinted over a Nancy Crow fabric I purchased in the 1990s. I added felted flowers of yellow and green (OK, OK. They aren’t cellophane, but the felting just seemed right). The flowers and image are on a machine-quilted muslin that I hand-dyed this year.

Thank you for the challenge, Yvonne. It brought to me fond memories.

In the sky with diamonds