Travel Faces

One of my favorite travel destinations is in Mexico.  So today for the face off, I am sharing a couple of older photos from my travels.

First up is a fun bit of art from a museum that I visited in Merida Mexico.  

These two characters were larger than life.

Next up is a photo of me on a Mexican beach.

I have no idea which beach this was, but I have a Mexican haircut in the photo.

When I travel, I like to get a haircut in every foreign country I visit. 

A couple of places (cruise stops) that hasn't been possible.

But if I am there for a week, I will be getting a haircut if possible. 

My motto: It is just hair, it will grow back. 

I see that I wasn't smiling - but I was having a good time.

The fact is that the sun was blinding me and I was trying to keep my eyes open. 

I am linking up with  DVArtist for the Friday FaceOff.

  Clicking the link will take you to her blog.  It is great fun

 to see how various people interpret the challenge.

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Well! That was fast.

On Wednesday, my oldest niece and her two daughters visited Mom.  Of course when they got there Mom was working on the puzzle and said "Y'all come help me with this puzzle."  According to my niece, the youngest is a puzzle whiz.  All I know is that before lunch time the puzzle looked like this:

Yes,  they finished it in a short time.  I think I am glad that someone else got to sort out all those tree parts. I find that the tree foliage is always the part that I leave for the last.  I suppose we will start another one in the next few days. 

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

A little fun with Mom

Some of the presents my Mom got were puzzles.  So we have started one of them.  The first day we got the outline - which is how I work on a puzzle. Mom, of course, just starts trying to fit any pieces together. 

As long as she doesn't leave pieces loose in the "frame area" I am okay with that.  Ha ha. In the photo you can see that she has  two pieces that I haven't yet removed. 

Of course sometimes, I can take those pieces and attach them. She is much better at finding pieces than fitting them into place. Mom is fantastic at sorting pieces sometimes. That is why the barn and the house are in place. Mom had piles of "barn" and "house" pieces, all I had to do was make them fit together. 

I think we are a pretty good team. 

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Merry Christmas

Here is a portrait of a guy you may be familiar with. I painted this several years ago. 

This is one of my favorite Christmas paintings. Merry Christmas to you all! 

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

An Early Merry Christmas to You

First of all, I want to say Merry Christmas to all of you that celebrate Christmas. Today I am sharing two small wall hanging quilts that will be Christmas presents. I don't think either of the recipients read my blog. If they do the only surprise will be which one they get.  

Since this is also a Friday post,  I hope you notice that there is a face on each of them. 

Some of you who saw yesterday's post may see that the trees are constructed with the hearts and of course the stars became the tree toppers. 

And just one more photo to show how much love I put into these - I did some of the quilting with metallic thread. That stuff is a booger to quilt with. 

I am linking up with  DVArtist for the Friday FaceOff.

  Clicking the link will take you to her blog.  It is great fun

 to see how various people interpret the challenge.

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

What?!?!

What on earth am I doing with these?

Check my post on Friday to see. I hope your holiday season is happy.  Stay warm!

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Friday Face

Welcome to another Friday Face! This lady seems to be suffering from seasonal depression which can be a very big problem this time of year.  Did you know that many people suffer winter depression? Some people call it the "winter blues,"  but for those prone to depression, it can be a serious issue.  I know that I need more light in my house in the winter to combat the gloom of winter.  I freely admit that I have suffered depression in the past.  I needed both medication and counseling to get past the problem. I no longer require either, but I stay vigilant and would seek help if needed.  

People, this is NOT something to cause shame - the only shame is not seeking help and overcoming the depression.  If you would like to read more about seasonal affective disorder, here is a link to the Mayo Clinic article.
(end of my public service announcement/rant)

I enjoyed creating this lady, and I didn't realize how sad and forlorn she looks until after I had finished. I think part of that is created by the heavy eyes and perhaps by the colors I used. Also, the mouth is "pouty/sad" because I used the darker color for the top lip. 
Because the face is darker, I chose a bright yellow into green hand dyed fabric for the background. 

All of the face, neck and hair are also hand dyed fabrics. The torso bit is a nice batik that just looked perfect, but it needed that hand dyed ruffle around the neck to keep it from blending into the neck. 

Ms. Nancy

 The next stage will be to mount the small quilt onto a 12" square stretched canvas. The canvas will be painted black around the edges and on the front part that will show in the completed piece.  Putting it on a canvas makes it easy to hang this on the wall like a painting. 

I am linking up with  DVArtist for the Friday FaceOff.

  Clicking the link will take you to her blog.  It is great fun

 to see how various people interpret the challenge.

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Dec 9 Friday Face Off

I am still having a lot of fun creating face quilts. One of the things that I love best is the personality of each character.  Today's face is named Cora Mae. Cora Mae sings in a bluesy jazz style. 

Cora Mae was created on one of the scrappy backgrounds that I showed previously  Cora Mae is made of all warm colors to contrast nicely with the cool colored background.  The one exception is her lips. Those are a cool purple that looks almost blue in this photo. Originally, the planned photo didn't have the highlights in the eyes.  I noticed that as I was beginning to write the blog post. A quick run into the studio and less than a drop of white paint fixed that quickly.  Here she is without the eye highlights.

You can see that the highlight adds character and life to the gaze.

On this one, the quilting seems subtle to me.  

Once the face is fused, I use black thread to do what I call coloring book outlines to sew down all the edges of the figure.  In this case, while it was still under the needle, I created the hair design also. 

And prior to that here is what she looked like  fused into place with no lines added.

Although this shows the process in reverse, you can see that each layer adds and builds on the previous layer to complete the piece.  The next stage will be to mount the small quilt onto a 12" square stretched canvas. The canvas will be painted black around the edges and on the front part that will show in the completed piece.  Putting it on a canvas makes it easy to hang this on the wall like a painting. 

I am linking up with  DVArtist for the Friday FaceOff.

  Clicking the link will take you to her blog.  It is great fun

 to see how various people interpret the challenge.

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Scrappy Backgrounds

Since I am clearly not out of my "make a quilted face" phase,  I decided to make a couple of background pieces using  Steam-a-Seam, batting and scraps.  First up, I wanted a neutral one so that I can use it behind a  wildly colorful face - because you know I love vivid colors.  

 After making that one, the thought hit me to make one with analogous colors (colors side by side on the color wheel.)  I grabbed a bag or two of scraps and started pulling out greens and blues.  Honestly I could have made at least five backgrounds from all the scraps I pulled out.  Now, both of these backgrounds are "ready for my close up, Mr DeMille."  (ha ha)  

I am hoping to make a face with every color of the rainbow on the neutral background. 

Meanwhile on the blue and green one, I plan to use mostly warm colors -reds, yellows, oranges.

Of course I will probably have some purple in there also. And perhaps on the interior, I will even include some blue and green, but I don't want it "fighting" with the background. 

Meanwhile,  I was given a video with my performance in the Rocky Horror Play. 

I may get in trouble for sharing it. If I do it will go away. But for now, 

here it is 

I was amazed that some people clapped and cheered when I walked on. Then when the song ended and they went wild, I was amazed - of course the applause was more for the whole show than for just me, but I basked in the reflected glory. 

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Good Morning World!

While looking at past projects  I remembered making a chicken quilt back in 2012.  I wanted to remake the quilt with some changes and mount it on a stretched canvas like I am mounting my face quilts.  I searched diligently for the pattern, to no avail.   I decided that I would contact the artist and ask if it was still available. Shock! She sent me the pattern attached to an email.  Of course, then I really had to make another one.  (Thanks Laura!)  She then made the pattern available on her website as a freebie and told us about it in her newsletter.  What a great Thanksgiving gift. 

Here is my latest chicken quilt "Good Morning, World!" 

The background sky is a fabric that I dyed, but if you don't dye or paint fabric, I would recommend fabrics from Artfabrik (Laura)  and Colorways by Vicki Welsh.  Both make wonderful dyed fabrics. 

Several of the chicken fabrics are from my stash of fabrics from Vicki. The breast is a fun shibori that I got from Vicki.  The head, comb and wattle come from a stash pack of reds from Vicki called Zinnia. 

Have you ever made a chicken quilt of any kind?

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Friday Face Off Dec. 2, 2022

Too much fun? It could be that making these quilted faces IS too much fun for me.  I keep experimenting with the "what if's" of faces.  My first thought is "How can I make this one different?"  I love it when they seem to have personalities.  I think this lady has some personality. 

Lisa

You may have seen this background in a previous post. I decided to see if I could make it work with the face. So the colors were chosen to work with the background. 

There was one on the righthand side that was "fighting" with the face. 

It was distracting!

So I decided to use a bit of paint to mute it and make it work better. 

I think it worked nicely. 

The face drawing in the next section I have used in the Face Off previously.

But I had to share this observation.

I was looking through some photos that I had taken while ushering at a concert.  (I only take photos at the concerts on rare occasions.)  When I saw first one of these pictures and then a picture of one of my drawings.  The drawing was long before the photo, but there is clearly a strong resemblance, don't you think?  

I don't think it was a psychic flash, just a neat coincidence.  

I am linking up with  DVArtist for the Friday FaceOff.

  Clicking the link will take you to her blog.  It is great fun

 to see how various people interpret the challenge.

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Friday Face Off

Welcome to the Friday FaceOff for this week.   I will start with a confession.  I have been sick with a mystery bug (not covid, I tested.)  When I feel badly it is difficult to create.   The spirit is willing but the body is resistant.    

Luckily I had put together this face a week or so ago and never have shown it.    My plan was to use up some almost useless scraps for as much of it as possible.  None of these pieces had fusible on the back of them.  Rather,  I layered a piece of batting under a sheet of Steam-a-Seam 2.  This fusible is sticky making it easy to work this way.  Of course I went about it the WRONG way.  I created the face first and then added the background.  That meant that when a piece touched the face, the edges had to be tucked under the edges of the face.  
There was a bit of careful lifting to be sure that the fabrics didn't fray.  

Aunt Lucille

Looking at the photo, I can see that this is not quite finished.  The eyes are lacking pupils and highlights. Ah well, that will be an easy fix as I draw in the pupils with a black sharpie and then use a spot of white paint for the highlight.  If  I felt better, I would just go add it and take a new photo. 
Hopefully I can do that and share the corrected version in a few days. 

__________________

I couldn't stand not fixing it.  So here is the face with the eyes finished. It amazes me how much that tiny bit adds a spark of life to the face. 

I am linking up with  DVArtist for the Friday FaceOff.

  Clicking the link will take you to her blog.  It is great fun

 to see how various people interpret the challenge.

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Playing with Scraps - Time for Fun

When I pull out the barely useable scraps for play time, it is always fun.   On Sunday I pulled out this pile of scraps and a 12x12 inch piece of Steam-a-Seam 2 for play time. 

The first thing I do is stick one side of the fusible to a square of batting that is the same size.  So you know,  this is a sticky fusible that you can temporarily stick fabric to.  Then when you press it with steam it sticks more permanently.   Then, I peel off the other piece of release paper and it is play time. 

Fabric pieces are adhered in a semi-random manner until all of the surface is covered.  There are some edges that overlap other pieces -those edges are loose and not "stuck" in place. 

Then when I am happy with the coverage, and think it looks okay,  it is time to press it with steam. 

After steaming and then dry pressing it,  to the sewing machine we go!  I do some free motion sewing to secure all of the edges. 

Take 1

And then I have to turn it all directions and see what I like best. 

Take 2

Take 3

Now the big question is this:  Do I use one of these as a finished piece?  OR Do I use it as a background for one of my faces?????

Yes folks, the struggle is real.  I always have a hard time with decisions.  I like all three of these (the 4th orientation was a quick "no" from me.  Honestly, I look at Take 1 AND Take 2 and see that I could do a few things and make this into two faces in profile.   Take 3 says "abstract landscape" to me. 

What do y'all think? Help a guy with this. (((grin)))

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Friday Face Off

This week I have worked on another clay face just because I had a moment when I wanted to process some polymer clay.  Working the clay with my hands to soften it is great for stress relief. (No worries, it had just been "one of those days.")  

Once my hands were in the clay it was easy to just go with it and make a face.  I had no plan but I did play with sculptural elements in the hair??hat?? whatever!  Then I had fun painting that part. 

This one looks a bit dismayed or distressed doesn't it?  

Ah well, I don't know the story behind it. 

In other news, I have been working on a song since at least June of this year. 

This week, something magical happened and it just came together. 

(

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. -- Pablo Picasso

)

So I am sharing the song with you.  

You can either watch the video below

OR 

Go to SoundCloud and hear the more professional sounding version. 

SoundCloud Version - On the Outside

GeneBlack · On the Outside

YouTube Version

I am linking up with  DVArtist for the Friday FaceOff.

  Clicking the link will take you to her blog.  It is great fun

 to see how various people interpret the challenge.

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Fabric and fusing Fun

Okay, so I have been slacking off on blogging.....yes I know "Bad ME."  Ah well, I have been trying to be a good person anyway.  I did drive my uncle to the hospital when he had to be there at 6 a.m. (too early for my guardian angel to be awake.)  Then I went back to carry him home also...and I stayed in WalMart two hours waiting for his prescription - because his MD always forgets to tell them the OTHER med that will interact has been stopped until this is over. 

So, I have been doing self therapy with paint and fabric.  First up, I painted a nice chunk of fabric (actually two at once, one on top of the other.)  And I LOVE this - 

Yes, slightly crazy but so HAPPY to look at.  The bottom one in the photo was 

the fabric on top while painting - it is more intense in color. 

I also chose four fat eighths of hand dyed fabric and fused it with Mistyfuse.

They are separate pieces that I can cut up for making whatever fabric art I want to make! Of course I am thinking "faces." You know I don't stick to "normal" colors. 

Ha ha! 

Another "therapy session" involved pulling a pile of random scraps 

What  mess huh?

Those were in this big jar where I keep odd scraps of batik and hand dyed fabrics.

The jar has a nice spout - that leaks!  So I repurposed it. 

But the fabric doesn't leak out like water or other beverages do. 

Of course I had to iron these scraps  to make them flat. 

Then I took a piece of Steam-a-Seam and put it on a piece of felt. 

Those strange pieces were cut and placed on the sticky Steam-a-Seam

with just slight overlaps so that all the felt was covered. 

At this point I can still pull off any piece and move it or replace it.

But I was happy with this one and decided to take it to the ironing surface

to steam it into place. Then I added a backing fabric, which I glue basted on

with Elmer's school glue. (it is a small piece and the back probably won't be seen.)

Next up I sewed around all the pieces to fasten down the loose edges where it overlaps.

Oops, I did a teeny bit of free motion in that one corner. 

I think I liked this better than when I quilted it.

Do you see a picture?  It was only planned as a non-representational abstract

But once it was tacked down and turned this way and that, 

we saw an image.

So, quilt it, I did. 

If you haven't guessed yet - don't look at the next photo

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Do you see it now?

It is a wide vase full of flowers and leaves. 

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Friday Face Off 11/11/22

This week has been busy catching up on lots of things.  I am going to share two faces from years ago.

Each of these are the faces from soft dolls that I have made.  The dolls were made for my grandnieces. First up, the doll for the older sister.

The face on this doll is machine embroidery that I digitized for this doll.

It was a simple design to create although the software I had 

at that time was not the best for creating embroidery. 

The next doll has a painted face. 

This doll was made with a stretch material so that it  was simply easier

to paint the face on the doll. Even with the paint it was a bit of a 

challenge to get the eyes like I wanted. 

I am linking up with  DVArtist for the Friday FaceOff.

  Clicking the link will take you to her blog.  It is great fun

 to see how various people interpret the challenge.

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.