Al Wiessner is my brother and I love him very much! Thanks to all of my friends who have helped him raise funds for the MS Society.
Here is where I explain why Al and my family and friends are riding and how you can help!

You can't help but smile . . .

Art-ography #13

Found a picture on my computer that I'd taken last spring but it was taken in the harsh sunlight of mid-day, so I added a cloudy light filter and it smoothed it right out. Found a poem on Quote Garden that was perfect . . . can you find the fairy?

Art-ography #12

This one is in response to a challenge to use a napkin in the background of a digital image. Well, I actually used it as a foreground, but hey . . . rules aren't important! The snow scene was one I shot on campus a few weeks ago and the snowman and tree are from a digital scrapbooking kit called Clay Play Winter by KAagard.

Bamboo ATCs for swap

We're having a bamboo ATC swap in my CBP Yahoo group and I decided to just cut up some of the practice sheets I haven't been able to throw away, mount them on 3.5x2.5 red cardstock, add a tiny dragonfly charm and they're good to go!

Art-ography #11

This started out as a close up picture of an old cross stitch piece I did years ago, topped by a picture of the lakefront that I took last summer with a multiply blend mode applied. Then I added a picture of a wooden statue of a horse that stands in a park between downtown Evanston and the NU campus, from which I erased all the background, and I found a cool little piece of poetry about horses.

Creative Every Day

Leah Piken Kolidas has started a blog called Creative Every Day. She posts prompts, ideas and techniques to stir our creative juices.

Art-ography #10

Pictures I took in Florida, hibiscus background removed and multiply filter added.

Just the facts . . .

Headlines after Bush Inauguration in 2005:
"Republicans spending $42 million on inauguration while troops die in unarmored Humvees"
"Bush extravagance exceeds any reason during tough economic times"
"Fat cats get their $42 million Inauguration Party - Ordinary Americans get the shaft"

Headlines after Obama Inauguration in 2009:
"Historic Obama Inauguration will cost only $120 million"
"Obama Spends $120 million on inauguration; America Needs A Big Party"
" 'Everyman Obama' shows America how to celebrate"
"Citibank executives contribute $8 million to Obama Inauguration"

Chinese Brush Painting - Bamboo

Well, I am officially sick of bamboo, but I think next week we move on to something else~~~

Finished Chinese New Year Card

I made this card as a commission, but have also put it up for sale in my Etsy shop.

Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative

My quilt, The Crooked Path, is traveling with Alzheimers: Forgetting Piece by Piece. The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative is a wonderful grass-roots program supported by quilters who are trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's, one quilt at a time. Read more at: http://www.alzquilts.org
You can see the Priority Quilts I have made and donated to the cause here

bikeMS

Groan, I know, I know, somebody else with their hand out! Well, if you are reading this, I have a favor to ask of you. I'm going for quantity instead of quality - as in the number of people I can get to donate $10 or $20 to the National MS Society. Multiple Sclerosis is a personal obstacle to me, and it has become a family cause. My brother Al (who lives in FL) loves to bike and he loves me and he found a way to combine those two feelings to make a difference in the world.

Four years ago, Al started Team iDentifi and over the years all three brothers, a cousin, and three of my nieces have joined the team. It has become a family event, since Mom, Beth, Mary and I all try to go to FL to cheer them on and be their support team. Even the Al's friends who ride and the men and women from iDentifi (Al's company and the team sponsor) have become like family - it's such a wonderful feeling to stand at the finish line each day and cheer them all in! It's a very emotional weekend for me - lots of hugs and happy tears!

http://tinyurl.com/6uheh4
This is the link to Al's page and you can see one of the hundreds of pictures I took last year. I really appreciate your support and I'm serious about $10 if that's all you can spare! Of course, you know we wouldn’t turn down more . . . LOL! Just do what you can to help find a cure for MS. And, on a personal note, help me get Al back on stage again this year as one of the top fundraisers. Thank you very, very much!

One World One Heart

WELCOME TO MY LITTLE PART OF THE ONE WORLD ONE HEART GIVEAWAY!
If you want to know more about the event and see a list of other bloggers giving away items, click on the logo.

My giveaway is open to everyone (you don't have to have a blog yourself to win), but you MUST leave a comment on THIS post and you need to leave contact information (email), so that if you DO win, I'll be able to contact you. This giveaway opportunity will end February 11th at 10 p.m. CST - winner will be chosen using a random number generator.

Now that all that is out of the way, here is my giveaway. It is a padfolio made out of stabilized fabric (it's nice and heavy-duty, but not too thick). There are pockets on the inside for a pen, business cards and one for miscellaneous stuff. Closure is by heavy hook and eye with 3 settings so if you put other papers in it the flap can still be hooked.
Front:

Inside:

Back


Thank you for taking the time to stop by and please feel welcome to come back any time and spend some time enjoying my fabric and digital art. Be sure to leave a comment on THIS post, though.

Chinese Brush Painting

The Chinese New Year is approaching and I had a request to design a greeting card for one of my neighbors. Since I'm already taking a class in CBP, I decided to attempt an ox, found a YouTube video to help and made dozens of practice tries. This is my final for now . . . and no, I didn't misspell New. In Chinese, the word for ox sounds like "new" so for the Year of the Ox, they are spelling New Niu, which is the English approximation of the Chinese word.

My play day with my friend Andee

I had talked Andee into taking this online class a few months ago and we were both disappointed both in the teacher and the project (a purse) and neither of us got any further than making the collaged fabric that the purse was supposed to be made of. I cut mine up to make flowers with the ladies at the Mather, but she still had hers - kept calling it the damn purse.

We'd originally planned to make a Priority Quilt or two from it, but when we got to talking about her Dad (who died with AD), we decided to make her a quilt to keep - she had a happy memory from when he was in hospice care and she brought in a friend who did music therapy with a guitar. When the girl started playing and singing Let Me Call You Sweetheart, he woke up and really enjoyed it. He said "You can call me anything you want, honey". So both the song and the guitar held bittersweet memories and we decided to incorporate them. We cobbled together sheet music and found a guitar outline. I printed the sheet music on organza and fused it to a piece of the damn purse and then she created a guitar from Etal (a metallic finish fabric-paper) and wire and beads and a nickel of all things! She wanted the guitar strings to be all cattywompus because of the damage Alzheimer's does. It turned out really cool.

Then I fused more of the damn purse, some fast2fuse and a backing and she satin stitched the music and guitar to it and finished it with a satin stitch. I think it turned out great!
I think she was happy with it and forgave me for talking her into the class . . .

Art-ography #9

Background on this one is a picture caused when the shutter delayed closing while I moved the camera. Black is another Dover royalty-free image that I digitally manipulated and colored.

Art-ography #8

I ventured out in the snow with a bag over my camera and got this tree shot. I added a white layer, decreased the opacity, extracted the tree and then used a dissolve on the white layer.

Chinese Brush Painting

I'm taking an online class on Chinese Brush Painting and our first lesson is to paint bamboo stalks - just stalks, no branches, no leaves. It's harder than it looks. Before I got to this, I went through a sea of cheap paper. Course I had to try out all of the eight brush tips I got in the Walter Drake kit - and then once I chose a brush that gave me the effect I liked, I had to figure out the water ink mix and how much to load the brush with. I still have a lot of work to do perfecting this technique. Next week, we get to add branches, then the following week, we add leaves! Believe me, you need baby steps with this process it's very hard work to learn how to relax and go with the flow.

Art-ography #7

Well, I lightened things up a bit with this one. I started with a picture of my niece I took at Christmas and then added a Dover silouette of a victorian lady on top and erased all the parts of the picture that didn't fit where I wanted them, added a background and painted all the parts of the hat. Took a ridiculous amount of time, but once I started, I couldn't quit.

Art-ography #6

OK, I promise to get off this dark-kick soon . . . this one actually started as a picture of my light fixture. I added a picture (Dover royalty-free again) of some sort of Aztec looking design and blended it on "multiply". That was pretty much it! I added a quote and called it done!

Art-ography #5

Still using Christmas lights pictures as background, I removed the white background from a Dover royalty-free image of fish and layered it on top. I then made another layer to color in some of the spots on the fish to add interest.

Art-ography #4

This is one I used in my Christmas Journal that I wanted to add here. It started out as a daylight picture I took off my Mom's balcony with a piece of her evergreen in the foreground. I added a dark blue layer on it and used the "multiply" blend feature on the layer then decreased the opacity until the light was right for a night sky. I added stars from a Christmas kit by Lauren Bavin and word art by Tina Chambers.

Art-ography #3

The background on this is a picture I took of some Christmas lights with a little camera jiggle. I added a Dover flower picture which I played with in PSP. I can't remember what exactly I did to it, but it started out with the colored chalk "effect" and I played with it until I liked the look.

Art-ography #2

I took this rather mediocre picture of my front door with the Christmas lights and wreath and wanted to make it pop. I extracted the doorway and the bushes with the lights with my PSP freehand select (also called the lasso tool in other programs) and promoted it to a new layer. So now I have two raster layers. I inserted a vector layer in between and put in a short poem by Henry Van Dyke.

Every house where love abides
And friendship is a guest,
Is surely home,
And home sweet home
For there the heart can rest.

Because the promoted selection is above the text, it looks like the words go "around" it.