Patchwork

Months back my mother came to visit (I blamed her for not posting during that period, which obviously was not so...as my laziness is a documented fact at this point). She left me with towels to wash and fabric scraps. I have a sewing machine (although I managed to bust it in one use...don't worry I won't build the suspense, mother fixed it on the next visit) and I've played around (in my head) with sewing scraps together and creating a patchwork piece for mailing...

And then I thought: Sewing takes too long. (Told you, my laziness is completely documented.)

So I turned to the ever powerful and awesome (as in awe inspiring -- not an '80's Dude. Awesome. Which really is the same kind of meaning but apparently one of my mental differentiations. Well hello stream of conscious, where have you been?) turbo tacky glue!

That's how I ended up with Sophie's Picnic:

With the exception of the glittery (shiny) flowers and frogs scrap book stickers, it's all fabric: ribbon, cloth and more ribbon. It's like a continuation of cutting out elements on ribbons to build something as I did with the Modern Pastoral. It remained unifinished because I couldn't stop thinking that something was missing-- hence the frogs and flowers.

Which kind of took a sweet but interesting little collage all the way to a tooth ache of cuteness and light.

So I sent it to my neice. She's adorable and almost four, and will hopefully like the visual candy (well, visual candy for a four year old).

Swirls

"Swirls" is one of my favorite clip art look up words. It always has interesting little pieces that I can do quite a lot with...(I really need to scan some of my destination bookmarks made for our summer reading program Novel Destinations. Add it to the list, Jeeves. Sigh, I would love a butler...especially one that washes windows and dusts.)

Swirls are also a favorite doodle and the way I draw them, they are really a self propagating species of vine...My love of swirls combined with a need to practice (and use, since I spent money on them) with the pastels started what became "Innocent Dreaming".

In fact, I had done this multicolor, softly blurred card then slapped some fixative on it and it proceeded to sit around staring at me longingly while I put together Modern Pastoral, Winter Forest, and Champagne. Occasionally I would look at it and think, well what am I going to do now? Eventually after numerous sorting through my clipping file to work on these other projects, more elements (or cut out images and a piece of swirly purple ribbon) were set aside with my swirly background.

And, eventually, I got this:

Ribbon, magazine cut outs, pastels, fixative and a thin (okay, thinner layer than I usually do...although anyone can see it is still overdone so much so that it hasn't dried completely clear-- oops (see it without the gloss on the Index Card Creation page) layer of gel medium make up this particular piece.

The lesson learned, or more precisely, the lesson underlined three times and highlight in bright yellow, is some creations take time....lots and lots of time, coming together piece by piece and walking away is just as important as sitting down and doing some work.

With my already admitted lack of patience -- It is unfortunate but true, that the length of time afford to this project to develop actually comes from my bone-deep laziness....Oops?