Got some photos on the Mac now???

Finally got some photos loaded into the new laptop. It has been an adventure, I can tell you. This picture was taken a couple of years ago in our garden and I am posting it -A- just to try to post a picture and , more importantly today-B- to show you some lovely colour and sunshine to remind you that it DOES still exist on this grey, rainy, windy , sad weather day. God bless all of you who have been badly affected by this awesome storm!

Have a very spooky Hallowe'en! Enjoy!!

Big changes

Sorry for the lack of pictures but I am in a totally new and unfamiliar space at the moment. I had to return the last computer I bought yesterday morning because it seemed to have a Windows 7 problem and would not work with my photos! SO.... last night, I bought a Mac! I am gradually figuring it out and have my first One to One session at ten this morning but at the moment, I have no pics here yet to choose from, so- sorry :-(  I just wanted to say hello and to promise better soon.

I HOPE EVERYONE IS WELL AND SAFE AND DRY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STORM. We are fine but had an horrendously noisy night. Still cannot see yet this AM but we are anxious to see if all of our trees are still with us. God bless All!

Computer woes:-(

Sorry I have been absent for a few days. My computer died a painful death a few days ago and I have had to buy a new one ( painful for me !!). The original ended up with a fried motherboard . It was only two years old and when we called the company to ask about it, we leaned that that particular motherboard is no longer made. Go figure. Anyway, I have ended up with a huge new machine but as everything is not fully loaded just yet, I have no pretty pics to show you. Soon, I promise.

I AM finished with the coleus project, photo to follow and hope to start a new quilt, a biggish one , from one of my Photoshop creations. I HOPE it works. It will be VERY complicated to make but I am patient. I am trying to use this unedited pic that shows, if you can scroll in on it, my stitching and heavy quilting. It is right off the camera so it may be too big to use. If so, I shall remove it and edit it later and THEN repost it. Bear with me please. Anyway, good to be back in the land of the living. Hope you are all well.

Silver Inchies

A mother always knows her own!!! My own - computer- is in the hospital so I am navigating DH's and we are NOT friends just yet! Hope this does not go on too long. Maybe I will get mine back tomorrow???

Anyway, enough whining and on with the Silver Inchies! I love silver. Most of my jewellry is silver. I have made six little silver Inchies- some ok, some less than ok , but here they are!

This looks messy here. Better in real life. It is black felt with a bit of heat transfer foil and beads and sequins.

MUCH better- black felt with heat transfer foil and beads.

As above.

Black felt base, silver stars sequin waste with  a silver bead in each star.

Tyvek painted with silver Lumiere, heated to deform it then beaded and microbeads glued on too.I like this one even though it is a little bigger than the one inch felt base.

Black felt, heat transfer foil over sequin waste , dull silver sequins and silver beads.

 I am posting this to everyinchiemonday2012.blogspot.com Pop by and see the glittering array of Silver Inchies this week!

Still a WIP!!

This W is still VERY MUCH I P !! It is taking forever with all of the thread work. Hope it is worth it in the end!

Heavy going!

this corner pretty well finished

still one and a half leaves to go

You can see where I still have to stitch

Once this centre bit is finished, I will do the background and THEN decide if I need any more shadows etc. It is a bit of a stretch of the realistic anyway, so I am not too fussed about accurate shadows.

AND, the Celebration of Coleus so far!

I am going to post this ONE MORE TIME on the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com and next week, it will be DONE or I will NOT post it. I WILL have started something else:-)

Ocean Inchies

I am not generally a water person- except from the safety of the shore. I love LOOKING at water, photographing water , drinking water- but I am not a swimmer or a boater. (That said, I DO have a lovely red cedar strip canoe that stays close to the shore!) When thinking of Ocean Inchies, I thought of that famous Japanese painting of the vicious wave overtaking the island with Mt Fuji in the background. Having seen the recent Tsunami and its horrendous death toll, we can understand why this is such an important piece of art. Even observing the water from the shoreline is not always safe!

I DO love tide pools! Too detailed to render in such a small canvas, I made a second wee inchie with "lots of good fish in the sea, in the sea, in the sea". Enjoy!

I am posting this on everyinchiemonday2012.blogspot.com Tune in to see lots of other ocean inchies.

Dandelion Whine

In the early spring of 2010 , DH and I drove up into Grey Co and found this most stupendous field of dandelions EVER! I am not good at estimating acreages but it was an enormous field and it was chocka-block dandelions in full golden bloom! GLORIOUS!!! I HAD to take photos!

DH is a very very patient man and he stopped the car a zillion times while I took pictures of dandelions in all stages of growth. When I got home, I started the editing, enhancing and printing of the pics on fabric. They turned out pretty well for a first shot. I soaked my fabric in Bubble Jet Set and the colour seems to be holding well. I realised today that I did not have  picture of the whole quilt, so once again , DH stepped in to rescue me. He was the holder. I was the picture taker. So...here you are - the Dandelion Whine quilt!

The photo printed pictures on the design board

All of the printed photos and the spacer pieces between

DH holding the final quilt up. Sorry it is pale and a bit fuzzy. We had lost the light .

MAJOR WIP

I ALWAYS have lots of WIP's and always manage to get them finished - eventually. At the moment though, I have the Mother of all WIP's on the go. I am trying to teach myself to use Adobe Photoshop!!!I have Photoshop Elements 8 - more than I will EVER need but I do want to learn it well enough to be able to do things with the photos I take to make some interesting quilts.

 I have a grand little book that inspired me initially- Artistic Photo Quilts by Charlotte Ziebarth. Ms Z writes well and her instructions are very clear- now that I know some bits of Photoshop. She does a lot of printng on fabric and then uses the fabris in her very interesting quilts. I did do one photo quilt- not sure I ever posted it here but will do so later today. I will have to find it and give it a little press .

I thought I would post some of the pictures I have created by layering several photos , making some layers transparent and enhancing the colour in some cases. Prepare to be amazed!

Dry grasses outside our daughter's home in TN last winter , colour altered and enhanced

Nice layers of a bicolour iris, Flamenco, and a magnolia soulangeana

Horses on the roadside cut from a photo and pasted onto a blank canvas  then the colours were dickered with. I like this. reminds me of cave paintings!

Simple one of two layers , top one transparent- peony centre and an iris

Those same TN grasses layered with local teasels from a nice day of picture taking last week

My lovely pale, powder blue irises with colours DRASTICALLY altered

Magnolia and Iris again

A bough of ripe apples layered with a nice iron fence- and then BIG colour alteration

One of my favourites. I may use it to make a little quilt if I feel I am up to the challenge.

I make most of my own greeting cards using my photos. I really think some of the things I have been doing with Photoshop would make lovely cards. I hope to try some more fabric painting and to use some of the prints for quilts. Stay tuned and watch this space!

I am posting this on the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com  Go and have a look. There is always something interesting going on there. Enjoy!

Eternity Inchies

This was a tough one to do anything really exciting with. Mine represents( although badly cut because if the tininess of the darned thing!) The golden circle that is a wedding ring, supposedly never ending. Well, in my case, it works out nicely, although many marriages are NOT eternal. Of course, there are a lot more eternities besides marriage but the basic concept is a perfect circle- no beginning, no end. I am going to post this on everyinchiemonday2012.blogspot.com  Enjoy the other Eternity Inchies there!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL OF THOSE CELEBRATING THE DAY.

Background Information

This took me a long time! I tried it on black and it was fine , but not cool. So, I tried hand dyes and chose this one. I see leaves and organic shapes so I thought it "said something". It is now fused in place and a few bits of the red painted Reemay to suggest more leaves . Now- I start to stitch, and stitch --- and STITCH! I am linking it to the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com

Boat Inchie

When we used to camp every summer, we often ended up on top of the hill in Lunenburg, NS overlooking the harbour. Every day, a small boat that looked like the Bluenose in miniature , would sail out full of gawking tourists on a tour of the harbour. Our daughter used to call it the "dime boat". The REAL dime boat IS the Bluenose and now that is has been refurbished and rebuilt , I did this quick sketch of it for my Boat Inchie this week.

I am linking to everyinchiemonday2012.blogspot.com  Lots more Boat Inchies there to enjoy!