Sneak Peek at the Art Show....

So my solo art show is less than 2 weeks away (opening on January 18th) and I've been pretty busy finishing up my final pieces and getting everything framed and ready to be hung.  I've especially enjoyed being able to work on a slightly bigger scale than what I'm used to.  I'm often hindered by the size of the embroidery hoop I'm using, so being able to do things in standard frames and rectangular shapes has been a fun change.
Here's a planning stage shot of a new piece I finished (see the end of post for the final piece).  I initially planned to do a full bear who was turning over some rocks, but settled on using just the back side of the bear.  Here's also my beloved rotary cutter and my brand new cutting mat.  I've been using a really old mat that had all sorts of ink spills and gashes in that sometimes made cutting a straight and even line a little challenging.  

Here's a detail of an embroidered ship that I'm in the middle of.  

Here's a before and after of one of my favorite pieces I just finished. I've been playing around with the concept of having a bear sort of "walk off" the page leaving behind his footprints in the snow. I initially had planned to do this in a circular embroidery hoop, but thought the overall design would seem a little cramped in the space. I decided to go with a more traditional rectangular shape for the design. I love the fabric that the brown bear is made with. I actually have no idea what the official name of this fabric is, but it's sort of suede like on one side and a more flat cotton appearance on the other side. The best part is that it doesn't fray. So it's perfect for using when you want sharp/complex edges and don't want to do a proper applique. I've had pieces of this fabric for years. I acquired a stash in my crafts class my senior year in high school in both this brown color and a forest green. Unfortunately, my stash has been dwindling down pretty fast lately.


And here's the after. I love the contrast of the white snow and dark tree trunks. All the trees were made from leftover scrapes of the felt from my owls. I kept the jagged edges on the trees for a little extra detail and more realistic appearance. This work also marks the first time I've ever including a child in a piece. A little reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood perhaps?

Snowy Saturday

We got our first real snow storm in quite a few years this weekend. This is how we awoke today. Our car was barely visible! The snow starting the night before, but we were at work. We had to clean off a good number of inches from our car at 9pm, so this was just from about 9:30pm to around 10am!






We only have one snow shovel. Realizing that this snow would be way too much work (and take twice as long!), I remembered I thought there might be an extra shovel in the shed left by the people who lived here before us. So I shoveled a path out to the shed to take a look and found not just one, but two snow shovels! (A little beaten, but nonetheless they proved to be quite useful!) As you can see, the snow was to my knees. Luckily, it was still pretty light and fluffy, so shoveling wasn't too much hard work.



Here's our fence in the backyard with all the snow piled up.



This is a shot of our snow covered backyard. You can see our birdfeeder poking out a little and the black railing along the steps in the center of our yard. Other than that, it's just snow.


The snow piled on top of our little shed. Talk about a lot of snow!



I measured about 18 and a half inches. This was taken at the edge of our back porch. Could possibly be more, but 18.5 is definitely a lot of snow!