Something About Nothing

 I created a few patterns from the mandalas I have drawn and had them printed on fabric through Spoonflower. I really like the images Spoonflower creates with my patterns. All of these designs are available to be printed on fabric, wallpaper, or the home decor they are pictured on!  Here is the link to my shop. I would sleep in this bed! or this one. . . This looks very western to me. Lovely! Party time. Comfy I'm going to hand quilt this piece.

My mandala drawing obsession continues. I'm trying to photograph them before and after coloring. Having the uncolored versions makes digitizing them more flexible. I can recolor the colored drawings digitally, but sometimes it's just nice to start from the beginning. I didn't know what to call this one, and someone suggested calling it "Daily Bread."  Ha! I didn't see it as bread loaves until she said that, and now I'm hungry. Sometimes the ideas I pencil in just don't make it to pen. And some of the ideas I pen in just don't make it through digitization. I like this "cleaned up" version best. It isn't easy making it all green. This one decided to be a snowflake. . . . . .but once drawn in pink. . . . . .it decided it wanted to be blue. I should probably draw more snowflakes to use in a fabric pattern.

Pantera of Brooklyn Mojo  and I collaborated on a crossbody bag.  The canvas fabric on the main bag is hand printed by Pantera.  The lining and body strap are my designs printed through Spoonflower. The pattern is from Candy Glendening's appearance on Quilting Arts TV .  You can learn to make a bag of your own by purchasing Season 2600  here .

I've spent a lot of time in Photoshop changing colors, adding layers and combining bits and pieces to create patterns. I uploaded a some of my favorites and sent them out to be printed on paper. Besides showing me the color and clarity of the designs I thought they would make nice covers on some mini pamphlets. I thought I printed one page on an 80 lb paper, and the rest on a 110 lb paper, but they all feel the same to me. I think they are all 80 lb. I didn't return to the copy shop because the paper was all the same price and I didn't want the hassle. I'll be sure to check better next time. I like the way the designs printed. I follow a writer named Simon Moya-Smith on Instagram. One day he posted a photo of an article he was writing. The photo was a writing pad filled with a beautiful mix of cursive, printing, and lots of scratch outs. I asked him if I could use the image for my art, and he agreed. The first step was to make a png file of his handwriting. I used the ...

I've had big plans in my head to do some major cleaning in the studio at the end of this month. My husband was going to a conference for a week and I figured I could pull everything out of the studio while he was gone and then only put back the stuff I wanted to hang on to. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for me, his conference went virtual. He encouraged me to go ahead, but I wanted to put everything in the bedroom and I knew it would need to be there at least overnight making it difficult to sleep. I decided I could clean out one small cupboard in my bedroom. This cupboard has been making me crazy for a number of years. A lot of stuff has just been shoved in there to get it out of the way.   Before I pulled it all out. There were a couple of surprises in there. The biggest surprise was this box filled with funeral cards. On the top of all the memories of my dead relatives was this business card: Cindy Kwiek: School of Dance.  I took everything Cindy offered! I was t...

 Drew more mandalas. I think each mandala takes about 4-8 hours to draw and color. I worked on them everyday I was home this month. From the few I have posted here it seems I wasn't home very much. I went a bit steampunk with this one! A bit herby, as in an herb, or maybe more like a succulant? I feel like this one looks like a party with ribbons and bows. I took it apart digitally and after changing up the color on another mandala I made a pattern I like. I'll be ordering it from Spoonflower and then it will be available for anyone to purchase. Went back to combining a few mandalas together. Made another pattern using this set as the basis. In the forest. . or is it a garden? Perhaps an entire world? Maybe I need to try another and include some critters too. I like the layered look on this one. I really had fun adding shadows here. No matter how much I use my Pitt Artist pens I still need to practice with the colors before deciding which I will use. Hope you aren't bored o...

 I forgot to blog in September! Stuff happens. Oops. I spent some of the month doing something I haven't done in years: traveling! My sister came through town in a U-haul to move out west, so I hitched a ride with her and her kitty and then flew home. She insisted on driving. Sister and I in her new apartment! I feel like this is one of the best photos of us we've taken in a long time. The next week my husband and I flew out to visit the grandbabies.  We haven't seen them in person for two years. We've missed them terribly. The Ibis (I think) and the squirrels seemed to cohabitate well. The grandpuppy is always happy to see me. Next post is about what I managed to create this month when I wasn't traveling.