Something About Nothing

Woohoo! The alphabet is done! Individually the letters are pretty cool, but the real test is in how they work together. Okay, that is better than I thought they would be, but I do feel the need to create a few more letters. I think I need a few more lower case vowels. But can I say how much I love the word "zombie." And maybe some other letters in lower case. I'm loving everything with that tangled "b." I need an entire alphabet like that. But maybe I wouldn't love it as much? Hmmm  I think I need a break from letters for a minute.  Time to carve a pattern or something. Any suggestions?

I have a big mess of rubber scraps building up from this months challenge. It will get cleaned up eventually. In the meantime, more letters! If you have an Instagram account, you really should be following #carvedecember. There are so many great carvings being done! Did you know you can follow hashtags on Instagram. I think it's a great feature being able to follow people AND hashtags. 

My friend, Anneliese , gave me a sweet little gift to help with my font challenge. It's over 400 pages of font yumminess! And it's egged on my challenge - very tough to stop, especially when I should be cleaning my studio! At this rate, I better come up some words to carve to complete Carve December. Any suggestions? Anyone? *tap tap* Bueller?

Eleven down, only Fifteen to go! Did I mention I am impatient? Maybe I need to do more than three a day? Speaking of impatience, I wanted to see what the letters looked like in words.  Fun sentence, huh? I think I need to do more lowercase letters. Hmmm. . . 

More alphabet. What a surprise!  Don't worry, only a few more days and the entire alphabet will be done.

After messing up the B, and not liking the second one I carved, I tried it again and carved a lower case b I really liked for Day 3 of Carve December.  When I saw the post I decided I wasn't going to be happy posting one letter a day, so I carved three for Day 4. This will get me through the alphabet faster, which is good because I'm a bit impatient! This will allow me to carve actual words too before the month is up. Woohoo! The blocks of Eco Karve I'm using are 2" square but the letters are often smaller. Many of them are 1" wide and almost 2" tall. I'm pretty happy with things so far. Fingers crossed for the rest of the alphabet.

I am in the middle of #carvedecember.  Thirty one days of carving a stamp (or two) everyday of the month.  I decided I wanted to carve my own alphabet.  I lost track of time the other night drawing a very simple alphabet.   When I started thinking about how I would transfer the letters onto the Speedy Carve I immediately wondered if I could use the Bunny Paper from Mistyfuse to do the job. I scanned the alphabet into the computer and printed it onto the shiny side of the Bunny Paper.  I used the fast mode on my Brother Ink Jet printer so there wasn't much ink.  I worried that maybe it wouldn't work. But it did! All I had to do was lay the Bunny Paper on top of the Speedy Carve and rub! The biggest issue I had was in getting the lettering lined up so that I didn't waste any of the Speedy Carve.  I was able to remove the transfer from the Speedy Carve, as well as the Bunny Paper with a wet paper towel.  I was als...

I decided to make a few pieces for the Amazing Alphabet   Readers Challenge  in  Cloth Paper Scissors  magazine.  The rules are to create an original 4"x 6" mixed media piece of lettering. I broke out my 6"x6" Gelli Plate .  I have used my larger plate a LOT, but haven't had a reason to use my smaller one yet and this seemed like the perfect project for it.  I added some acrylic paints to the plate, some homemade and store bought stencils and printed onto  Strathmore Mixed Media 100 lb paper .   I really should have cut more paper!   The pieces print up so quickly and I really enjoy adding extra layers.   I find mono-printing so relaxing. I don't have any photos of the process because I was having too much fun and forgot to pull out the camera. Some of the lettering was written directly onto the mono-printed pages and some were written on to white tissue paper and then applied to the mono-print...

I finished the blocks for My Alphabet Quilt ,  a pattern from Amy Bradley Designs. I feel it has taken me much longer than it should have because summer got in the way. Not enough time in the sewing room, but what little time I did have the project went quickly and I am delighted with the results.  I will put a few borders on it but for now it is hanging at the store  to advertise the Block of the Month club we will be doing with the quilt starting at the end of August.

26 Quilters participated in this Alphabet Soup Challenge Each participant made an 18"x 24" quilt about a letter of the alphabet.  The quilters were all so very creative with their letters.  My friend Kaye, took the letter K, for Kotex, a girl's rite of passage.  My friend Leigh's G stood for Gleevec, a drug that saved her life from cancer. I took on the difficult letter of "U" (bottom left) because my family loves The University of Utah.  Education is important to my husband and I.  My parents and grandparents never went to college.  My father never went past the 7th grade and my grandmother and her brother were the first to go to high school out of her siblings but she never graduated.  My husband's parents and grandparents never went to college either.  His mother only attended a few years of schooling because they couldn't afford to send her to school in China.  As a result we have felt the need to pursue our education and hopefully ...