early January

I forgot to mention last time the important news that Lily is learning how to sew.  She's very creative, and she's eleven.  Because she's shown an interest in making outfits for some of her stuffed or plastic toys, for Christmas I gave her 2 books... one geared to tween-age sewing and the other to help get her familiar with a sewing machine.   A few days later we worked on her first steps.  She practiced sewing straight and curvy lines, and pivoting for a turn.  Then so we could wrap up the session with an actual project, she made a chicken pin cushion.   We both had a good time.  :)

The nice thing about this age is the lack of inhibition.  As we looked at fabric for the project, she asked if she could use green and blue, her favorite colors.  Of course!  There are no quilt police!  Then she chose buttons for the eyes, one yellow and one red.  Yep, she's going to do just fine.

I mentioned last week about the art journal project I've joined in on.  My cover is still a work in progress, but it's coming along.  Here's how I'm progressing.   You can see I'm using a composition book.  After watching several youtube videos, it looks like it will work fine.  I learned to open the book flat, and tie a ribbon all the way around the binding, then repeat that process at intervals to have about 5 or 6 ribbons.  This helps secure the binding, to keep it from separating from the pages as they become heavier with content.

Next I inserted some little pages to go underneath those ribbons.  I took newspaper inserts, and trimmed them down where they would have a staple intact.  I slipped that under the ribbon.  As I use those pages, I will gesso the insert to cover up the advertising as well as give it a base for whatever I decide to do.  I'm totally winging this (after viewing the videos) because I do not come with a scrapbooking background.

Next I gesso-ed the cover.  This covered up the design and gave me a blank canvas.

I've not finished the cover yet, so I'll show that later.

We received our first prompt.  Remember there will be 52 prompts, one given weekly.  No right or wrong, we do as we please.  The first was Up, Up, and Away...as in soaring into the new year.  Several have posted theirs on Facebook, and there are a lot of talented people.  Lots of balloons, hot air balloons, wings, etc.  I saw them, and knowing I'm not a particularly "airy" person, I took a different little spin.   Picture a little ant farm with all the trails that ants make.  Picture one little ant on his journey to the top.  Then picture him going further, and climbing up a tree.  Going out on a limb, he hops on a leaf, and "soars" through the air.  "Whee!  We all want to soar..."

I know, I have a long way to go.  But, thankfully this is a journey and there are not expectations of perfection anywhere along the way. 

Until the next time, have fun and express yourself!