Another Tree; Tree of Life ATC

I just love creating art with trees as my focus. They are so figurative. The picture above is ink and colored pencil Tree of Life ATC for a swap on swap-bot. As I was working on the theme, I easily came up with a dozen ideas....my next theme for a series of art quilts? Hmmm.

Per usual I retain all rights to my images on this blog, copyright Penney Hughes

10 Earth Day Giveaways, Coupons & Freebies

* The Green Bag Lady is doing a give away on her blog through Friday, April 23rd, for her handmade grocery bags and is willing to ship internationally to the winner. If you comment, say Wylde Iris sent you.
* Another green bag give away on Bag Snob, but hurry, you must post a comment of the worst ecological thing you have done by the end of Wednesday, April 21st.
* An eco-artist giant giveaway at Modish.
* Drugstore.com is giving up to 40% off of it's green products.
* Safeway also has coupons for some of their green products and a free reusable bag with $40 purchase.
* Reynolds Wrap has a $1.25 off coupon of their recycled aluminum foil.
* Get outside and see the earth up close at one of the National Parks with free admission all this week.
* Enter a chance to win a sun resistant, recycled shirt by 5pm ET, Earth Day.
* Enter the environmental books giveaway from Non-Toxic Kids.
* Free kid friendly compost gardening class on Earth Day at the Silver Spring, MD Whole Foods. While you are there you can check out the green kitchen exhibit.

Spring Goddess & Mermaid Paperdolls

I am getting back into swapping with other artists on Swap-bot. I am participating to two paperdoll swaps using patterns from the beautiful Enchanted Gallery site. The link is for the paperdoll templates but you should really take a look around the site, the artist, Kimberly Crick's artwork is very lovely.
Now a couple of notes about my paperdolls. I pasted a cherry blossom fabric backing to the Spring Goddess paperdoll since the DC area in spring is all about cherry blossoms. Her head Botticelli's Flora from his painting Primavera. The blue sequins symbolize rain drops.
The mermaid's tail has purple and blue foil embellishment; the foil came from a Palmer Bright and Shiny Easter Egg kit. I love that stuff, if I can find some in the after Easter sales I think I will pick up another box. Her look is inspired by a picture of Crest o' the Wave from Loraine and the Little People by Penny Ross. Very Art Deco show girl kind of look, simplified.

Mail Art Affirmations

My little one at home has been particularly restful today, so I decided, last minute to enter the Cloth Paper Scissors reader challenge called 'Pass it On: Mail Art Affirmations.' You can go here to view the entry guidelines. Basically you create a multimedia 4x6in postcard with an affirming art-related quote. You mail that postcard to CPS magazine and then they swap it out for you with a postcard from another reader. My quote was inspired my something my minister said on Sunday and then rephrased in my own words. I was also thinking about all of the broken limbs on the trees in my area of the world because of our recent record snowfall. There will need to be some creative pruning if many of these trees are to survive.
My postcard back is watercolor paper that I painted, I then added crumpled tissue paper and lightly couched on many threads, fibers and strips of fabric to make up the tree body. The lettering is done in archival pen and gel pen.

Quilts from the December / January Quilt Show

The quilts above are the two I finished for the art quilt show. The top one is titled "Sycamore" and the bottom is "Tree of Life."
Sycamores have a bark that does not expand as it grows and so the bark splits open as the tree ages. This was the inspiration for my quilt. The Sycamore quilt is made from layered sheer fabrics in silks, polyesters, cottons and cheesecloth. While it is hard to see in the picture, the side panels are quilted Sycamore leaves. I used a colored pencil to color in the sky in areas where the leafs did not overlap. After layering and apliquing the quilt fabrics, I used a natural sponge to paint layers of textile fabric to simulate lichen. Lastly, I have added a couple of beads as accents.
The second quilt is an exploration of a traditional theme, the tree of life. I painted a commercial stamp with diamond shapes onto cotton I prepared. I then cut out and appliqued the tree onto blue-violet silk. The flowers are sequins and the leaves, hand-painted, cut-out cotton shapes sewn on. I then painted each of the animal shapes with fabric paint and again appliqued them to the silk.

ATCs on a snow day

It has been snowing like crazy here in the DC area. What can a family do for a week indoors? The boys and I took advantage of Fallon's nap and whipped out some artist trading cards (ATCs.) I used quilts, insects and Asian art as my inspiration. A tip from my boys...acquire an old geology textbook for inspiration. We have completely cut up ours and will be seeking out a new one.

New Baby

Finally, I am putting up a picture of my new baby, Fallon. She was born 9lb 6oz in mid January. I have to blame her for my lack of posts but I plan on making up for it, although my pace may be slow with three children to look after. I did get four art quilts done for the show (see previous post.) I will post those remaining quilts soon.
Welcome Fallon.