some kind of wonderful

playing again

colour, paper, and paste

 

i was commissioned to make another collage of "the four blondes"

as my good friend likes to refer to herself and her three besties

this one is a birthday present for one of the girls

 this time i channeled my sixties hippie memories of favourite outfits

well - a little of the seventies may have crept in...

i had a wrap skirt awfully similar to this one, and an indian cotton white blouse with embroidery and beads - honestly, i don't think you could have made it through the seventies without one!

 

 never had red leather boots but wouldn't they have been smashing!?!

and these pants would be so much fun

my favourite pair were wide bell-bottomed, light blue denim, embroidered with an indian guru on the bottom outside of the leg....he was smoking a pipe and the smoke circled up and was intertwined with flowers all up the leg to about the knee

both legs were embroidered in the same manner and i absolutely adored those pants

i also had a pair of wide-legged striped pants in all the colours you see below - my mom made them for me and i always wore them with a brown turtleneck - always, always, always

 and of course, a little chanel-inspired suit

the bag is made of a piece of carved ivory from a bracelet left to me by my grand-mother

not the diagonal quilted look chanel dictated, but my own twist on it

rose-coloured suit

rose "quilted" bag

 it's like playing with paper dolls but you're not limited by the clothes that came in the package

on the far right is a hippie mini-kaftan

 i had a maxi and it was orange and brown and turquoise

and espadrilles

 pure play

pure colour

pure fun

 my friend thinks i did something wonderful for her

but methinks she did something wonderful for me when she asked me if i would....

and you know that she is... some kind of wonderful

 

is it real?

or is it memorex???

(you have to be of a certain age to get that one!)

so many times when i am making something i wonder where the idea came from

 all of the things that we see, hear, and read come together in our brains and form new thoughts, ideas and visuals

 hard as i try to create my own designs i know that somewhere along the way, something influenced me

i'm working on a banner for a class sample and wanted to design my own lettering

i resolutely refrained from looking at fonts on here or in books or cards

and just drew from what was in my own head

and half-an-eraser-later i came up with this

designed by me, influenced from the world i live in

as i look at the pictures i see little design flaws - the wrong curve here, too wide of a slant there,

details sure enough, that probably don't really matter except when you have an eraser in your hand...

banners and garlands aren't new at all, and i'm not likely to be inventing anything remotely new or stunning here but i can tell you that what i am doing is as much of my own thinking as possible in a world full of people who are playing with the same toys

and i'm thinking to myself, and apparently to all of you since i am typing this on my blog, that whatever i conjure up, it will be of my doing

"it will be real"

 

sparkle & sheen

if sparkle" is the main event then "sheen" is the opening act...

i've begun working on august's heart and thought the beautiful soft sheen of silk would make a lovely beginning

and i can't think of a better way to add some sparkly shine than with the embellishing that comes with crazy quilting

the next thing, the fun thing, is to start gathering all the bright shiny bits and pieces

and then i get to play

(july went by too fast after all, don't you think?)

An Obvious Truth

weird how things sometimes just fall into your lap 

i wanted to finish the little elf shoe today - it's been hanging out on my work table long enough

it was looking pretty plain and as august is my month of sparkle and bling i decided it needed a bit of a shoe-shine

i found this charming little antique button with just enough of it's sparkle remaining, and just enough of it worn away....

i suppose you could say i'm getting my feet wet slowly

it was much easier to do the next step...crinkled paper strips to fill the cavity...

i pulled out an old music book of french songs and started cutting strips with my zigzag cutter

fun, fun, fun - it's like making paper ricrac

(have you ever made paper ricrac - i think i'm hooked!)

 when i got out the camera to take the pictures i focused in on the song title

and then me being me, i had to google it

it's a song from the 17th century about a french military leader, by the name of jacques de la palice

taken from his epitaph, the last line was misconstrued a few years after and rather than being read that if he wasn't dead he would still be envied, it was re-written that if he wasn't dead he would still be alive

and a new word was born

lapallisade.... an obvious truth

it was an obvious truth to me that i needed more light and sparkle in my life

and as usual, the universe has a habit of confirming the things so i remember they are true

choices

i was reading a blog post the other day (sorry, can't remember where now) where mention was made about a book about choices and how we choose

 just the kind of thing that always gets my attention;

i love wondering about who we are and why we do what we do

and in all of that i realized i have been making a bad choice of my own lately,

without truly understanding it was a choice

 

i've been choosing to be dull and dispirited

i thought i was explaining why i had neither been posting here, or visiting your blogs

and i think i really just sounded whiny

 

when i would really rather be bright and sparkly

and have shiny bits of brightness and light in my thoughts and in my smile that show i understand each day is a treasure

 

all these bright, sparkly bits, beads and baubles might be sitting on a background of delicate net, but they give a strength to the fabric that it wouldn't have otherwise

solid and substantial 

and so as soon as i posted that perhaps "rest" might be a good word for august, i realized there was a word much better...

sparkle

such a good word, in so many ways

 i'm excited to explore it, play with it, embrace it and be it

"organize"

 you remember this one

"snippets"

 and this one

"simple"

 and this is the beginning of "simple"

which is even too simple for me right now!

this month's work will be a wonderful journey into a world of glitter and delight

of bright and shiny

pretty and sparkly

 for both me and my heart!