Contrast

"No bird soars too high
if he soars with his own wings."
~ William Blake

The two flower petals have now become bird/petals. I love the texture of these stitches.


While I really like monochromatic art, I never seem content to create something myself without adding some stark contrasts. I love how the deep purple is making the yellow pop, and vice versa.

"Contrast warm to cool.
Make color sing,
ring like a bell.
Work from big to small."
~ Sergei Bongart

The dense scattering of the contrasting French knots, among the simpler seed stitches, back stitches, and running stitches is adding lovely texture, too.

I am learning a lot about my use of color by doing these stitches, things I never noticed before when I was painting or drawing. Stitching is so much slower and more deliberate, you notice how each stitch affects the appearance of the one next to it. It reminds me of the ripples our own actions cause, and how the simplest thing we do or say can impact someone else.

"Without contraries is no progression.
Attraction and repulsion,
reason and energy,
love and hate,
are necessary to human existence."
~ William Blake

And please note: I've been trying to do some online Spring cleaning. It turns out that I am too interested in too many things. Hahaha! As if that's even possible! On Blogger, I am following approximately 900 blogs. I can no longer use my Blogger dashboard to manage what I follow, since it can only handle up to 300 blogs. It's been causing me nothing but headaches to try to get this under control. I can't delete inactive blogs, blogs without a followers' widget, blogs that have totally changed focus, etc., etc. using my dashboard, until I get under that 300 point.

If I temporarily disappear from your followers list, don't worry. I'm following you another way until I can get this all taken care of, and so that I can access the dashboard again.

I've got the same situation with Facebook and tumblr, too. There is just too much interesting stuff out there on the web!

“...I have always lived on contrasts!
To me the only death is monotony.
Beware of monotony;
it's the mother of all the deadly sins.”
~ Edith Wharton

Tea bags

my first painted teabag

This will just be a quick post today, since I've got my annual monster of a chest cold and I can't stop coughing. Thanks to my cold, though, I've been drinking lots and lots of tea, and I've been saving the used tea bags. Have you ever done this? The tea stains the tea bags in the most beautiful way, and each type of tea leaves a different shade of stain.

In South Africa, artisans use these tea bags to create the most beautiful art. The result has the look of ethnic textiles, don't you think?

Below are a few examples I found on-line, showing what beautiful things can be created by decorating a used tea bag.

from originaltbagdesigns.com

from fairtrademarketplace.com

found in the New York Times Blog

Aren't they fabulous?

I'll be back to more regular blogging and visits to your blogs soon. In the mean time, I hope you have a great weekend.

The Flora Schmetterling Story

Here she is, my first attempt at papier mache. She told me her name is Flora Schmetterling. Schmetterling is the German word for butterfly, so I think her name suits her, don't you?

She started as a discarded water bottle, recycled aluminum foil, some cardboard and some masking tape. Most of the papier mache was made from recycled newspaper, but for the final layer I used some pieces of watercolor-stained paper towel I had been using for months to clean my brushes.

Flora Schmetterling has finally emerged from her cocoon. She realizes that her days are numbered. She is fragile, beautiful and determined to fulfill her purpose.

She loved being a caterpillar. In those early days she was colorful, curious, traveled extensively, and loved to dance the night away on various plants under the moonlight. And she could eat and eat and eat. Those were the days!

Finally, it was time to grow up and cocoon. Those were dark, formative years. They were necessary but difficult, because all her beauty and talents were hidden in her cocoon. Even her cocoon was hidden from the world, to keep her safe.

Finally she felt a stirring inside her soul. She was changing and no one could stop her! Her cocoon couldn't contain her any longer. First there was one little crack, than another, and then POP! There was air, there was light, and she could breathe again.

She remembered those days long ago - travel, adventure, dancing.

She basked in the new day - her wings drying and becoming more radiant, delicate yet powerful. They would carry her far.

From now on she would no longer be confined to the ground. She could fly! All her beauty and talents gloriously visible and impossible to contain in a cocoon ever again.

As I see it, Flora Schmetterling is like so many of us women in "middle age" who are ready for new challenges. We're ready to show our true colors and talents, and we're ready to fly. No more crawling, no more cocooning. It's time to spread those wings and see where they take us.

I really like the way this first project turned out. I like how wrinkled her face and neck look, and I like how she looks like a piece of naive folk art. There are a few things I will do differently when working with papier mache from now on, but overall, I'm quite pleased with Flora Schmetterling.

The idea of a folk art piece came to me when I found a book about folk art at a resale shop recently. This book has hundreds of stunning photos of the folk art collection at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I don't know how I missed visiting this museum when I was in Santa Fe a few years ago, but it's definitely on my list of places to see the next time I'm there! (If you are interested in the museum, you can find it at www.internationalfolkart.org/)

I hope you find your wings, like Flora Schmetterling!

Another Angel!

I seem to be finding Angels often lately. On a trip to the thrift store "just to look around" I found this little beauty hidden among the knick-knacks. It's made of clay, and the original tag was still attached. According to the tag this was a sample piece from a sales rep of some sort. This piece was made by an Inca artisan in Peru.

Pretty neat, huh? How could I resist? If you click on the picture you can get a better look at the precious faces of a few of the children.

I hope you spot the Angels in your life!