30 January / Cold!

Today is to be a record cold day in our area.  Wind chills of 50 below are in the forecast.  A good day to stay in the house and play.  The trees at the Figge are all warm and snuggly!

29 January / White on white

This should be a post about all the snow we have, but I'd rather not even think about it!

Early in the month, girl's day out took us to the Figge in Davenport.  This heavily textured piece caught my eye.  Silly me - I didn't catch who created this.  I just know I like it!

28 January / Gelli / using page protectors

Still playing with gelli prints...

19 January

A few of my "morning tea" stitching pieces:

16 January / gelli papers

I've been enjoying making gelli/brayer papers for collage work.  No motivation to do collages, but I am loving paper making!

14 January / Figge Haitian Art

For my birthday, my family took me took the Figge to enjoy an Impressionist exhibit. Unfortunately the line was too long to ask everyone to wait. No way could my mom wait 3 hours to get in to look at art she wasn't particularly interested in viewing. 

Instead, we took in the art on the second level and even though I had seen much of it before, I enjoyed it.  The Haiti Collection, with it's bright colours, was very pleasing on a cold winters day.

12 January / collage class

I signed up for a year long online collage class.  Ambitious and crazy.

Week one:

Grid assignment:

Begin with a random shape collage. This one was easy.  The blue so looked like a dress.

This one was harder.  The beginning piece was an old shape that ended up being covered by other papers.  I will continue to play with it

The "stem" of the flower was the beginning piece. It too is in the "work on me" pile.

9 January 2019

While on the island of Gozo in Malta, we visited the Ta' Kola Windmill.  My sister lives in a Dutch community and if there is a windmill in the area, we must go. 

The windmill has not been used for many years, but is a delightful museum with rooms being furnished as they were years ago when a family lived and worked in the windmill.  These two fabric collages were hung on the wall in the stairwell.  It was very dark, and I could not use a flash. I was so happy to find artwork from a time long ago.

7 January 2019

Each morning while enjoying my tea I do a little stitching.  Thank you Beth for encouraging this habit! I finished this small block this morning. The circles are about the size of Girl Scout badges and were created with a stencil and dye thickener on linen fabric.

4 January 2019

The island that Paul was shipwrecked on in Malta.  This small island was across St. Paul's Bay from our hotel room.  Isn't this a lovely view?

3 January 2019

I returned on the 1st from a wonderful trip to Malta with my sister.  22 hours of travel to get home - yesterday was a blur as I didn't really sleep much after getting home.  Last night I slept like a princess and feel ready to tackle the world once again. 
Malta was beautiful, delicious, exciting, relaxing, and the perfect place to spend time laughing with my sister.  We enjoy the same things, so traveling together is always a great experience.
I instantly fell in love with the religious door plaques on homes.  I was determined to find one to bring home to keep a piece of Malta with me.

Yes, I did find one to bring home.  We found a small shop in Velletta on the last day of our travels that sold one very similar to this one. Once everything is unpacked and put away, I plan to create a small shrine to celebrate a joyous holiday and exciting start to the new year.