Coffee Filters Aren't Just for Drinking

My friend Sonja does incredible painting and quilting on all kinds of things you would never think of. So she sent me some of her coffee filters, all the way from Hawaii. Turns out they were exactly like the filters they sell on Long Island, so it is just her magical way with them, the filters weren't extra special after all. But I played around with them and made these cards, including some of my home-made batiks, hand carved stamps and fancier than usual stitch work.

Postcard Madness

I started out in the whole fiber arts world by doing quilted postcards in an art2mail exchange. This addiction led to a whole bunch of yahoo artquilting groups, an article in Cloth Paper Scissors, and some other publishing excitement. These are some of my latest cards, with layers of torn cotton calicos and heat distressed lutradur and/or angelina fiber on top.

Elizabethan Collar on Coconut Jenkins Wyatt

Poor Coco had a grooming accident...had to get 5 stitches in his little tummy and wear this lovely collar for 10 days. All healed now and back to his old self.

tyvek

tyvek

I love tyvek, which I get mainly from recycling shipping envelopes and painting inside-out. I use it for fiber-art and beads. The necklace was featured on Cloth Paper Scissors Embellishments Newsletter. I painted tyvek, cut long triangles, rolled them into beads and lightly heated them.

I love doing self portraits. I made this piece by connecting some 4" x 6" postcards with beads and wire. I over-painted photos from kindergarten through last year and alternated them with abstract versions of myself. I used mostly oil pastels over photos printed on Avery cotton. And the exciting news is that I am going to have a series of nine self-portraits in a new book called "Mixed-media Selfportraits" by Cate Prato, which is due out in July.

May 22, 2008. Over a year since I posted. I just couldn't get this darn blog to work for me. But now I have reset my password and maybe, just maybe, have gotten it working.