Freedom Quilt 6 ~ More Ironing

It takes a while to iron 40 yards of freshly dyed cotton! Today I ironed some of the purples.

I'm ironing, cutting and folding as I go along. Here are today's colors along with yesterday's colors:

And here is one of the purples, I just LOVE the textures in these colors!

Tomorrow I finish this!  It takes a while, but it will be worth it.

Happy Creating,

-Carmen Rose

Freedom Quilt 2 ~ Cut & Soak

Freedom quilt, day two!
Today I turned 40 yards of fabric

Into forty yards of fabric...

in one yard sections. 

I soaked it all in soda ash solution, then wrung them out and put them in containers, ready to dye.

Tomorrow... I dye!

Unless life gets in the way... in which case it will need to wait a while.  But that's fine.

No worries,

-Carmen Rose

Colors of Fall

Check out Pantone's Fashion color report for Fall 2010! It's a beautiful combination of colors. I'm always drawn to the purple colors, this time was no exception. "Purple Orchid" and "Chocolate Truffle" are both striking colors, as well as "Woodbine" which is a lovely rich green along with "Endive" which I interpret as a pale jade green. These colors were inspiration for new jewelry! Grape colors if you ask me!

When Artbeads.com contacted me again about making something for their Fall Design Partner's Gallery, I came upon this beautiful maple leaf and these beautiful silver lined round twist beads which I thought would be perfect for a grape cluster design. Grape leaves and maple leaves aren't the same, but close enough.

So I started with a sketch. This is a bit unusual for me, but I had some time to think about this idea until the beads came. 

I also made some polymer clay beads, they are the swirly round ones that are a combination of the "Woodbine" "Purple Orchid" and "Endive" color scheme along with some copper.

I added in some copper wire to the design.

Then I worked late into the night in Studio Nine.  And by morning I had this:

I wanted to try to show the back part also, because I like the copper chain, the different textures and the copper wire twisted into a clasp.
$295 email me at CarmenRose at comcast dot net.

A detail of those glass beads from Artbeads.com plus Amethyst, Jade, Faceted light Amethyst Crystals, Vintage Jade beads, Swarovski Pearls and other great beads from my stash.  I really think the "grape" leaf is the star of the show in this piece. 

It's structured on chain so it has lots of wonderful movement.  These are my colors.  I'm going to enjoy wearing this one! 

It's been years since I've done much by way of jewelry design even though I worked in this media professionally for quite a few years.  And much of this year I was emotionally unable to get in the studio and do the work that is closest to my heart.  I've moved my studios recently and it took considerable time to begin to set up another studio in my new home.  I finally have a jewelry design area.  More than that, I have once again felt the stirring of inspiration and I can't tell you how good that feels.  It's been a long dark season but this is a very good sign.  The creative juices are moving once more and I am grateful.

And that night after I created this piece, I just couldn't stop making jewelry.  It feels so good to be back in the flow again.  And I think I'll enter this piece in the Artbeads.com Inspiration Competition when I get a chance!

May your creative juices surprise you with a blessing this week!

-Carmen Rose

FTC disclaimer: I received some of the products shown in this blog from Artbeads.com free of charge, I have not been paid for my endorsement of these products and I am reviewing the products honestly.

A Closet Obsession with Order

My closet was a wreck and since I hardly ever manage to close the doors on that thing, I decided it was time to get to work. And so after a variety of trips to Lowe’s and a few other places I settled on the Rubbermaid closet system and bought a closet kit plus a few additional items to trip out my closet. I managed to find other places for my clothing for a while, removed the shelf and bar and got started.
The Rubbermaid system goes in relatively easily, my worst problems were fighting with the stud finder that seemed to give some pretty inconsistent readings. I finally got a screw into each stud and hung the top horizontal bar, the long vertical bars hang from that. Each one went in pretty quickly and easily with a screw at the bottom to hold them in place. The brackets have a little plastic do-hicky that snaps in place once the shelf is installed and that keeps the shelves securely in place. All in all I was pretty impressed at how easily the system went together and how secure it felt when it was in. It was far better than I thought wire shelving would be.

I started adding clothing and realizing that the new system gave me more rod space, but it was still going to be a tight fit to get all my stuff in that little closet. We’ve had some pretty nice closets over the years, I’ve been a little spoiled. But I knew I could make this one work. It took a while to go through the clothing, trying things on and making assessments about what still worked and what didn’t, but totally worth it.

I made another shopping trip, this one dedicated completely to shopping for hangers. I was in one store where there were some great looking hangers in the display, but some were broken. I considered that a bad sign and kept on walking. I love the look of a closet where all the hangers are consistent and while it took me a few tries to find a store that had enough of the right kind of hangers in stock. I did finally come home with three bags of hangers. Hanging everything and getting it organized was fun. I had no idea I had so many long sleeve shirts of the same color. It’s funny what you realize about your shopping patterns when you get a good look at what you actually have. Apparently I purchase tops in pink/fuchsia, lime and turquoise. Now that I know that, I can fix it. Today I bought purple! =)
I have more shoes than I thought. And getting them all organized in the shoe cubby (thanks to my hubby who put that piece together for me) was fun. Now I can reach for a pair of shoes in no time and I’m now free of the dozens of shoe boxes piled in the floor of my closet. I haven’t worn many of those shoes in a long time just because I didn’t even remember what all I had. And at 25 pairs of shoes (boots stored elsewhere) it is reasonable to think that if I purchase a new pair, removing an old pair shouldn’t be that big of a deal. I already parted with some and that’s great. Notice that I only have one pair of dress shoes that have a back on them, all the rest are either strappy or open back styles. I’m not a big fan of having shoes on the heel of my foot. I think I will keep an eye out for a pair of tennys though. I haven’t had sports related shoes in ages and since I’ve done some jogging lately, it might be good to have the right shoes for that. I suppose I’m a pretty good consumer, huh?!
Some of my favorite features of the makeover include having my jackets and blazers in the same closet with everything else and my tops organized by sleeve length and then color. I now have a tie rack that I use for hanging belts, scarves and tank tops. Love that!

And of course bins for clothing that just wasn’t made for hangers. All in all I’m pretty pleased with how it looks. And as I make my way through the weekend’s laundry, maybe most of it will fit and the rest can go to Goodwill. I do like having a place for everything and everything in its place.

This Good Day

I scored some wonderful veggies today at the Farmer's Market. Sometimes I think I buy them just for the pretty colors to put on my kitchen counter for the week. I decided to get beets from Bob and Lisa who had the booth next to me at market this week. They put extra in the bag before they handed it over. It's a fun feature of market that we pass our products around to each other, sometimes bartering and sometimes just being neighborly.
Dinner when cooking for color...
I've never cooked beets before, never had the urge, never found them anything of interest until I saw them at market today and decided to try them myself. Maybe it was the salesmanship, I don't know, but they made them sound delicious. They told me how to cook them and I followed the instructions mostly, except for the bacon. =) I thought it needed bacon. Hubby didn't like the greens but approved of the beets.
Fresh Basil and mayo are wonderful on good tomatoes and I purchased a loaf of wonderful bread at market and melted some fresh motz over it. Yummm...
I roasted a few heads of garlic and a number of jalapeños in olive oil for flavoring this and that over the next few months. I wonder if that will have the "depth of flavor" (a phrase used by Barefoot Contessa on The Food Network) that I hope, we'll see.
This spring I planted this little bird bath full of goodies and I must have been doing something right. The plants are growing and so are the golf balls. There are now 17 of them. We find them regularly since we live on a golf course. It's only natural since our home is located right on the curve of a 90 degree angle green so that the golfers are aiming directly for our house when they tee off. =)
It’s been a lovely day - in spite of the alarm going off at 5:00 am to get up for farmer’s market. It was a fun market day, the temperatures were perfection. I wore a jacket most of the morning, just can’t believe this is July! And it never did actually get hot, just perfection all day. Even though the vender on one side seemed very grumpy, the lovely couple on the other side of me made up for it by being good company. I borrowed two books on felting from another vender and flipped through them in between customers. Talk about inspiration! Yay!

This afternoon I saw that a friend of mine is having a sale in her lovely art supply store which is close by. So instead of catching a nap, I headed over to pick out a lovely collection of colors and canvas. Buying colors is such a delight and it's a treat to pet the puppy and Leslie is very cool!

And when I came home I still wasn’t ready to succumb to a nap so I pulled out a box of llama fuzz a friend had given me and tried out a very basic felting technique. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do but just haven’t gotten accomplished. The results are rather weird. I also dyed up some wool roving in a variety of colors, so once that color is properly set I’ll play with adding some color to the strange experiment and see what happens. I blame it on the books lent me by another vender, they had such inspiring photographs!

We’ve been working on another bathroom facelift this week. It takes time but the work is rewarding and I’m pleased with how it looks so far. We’ve hung a new light and med cabinet; I painted and installed a new vinyl tile floor. It’s cheap and fast and will hold us over until we’re ready to rip out and install some exotic glass or hand painted tile or something. Hubby put the baseboard back down and I have a little touch up painting to do. There are other details that need to be finished up and I’ll post photos when I get the chance.

We’ve had a lovely evening here and I’m grateful for these days that feel so right. This year has brought more than its share of grieving, and these days of grace are good for the spirit. I am grateful. It reminds me of a Fernando Ortega song called “This good day.” And if I could have found a youtube video of it that was decent, I would have included it.

Here is the chorus:

“This good day, it is a gift from You
The world is turning in its place because You made it to.
I lift my voice to sing a song of praise
On this good day."