Monday, March 10, 2008

Take It Further & Weekend Projects

Looking back I got a lot done this weekend but I am feeling frustrated because I didn't get into that "zone" until Sunday night and then I had a hard time stopping and getting ready for the week. I was up way too late as a result and am tired today.

I had so much fun doing the Pink squares last month, I kept going. I had found a little silver cardboard open-top box that's the perfect size for the squares and I decided to fill it and keep it on my desk at work. Here are my first three squares. I used more markers and paint this time. I used Sharpies and colored the backgrounds and also colored some white plastic produce netting. It's hard to see in the scans but I left some of the netting loose and raised from the fabric. The shadows form nice designs. I also used painted cheesecloth, an image transfer, and beads.

Last week I played a bit in Photoshop and learned about layers and created this image for the March TIF challenge. I had wanted to play more in Photoshop for a long time and I really learned a lot. I manipulated a micro-photograph of sand to enhance the colors and texture and then layered it with photographs of the earth taken from outer space. I then added the text. Pretty basic stuff but I feel a sense of accomplishment.

I sized the image in a Word document and added a background to the page and brought it home to print. When printed on the fabric, the colors were dramatically changed and not at all what I'd hoped for. My husband and I worked with another photograph for which I had the original photo and not just the Word document and that came out much better so I plan to take the original art for this home and try again one night this week.

Tonight is the Homewood Embroiderer's Guild meeting. It's the last one before our Monica Ferris Lecture Luncheon so we'll see how ticket sales are going and plan favors.