New Toy, a Doodle & a Magazine photo

While attending the Creative Festival in Toronto, on Friday, I picked up a few new gadgets to try. One item was this Magic Heat tool I purchased at the Jenny Haskins booth. It has multiple uses but I bought it primarily for use in cutting stencils. I tried it yesterday and it works wonderfully. I drew a few leaf shapes onto a piece of Mylar, just traced the lines with the heated tool and there it is ........ my first stencil.

I used dye sticks to stencil the leaves then added a little thread painting to create this postcard.


I picked up a number of items I have been wanting to try. I'll show some of them over the next little while.




I also picked up the summer issue of A Needle Pulling Thread magazine which has photos of 2 of my postcards...............how cool is that?




If you are a regular visitor, you know I like to participate in the Creative Prompt Project. This week's word prompt was/is a tough one, word prompt # 37 is Gracious. I think of graciousness as a quality and could not really think of how to portray that on paper so I cheated ever so slightly and went with this graceful swan.

Grand National opening reception

A reception was held this evening at Joseph Schneider haus in Kitchener, Ontario to celebrate The Grand National's transitional year with the opening of a wonderful show consisting of quilted Postcard greetings sent from across Canada. You can read more about the show in an previous post here, where you will also find a link to The Grand National quilt shows new and fabulous website.
If you have read the earlier post you know that the judges were to be selecting what was being called "the terrific twelve" to put into a souvenir booklet of postcards and tonight was the unveiling of those twelve.
I am so incredibly excited and honoured to tell you that not only were both of my cards part of that selection but that they are, in fact, the front and back cover. It is such a thrill for me to be part of this show and to have the opportunity to meet so many artists whose work I have admired for some time. There are more than 100 postcards to be seen and they are really quite amazing, you need to get up close and personal with them. I wanted to give you a sense of the show but not wanting to give anything away and I would not want to put up photos of others work without their permission so I'll just show you some of the neat things that was done with this display. A number of the cards were blown up to poster size and scattered amongst the 4 x 6 inch gems. There are cards dangling from the ceiling and spilling out of a mail box. It took several trips around the room for me to fully appreciate all of them.
I also wanted to note that Janome Canada is continuing to be a truly generous sponsor of GN and at the close of the show (end of August) the ballots will be counted with the "Viewer's Choice" winner receiving this Janome Memory Craft 6600 P sewing machine.
I think it is almost impossible to pick just one favourite. The organizing committee has done a fantastic job putting this show together and I want to say Thank you so very much to everyone involved.
The postcard booklets are available for sale at JSH. I hope that if you are in the area, you are able to take in this inspiring show.

Postcards for Grand National

In 2008 I was thrilled to have my piece Earthbound accepted in The Grand National Quilt exhibition. It was at that time that I found out that it was also the last year this show would be held at the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, too bad as this was an incredible space for the exhibit.
Because the organizers now had to find a new location, the Grand National themed "Off the Wall", scheduled for 2009 has been postponed until 2010 when it will be held at the Homer Watson Gallery.
Wanting to still go forward with a show this year, the organizers decided to have a "mini"Grand National with quilted postcard art being displayed beginning in May and running through the end of August at the Joseph Schneider Haus Museum and Historical site just up the road a bit from KWAG.
A call went out for submissions of these 4 x 6 inch works to wish them well in their new venture. They have requested that they be able to retain all the postcard entries to help promote and support The Grand National and to assist with it's transition. There is a plan to select 12 of the entries to be included in a printed booklet that will be made available for sale.
They have a great new web site where you can view works from past shows and get updates on current happenings.
Above are the postcards that I sent.
This first one is of the Joseph Schneider Haus site. I titled it "The Journey Continues", as this has become the Grand National's transitional home. In making this card I did some thread painting, beading, painted batting to create the bushes in the foreground, left some rough raw edges for trees and then hand stitched the outer edge.
The second is called Inspiration Grows. It is a fairly simple looking tree that is made up of text showing titles, dates and venues of past and future shows, the ground and roots are made up of words like inspiration, imagination, creativity...etc
both have lots of machine quilting.If you click on the photos you should be able to see more detail.
So if you find yourself in the Kitchener Waterloo area this summer why not stop by and take in the show.