Growth

The giraffe has been a little slow growing as of late. I have had a few sick kids and have been combating my asthma ) it has gotten pretty bad again) so it has slowed me down. I think the work is coming out well.

doodles

I was teaching parts of the face for portraiture this last week and here are a few little samples I made.

Giraffe

Not much progress I added the upper chest and lower neck and part of the last leg and part of the tail area. But not much in the overall scheme of things I was helping out at school so I didn't have much time for working on this. But any progress is good in getting this done. I am liking the giraffe way more than the zebra seems to work up faster.

A small collection

This is a few of the silhouettes that are in my home. Some I have cut some other people have cut and some are ones I have cut to copy old ones that are in other family members homes. They span from about 1950 to now. They are all family members except the one in the middle that has the silhouettes of 4 people walking with a poem. I have more I need to cut that are from photos of silhouettes in family member homes. I just haven't had the chance to sit down and do that yet. Once that is done there will be about 10 more on this wall. Four of these are from Disneyland over the years.

On a side note the ceramic dragon you see on the bottom left my 12 year old daughter made.

Twice as large

The giraffe is twice the size of the other animals on this cross stitch this is how far I got on it yesterday. It is a little bit easier even though it covers more area. Because it doesn't have all the color changes that the zebra has. That isn't to say there aren't color changes just bigger areas are covered with single colors. I am glad I did the zebra when I did if I had done it last it would have stopped me in my tracks as it was so slow going.

On to giraffe

So the zebra is done now on to the giraffe and the button boarder in between them, then on to the rhino and finished. This feels like the never ending project. Most times I have no problem doing projects for people this on is just real cutesie and real boring cross stitch has never been to interesting for me even though the finish piece is pretty. It is the getting there staying focused on it that is hard for me.

Foil Silhouette

This is for my sister in law for her birthday. Yes there have been a lot of birthdays in our family in the recent past and I am trying to get caught up on them all. Top photo flash off bottom photo flash on.

Twin Dragons

This is for my brother-in law for his birthday. Sort of a yin and yang dragon theme. He loves oriental stuf and collects dragons. This design was originally meant to be a tatoo but I think it looks much better this way. The design is not my own but the scale and the cutting and material sued are my own.

Yoda silhouette

These are for three different nephews. We are going to my Mil's house tomorrow to celebrate the last three months of birthdays so I decided I would make each nephew a Yoda silhouette. I don't know if they will like this type of thing but you know they don't really get a choice on what gifts they get now do they. Ihave got to find my silhouette paper using origami paper is driving me crazy.

Making brooches

I have been helping teach in the high school art classes. They have been studying how to work with clay to make beads and other jewelry. Here are 3 pins I made in the course of demonstrations. These are things that I made real quick during class time so not the best but not the worst either. Cute enough for what they are demonstrations.

The rose above is about 3 inches long and 2 1/4 inches tall.

Four face brooch is 2 inches tall by 1 1/2 inches wide.

Baby face flower fairy rose is 1 1/2 iches wide by 1 1/2 inches tall.

David H. and Wendy R.

I showed the Wendy tapes recently. I also thought I would share this a picture I cut of Davy and his wife Wendy this morning. Yes he married a Wendy just not this Wendy. She looks charming and I love this picture that was on face book of the two of them so I decided I would cut a picture out of them. The original photo was of them taking a picture of themselves looking in a mirror so there are things I have edited out and changed. I made a little mistake on the mouth area but if he wants it I will gladly send it to him. I wish them a long life together. It isn't mounted to the red just sitting on it for contrast for the photo.

Scherenschnitte

There is this blog I found the other day about Scherenschnitte. The lady lives in Salt Lake City which is less than an hour away from me. The basic techniques I already know how to do but it would be fun to take a class from her to see how she does it herself. The image in this post is one, Alice playing crochet with a flamingo and a hedge hog, I cut but I used a free pattern she had on her blog. So if you want to make one follow the this link to the specific page it is on. She tries to post a new pattern every Tuesday for people to try. Which is pretty cool and a major thing to do as she would have to design and cut and make a pattern for you to cut pretty generous of her. I am more use to using scissors to do this type of thing the artist craft knife is not as comfortable to me as you can tell my lines are not as smooth as they should be. I also need to improve where the holes are as that was a little ruff and it shows. But that would improve with time I think I had a death grip on the blade. I need to relax a little and it would be nicer. The red and blue are not glued together I just set it there for the eye popping effect for the photo. Because I am new at this that took me about 30 mins. to cut this I am sure it would be faster with practice as I wasn't always sure where to cut next.

The Wendy Tapes

• This isn't a new release just something I thought I would share about me.
  
• Music by my good friend David Houston
• Photos by another good friend Christopher Michael Paul
  
• and yes that is my face on the cover

I was in my late teens when the photos were taken and in my early twenties when this album was written.

This is a taste of some of the sound on (v2.4 second release2004) sound on (first release1994) where to buy. There are two versions of this Cd as it was re-released remixed a few years after the first release with a new song added. There is some video footage if you follow the links back then click home. It isn't of this music just other music he has done very nice all the same.

Pretty Images : Lost things

Help for Becca my Sister-in-law

I know I already posted about this once but I still want to help her more if I can with the help of my readers.
She is still looking for people who want to help her get a good grade in in photography class at the university. If you like something she has done please leave comments on the photos and constructive criticism is always good helps an artist to see their work in a different light.
I want to help her as much as I can not only because she is my sister-in-law but I really like her images and she is an all around nice person with a great eye.
If you would like to help her too follow this link to her blog and click on her "follower" link in the upper right hand corner of her blog.
In this post all the photos and images have been created by Becca. She let me borrow some so you can see a sample of her work.
Thanks in advance for any help you give her.

Clay necklaces

My children played with clay yesterday and made some beads and mini sculptures. The girls would like to know what people think of their work

The oldest daughter made some bunny beads for Easter Necklaces for herself and the next sister down.

The youngest made swirl beads for herself and for the older sister to use in the first bunny necklace with the gray bunny. Not bad for an 8 year old. I strung all the beads for the girls. I think the youngest daughters beads came out great especially with the wire stringing they received.

I have yet to do anything with the beads I made as the demo for the class last week.

The middle daughter made some playing pieces for her game that she is entering in the science fair on Tuesday at her school.

More Green Zebra cross stitch

Not finished with the green zebra yet but progress is being made.

Green Zebra cross stitch

Here is a piece of that baby cross stitch I am working on for a customer. OK can I just say I am not a cutesy type of person and this has been hard for me not skill wise just imagery wise a little too cutesy makes it hard for me to work on it. Below is what it needs to look like when done.

Just noticed two mistakes I will go fix them one is the button color on the hind leg and one is on the face where the stitch went wonky. They will be fixed and gone shortly.

And now I know

I could not wait till it was done I had to go and get it wet to see if knitted cotton would block well I am happy with the results. So looks like it won't need an edging but I may put one on it any way just for practice sake and to pull it all together and to give it a nice edge.

To see the before go to the next post and you will see how wavy and off everything looked.

Cables

Did a few cables on my sampler and a few other stitches too. It is amazing still to me how the same number of stitches can have such a differnt effect on how wide the piece is. Not sure cotton knit blocks well I hope so and I hope that adding a boarder will correct this too to straighten it out. If not I am good with it this way too after all it is just a practice piece. The above middle set of stitches after I did them in the sampler I decided I don't like them. Not pretty to look at, at all to me. So I am glad it is a sample piece and I won't be using that one in a sweater or lace in the near future. Maybe in time I will find a use for it but not at the moment.

Bad light on this last photo but it is a close up of the latest cable.