Jessibel Designs

A while ago, I was playing around with bleach stamping for my technique class.  It was so much fun and I made so many samples, I decided to put them together into a book.  I stamped both sides of a piece of cardstock and added several sheets Painter’s masking paper to make each signature.  The book has 10 signatures and I used a piano hinge to put them all together.

There are more pictures of the inside in my gallery here.

I recently visited my friend Judy and got to see her studio space.  All I can say is “WOW!”  I had to go back out to my car and get my camera.  She has the most wonderful collection of stamps and other stuff.  I didn’t want to freak her out too much so I only took a couple of pictures of one wall of stamps. (Yes, a wall of stamps.  And there was another half wall and more unmounted stamps in cabinets and stuff.)  And, there is still much more according to Judy!  I was just dropping her home but we ended up playing around and talking for several hours.  So much fun!  Thanks Judy!

She is also an amazing artist.  I hope someday we can get her a website or blog so that she can share her work with more people. (hint hint) :)  It was truly inspiring to be in her space.

My mom recently hosted an ATC swap on the Yahoo group - ArtistTradingCards.  The theme was “Secret Life of Bees” and I made a bunch of digital cards for the swap.  I figured that since I didn’t have much time to work on them and I needed to make a bunch, I’d do a few digital cards and print out several copies.  This theory didn’t really work in practice though because I got so excited by the cards that I ended up spending a lot more time on them than I originally planned.  The digital stuff was a blast and I’ll definitely be doing more of this type of art.  Here are the cards i made for this swap.

I’m participating in a collaborative project through LiveJournal.  We are making our own Tarot Card deck.  Every artist picked three words and made 6″x8″ pieces to illustrate each word.  We also are writing short descriptions about how to interpret our word when someone picks it from the deck.  The host for the project is scanning every piece (about 60) and printing half size copies for everyone.  We will get a full deck of cards, a booklet with all the descriptions and three other originals back for our three.  It is an amazing project and the artist involved are fabulous.

Here are my three cards…

Nature

Fear

Light

I planned to post this last week but oh well…  Here is the other quilt that I entered in the show this year.  This was my very first needle turn applique project.  It started in a class with Pat Campbell at the International Quilt Festival several years ago.  I had no idea how much i would enjoy needle turn before this quilt so I call it “The One That Started It All.”

This weekend is the Austin Quilt Guild Show.  I entered two quilts in the show this year.  Last night I went to the preview and award ceremony and to my great surprise, one of my quilts was picked for third place in the applique category. 

This is my Night Blooms quilt.  A little over a year ago, several of my quilt bee members and I were picked to go to L.A. and tape a couple of episodes for the DIY Network show, Uncommon Threads.  The show features needle arts groups from around the country.  We had to come up with a project to demonstrate on the show so I designed this quilt specifically for that.  I have to say that, up until the actual taping, the whole idea of being on a TV show was extremely frightening.  All I kept thinking was, “how did i let them talk me into this!”  But then we got to the studio in Burbank and met the host, Allison Whitlock.  She was so great and easy to talk to.  When I finally started taping my episode, everything was fine.  I felt good and they made the whole thing really easy.  I would definitely do it again if i ever get the chance. 

My pattern and instructions for this quilt are up on the DIY site here.  Actually, the pattern is still not up over there for some reason so I’ll upload it here for anyone who wants it.

My friend L. has some pictures of her project and the show taping on her site here.  Also, S. had a bunch of pics of the taping and studio on her site here.  My camera died just before the trip so I don’t have in pictures of my own.

I’ve finally found a gallery that will work with Wordpress and a plugin that makes it easy to add photos from my gallery to my posts. Yeah!  I’ve updated all my old post now so that the pictures show up and are a decent size and all.  So, if you have me on your Bloglines (all two of you), I am done with all the crazy re-publishing-ness and am on to new posts.  (for now anyway… next on the list is figuring out all the template business so that my blog and gallery look the same.  Wish me luck!)

This is my first post on my own website.  WooHoo!  I finally just bit the bullet and bought a couple of months of hosting from Go Daddy.  I already decided to use Wordpress to put it together and Go Daddy had it as one of their options.  It all came together quite well.  And, it was very easy to set up and migrate my Blogger stuff over.  Why did I wait so long?

I’m behind on my posting of recent art so I thought I throw some pieces up real quick. These are some of the samples that I did for my last Technique Class. We worked with beeswax and the class turned out great. I looked around about 20 mins. before class was over and everyone was still hard at work, totally engrossed in what they were doing. That is a great feeling for a relatively new teacher like me.

This is the first piece I did with beeswax. It was done on an 8×8 canvas panel. I wouldn’t really call it done so maybe I’ll work on it again someday.

I cut pieces of chipboard for my students to work on so I did a couple of pieces here to make sure the surface was good. The chipboard absorbs a lot of wax but it worked great for learning. These two are both 4×4.

I did another piece in my book for this class. I’ll have to post pictures of that one later along with the samples for the previous technique classes.

This morning, I took my Persian cat, that I’ve had for 10 years, to the vet. For the past couple of days, she has been lethargic and I haven’t been able to get her to eat. The vet ran blood work and discovered that Carrie’s kidney’s were failing. She recommended an ultrasound of the kidneys so I took her over to a specialist. I also called my mom so she ran up and met me at the ultrasound place. We found out from the ultrasound that Carrie had Polycystic Kidney Disease. There’s no cure for this and it is one of the things that happen to Persians a lot. Carrie probably had it since birth and we were lucky that she lived to be 10. About the only thing we could do was give her IV fluid which would make her feel good for about three days. But, my vet felt that then she would be right back to where she was this morning. We made the hard decision to put her down and not prolong any suffering. However, it is just the tip of the iceberg for my suffering.

So… Goodbye my sweet fluff. I will miss all your fur and way you would lie down on my pillow at night and cover my face with it. I will miss you wonderful purr and way you would drool on my hand when I pet you especially well. I will miss your funny little meow and how you never learned to retract your claws when you jumped in my lap. The way you would use just one little claw to poke me and wake me up in the morning. But most of all, I will miss how you always seemed to know when I needed you and how you were always in my lap before I even sat down.