Song. Three Muses. O Canada!

This is my piece for the challenge at Three Muses this week, which is "song".  The song I picked is the Canadian National Anthem, or Hymne National.  Two national languages, you know :) Scroll down for the words.  This is a 6x6 inch art quilt, once again using some of my hand dyed fabric, one of my maple leaf photographs transferred to fabric, stamped, stitched and foiled. 

I love the Canadian National Anthem. It is filled with incredible words and phrases like: glorious, free, true north, strong, home, love, glowing hearts. It is a powerful and moving piece.

I have lived in the United States for many years now.  It is truly a privilege to live here, and I deeply appreciate many things that living in the United States has brought to me.  It's interesting, one thing it has shown me about myself is this: you can take the girl out of Canada, but you can't take Canada out of the girl. I am so grateful to be Canadian.  Thank goodness for Canada.

And yes, I can sing the national anthem in both national languages :)

National Anthem

O Canada!

Our home and native land!

True patriot love in all thy sons command.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,

The True North strong and free!

From far and wide,

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

God keep our land glorious and free!

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Hymne National

Ô Canada!

Terre de nos aïeux,

Ton front est ceint de fleurons glorieux!

Car ton bras sait porter l'épée,

Il sait porter la croix!

Ton histoire est une épopée

Des plus brillants exploits.

Et ta valeur, de foi trempée,

Protégera nos foyers et nos droits

Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.

Time Flies. Three Muses. Bracelet With Vintage Czech Watch Bead

This is my entry for this week's challenge, time, at the Three Muses.  

Working title: "Time Flies".

Oh my, this challenge was a challenge on every level imaginable. You know how sometimes there are challenges or topics that just ask a bit more of you?  Well this was one of those for me.  Fortunately I just received a shipment of some absolutely gorgeous vintage beads from Prague, including these lovely 1940's watch beads.  I was determined to figure out how to use them. These are 2 holed beads, something I have never worked with, so that was a great learning experience.  This piece went through several iterations, as time flew by, and finally ended up as this bracelet. 

Cards. Three Muses. Vintage Button Card Tag

This is my entry for this week's challenge of "cards" at the Three Muses.

"Cards" drew me to the vintage button cards that I have posted on the walls of my studio. I scanned some into the computer and used a copy of one of them to make this tag.

Vintage button card facsimile, vintage mother of pearl buttons, stamped, stitched, embellished.

See the back, looks just like a vintage button card :)

 The original card.
Also, if you scroll down, or go to this link, you will see another tag that I created using the same approach for Mixed Media Monday's challenge of Marie Antoinette.

Three Muses. Relationships. Love the One You're With

This is my entry for this week's challenges at the Three Muses, "relationships", called "Love the One You're With".

This is a 6x6 inch art quilt made with more of my stash of hand dyed fabric, which I sun printed, then wrote on with white pen, stamped, stitched with metallic thread and finally foiled.

The one you are always with is yourself.  I've always found that my relationships with others, be they humans, animals, and even the plants in my garden, are so much better when I am in good relationship to myself.  This art quilt is my reminder of this personal reality.

Three Muses. Legs. Kitten Art Quilt.

This is my entry for this week's theme of "legs" at the Three Muses.

For over 8 years now, we have fostered kittens for the Seattle Animal Shelter.  We do not do this all year round, just during kitten season.  I thought I would honor all the four-legged creatures who have passed through our home and blessed us with their presence.

Hand dyed fabric, photo transfer, vintage charms, stitched transparencies, stamping.

It's so much fun to watch the really tiny kittens find their sea legs. Their legs are so tiny that we have to teach them how to use the litter when it is in an old cookie sheet on the floor - they can't handle anything higher. The bottle babies have to practice just walking at first.  And they walk through everything, litter, food, water, it's pretty messy for a while. Pretty soon, though, they figure it out and start tearing around the room we reserve for our fosters, and then it's just crazy fun to watch them slip and slide on the hardwood floors.

Our family came to this choice after losing our 17 year old brown tabby, Alu. She was really my cat - I got her when I was in graduate school. I really did not want another animal, but my children really did want a pet, so we compromised and decided to try fostering, and it has worked out wonderfully well for us. To see one of our foster babies, see this Monday in Seattle post.

Seeing Stars in Seattle. Artist Trading Card (ATC). Three Muses

This is my entry for the Three Muses challenge this week, "Seeing Stars".  It is an artist trading card (ATC) made with my hand dyed fabric, sun printed with stars, stitched and embellished with handmade paper, vintage dictionary paper, sequins and my latest vintage delight, rose montees - tiny crystals set in metal settings that can be glued, or wired or sewn through the channels on the back of the setting.

I am always astounded at how many stars we can see in Seattle, just from the back porch. You'd think that the lights of a big city would wash out the night sky, but (when it is not raining!) I see lots and lots of stars. It always makes me wish to be somewhere well and truly dark, where the city light would be removed, like a curtain lifted, and the true radiance of the heavens revealed.

Three Muses. Music.

The challenge this week at the Three Muses is "music".  This is an artist trading card (ATC) featuring a vintage sheet music background, distressed and painted. A pressed Japanese maple leaf from my collection is adhered on top, with a bit of stamping and a transparency sheet covers the entire card, and is held in place with brads.

Sometimes in the autumn, the leaf colors are so intense, they seem to me to vibrate and I think maybe the leaves are singing - a leaf song.

Three Muses. Hats and Crowns and Wings and Things

Here is my entry for the Three Muses weekly challenge, where the challenge this week is "hats and crowns and wings and things".  I don't use those motifs much in my paper and fiber art, but for some weeks now I have been looking at these gorgeous 1940's brass crown stampings sitting on my work table and intending to come up with a jewelry design featuring them. This challenge was just the ticket!

I think of this necklace as "The Queen's Jewels" and it features several vintage components from the 1940's to 1950's: the crown, the rhinestone bead balls, the crystal beads and the glass pearls. With a royal swan dangling off the extension chain, hopefully this is fit for a queen :)

Added Apr 28: Available now at Bumbershoot Designs under the name "Royal", you will find this necklace here.

Three Muses. Maps.

"Maps" is the challenge this week at the Three Muses challenge blog - Incorporate maps into your piece.  Here is a book I have made - the base of the book cover is a map of one of our favorite vacation destinations, Seaside Oregon. Over the map I have collaged bits of paper and hand dyed thin papers and metallic threads, so the base map peeks through the layers. 

Then I stitched, stamped and embellished in an ocean theme, with starfish stamps and vintage beads that remind me of iridescent bubbles. 

 Inside this book is an eclectic collection of my handmade papers and paper experiments. I've sewn a seam down the center of the book to hold all the pages together.

Three Muses. Bye Bye Blackbird.

This is my entry for the Three Muses Challenge this week: Bye, bye blackbird.  So, no matter how hard I tried to get these blackbirds to come out black, they came out white. Think of it as a photographic negative... albino blackbirds.  Just can't argue with the muse.  Did you know there really are albino blackbirds?  There are lots of interesting pictures and discussions on UK birding sites, for example, here.  Anyway, the major inspiration for the piece was the gorgeous Beatles song, which is now running like a tape in my head, over and over... here's a link to Paul McCartney performing it.

For this ATC, I've used vintage sheet music, gesso'd, stamped, birds perched on the music as if it is a branch, vintage mother of pearl sequins, stamped with letter stamps.

To get ideas for this theme, my family did some brainstorming and my daughter Emma did some research at www.poets.org. She found this beautiful piece by Wallace Stevens.  I thought I would share it with you - there is so much contained within it to appreciate and work with.  Parts of this poem also made their way into my ATC. In the US, April is National Poetry Month!

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Wallace Stevens

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

Three Muses. You Are What You Eat

This is my response to this week's Three Muses challenge, "you are what you eat".  And I eat a lot, A LOT, of chocolate. I have a studio chocolate bowl... I love just about everything that is chocolate, including the chocolate wrappers...

This is an ATC made of fabric paper - where I have collaged layers of paper chocolate wrappers onto muslin, added metallic threads, put on an overlay of netting, then burned, stamped paint circles, stitched, and used some vintage embellishments: ribbon, beads, and a mother of pearl button turned to show the mottled shell on the back. Like a little white chocolate, with drizzles.

Luckily, Seattle is home to a number of great chocolate companies, such as Seattle Chocolates, Fran's Chocolates, and my favorite local company, Theo Chocolate.

If you visited my post for last week's Three Muses challenge, you know I also love tea.  With tea and chocolate together - oh my, life is fine indeed!

Three Muses. A Nice Cup of Tea

This is my first ever posting for the challenge blog Three Muses. I absolutely had to create for this theme since tea is so very, very important to me.  We live in Seattle, home of Starbucks, and there is no coffee in our house. None. Nada. Zip. Only tea.  And only the good stuff...

For this 6x6 inch art quilt, I've used tea stained fabric, overstamped with a beautiful teacup stamp from Stampington, a strip of my hand dyed fabric, used tea tags, ribbon that I trimmed to mimic tea leaves, teacup and teapot buttons.  And one bit of vintage: the celluloid carved roses with vintage brass headpins in their centres.