The Sun is Shining

In contrast to last week, the sun was out and shining for Tuesday. Maybe that's why we had a busy meet-up! It started off normally but we had other Makers drift in throughout. Which means there's a whole bunch of pictures!

There's everyone (except me, but there's my stuff right in the front) getting off to a rolling start. From left to back to right there's: Pearl, Marg, Cindy, Mia, Laurie, David. Later on Jean, Deb and Louise visited! Good show.

Cindy is putting together her large pop can tab purse ever - it will be double the size of her usual ones (like the green one in right corner of the picture). I would be sincerely SICK of pop can tabs at that point. And black crochet yarn. In the background there, Mia is unpacking her wool to work on her needle felted sculpture. She also made a neat little mask with a lump of polymer clay I gave her. I think she sculpts anything!


Marg is painting her next piece in this pic but earlier she showed us what she plans to have printed up for some of her upcoming shows where her photography will be a part. If I were bright I would have moved along the table edge and photographed the pretty purple sweater that Pearl was knitting up but I didn't get a very good shot of that!



Here's what I made Tuesday. Well, here's the redo of what I made since someone bought the one I made on Tuesday afternoon! There's a little pearl, turquoise, antiqued brass wire and a few of my polymer clay beads. This was part of a challenge Cindy and I had to show how very different results can be achieved with similar materials. You can see what Cindy whipped up in her matching post.

I snapped a picture of Louise to use as I work on her website - that's at www.skysweptdesigns.com - but it's fair game since it was on Tuesday and the t-shirt is from her most recent snow dyeing day right? We'll assume so!

These are Jean's finished transfer, mixed media canvases. Deb, who's helpfully holding the canvas for me, was knitting too. Some day I will ask the nice knitty folks to teach me. My very sweet and patient Granny gave up ages ago!


And here's our mascot (sorry Laurie!) for the group. She's got this little pouf of fluff added to her bun and other small finishing details added that I can't see in the picture. Laurie nabbed one of my orange lily beads to add to her bodice, so we'll see the update next week.

When It Rains

This weeks meeting was unique in that I walked over in the pouring rain and left in snow. That's been the theme for the weather the last few weeks though! Here's hoping we eventually escape into spring and summer.

Because I'm eternally optimistic, I brought my bird project - a customer requested bird shaped, flower covered beads which are in progress here (finished pics here):


Louise was showing off one of her projects from the Quilts Canada convention she attended in Calgary last week. The book has pages with all sorts of techniques in it:


Mia was working on her needle felting. She brought along her first completed sculptures, little tribal or caricature type figures. From wool. Very neat.

Later she was taking advantage of the machine that combs wool Laurie brought in to play with. If you think it looks like a torture device, you're not the only one:

Jean was working on a transfer based collage, slowly washing and rubbing off the paper backing from the transfer that she'd applied to a prepped canvas. You can see it in progress here (the white parts of the picture transfer clear, so the canvas colour shows through):


And we have Laurie's wood fairy with the sparkles - I should say, Angelina fibres - mixed in with her outfit:

We Were Quiet This Week

Only four of us showed up this week so it was a fairly quiet meetup. We all had our projects to entertain us, too. Laurie had her little woodland faerie, of course, and was busy figuring out her clothes. Here she's felting the leaf like portions of her skirt.



I brought a batch of my smaller pendant style beads and turned them into keychains. I long ago learned that not everyone can be talked into buying jewelry, even something as casual as a single pendant style necklace. So I offer keychains made with the same art beads. My grandmother, for example, wouldn't let me make her necklace (I'm not offended, she only wears her wedding and anniversary rings) but I made her a keychain. My mom has several, some as purse jewelry. And the nifty little tool roll in the left of the picture is a crayon roll from Tamara of Barefoot Tams.



Mia is doing much better with her needle felting than I did with my attempts! She's jumped right into sculpting it. Her little head has such personality already and she was beginning work on the body when we finished up for the day.



Marg was fighting with her watercolours to get the perfect setting sun sky. Eventually she decided indigo was the way to go. You can't see it in the photograph but she is working from an older photo of children silhouetted against a sky with a setting sun in it.


Friday, April 30th a few of us - Cindy and I - will be at the Craft Fair and Flea Market held from 12 til 8 at the Legion in Swift Current. I'll have some of my work there but I'm also going to take advantage of the flea market / garage sale type venue to destash some of my extra supplies! This is only because I need to make space for the next shipment of new clay...

The Best Part About Making Things

The best part about making things (and talking about making things, teaching making things and selling things I've made) is that I get to see how other people are using what I've made, taught or sold or what they're doing themselves and how it's progressing. For example, here are a couple of pieces from a class I taught last weekend at the gallery that I brought to show the 'gang' this Tuesday:


Over here we can see Cindy poking through a stack of baubles Pearl brought us from her cleaning efforts. In the back of the photo you can see a little of Pearl's ongoing rug-hooking project.


This is a pic of Mia trying out needle felting after she confessed an interest to Laurie last week. She's doing it much better than I did by the way. She doesn't seem to be stabbing herself which was the result of my first efforts!


And here we have Marsha working her way through this tiny, intricate bit of needlework. In the background you can see Marg working on our project of the day: conquering Photoshop Elements. I'm not exactly sure if we won or not though. In the lower right of the picture you can see a few of the little heads that Mia sculpted from Paperclay.


Laurie's fairie is getting outfitted in needle felted clothes, bit by bit. Here's our weekly glamour shot, against a backdrop of Louise's scarves:

The Circle Grows

This week I arrived to see more people had ventured in to the Tuesdays with Laurie! Marsha Canon, Louise Perrin and Mia had come to see what we were all about.

Marsha is a talented visual artist who both paints and does painstaking, master level needle work. Mia sculpts and this Tuesday she was trying out a little bit of Paperclay. The rainbow below is a little of Louise's recent snow dyeing project.


Here is another picture of Louise's work, a quilted piece for display at the Quilts Canada show in Calgary.

I'm always pushing people to try polymer clay out since it's my obsession. Cindy goes in spurts of indulging me and here are some of her latest little beads.
Finally we have the weekly update on Laurie's felted fairie: she has wings! I'm not quite sure what magic went into them but aren't they darling?

Wheels and Rugs

This week we had a few more fiber artists - Val Fiddler and Pearl - working on spinning wheels and doing traditional rug hooking. Deb brought in an antique spinning wheel that had been in her family for ages for Val to look at.



Pearl uses very thin strips of cloth to make her pieces. This one will be a valance done in earth tones.



Laurie's wood spirit got her barefoot sandals this week. Check out the cute little toes!



And Laurie showed us what she has in mind for wings. They'll be floral wire between layers of wool and other small fiber bits.



To celebrate my own Excellent March (everyone needs to celebrate right?!) Cindy made me a strawberry shortcake. Now there's a work of art!

Collaboration

One of the things that happens when you get creative people together is collaboration! Laurie decided her felted sculpture needed a little bling. And it turns out that Cindy is great at creating bling.


The combination of crocheted wire and glass leaves is just the right oomph for the felt! The group is currently discussing a larger collaborative project.

This week we had a water colour artist working on getting her sunflower perfect. Elizabeth, another Maker, brought along a whole stash of beautiful beads and purses from her trip to Africa last year. She's working on basic jewelrymaking techniques to repair and embellish the handmade bags and make use of some of the fabulous paste glass and trade beads she brought back.


And, in a recurring theme, we're still famous! Shaw TV was on hand today to interview Laurie. She plugged the Tuesdays with Laurie for them too, right in front of the little pedestal with my work in it!

We're Famous!

Someone must have heard of us! I came in to the second meeting to find that Laurie, the education coordinator at the Art Gallery of Swift Current and the Fearless Leader of Tuesdays with Laurie, was being interviewed by a camera-lady from Southwest TV.



The needle felted tree spirit has hair, clothes and a little tiny tongue this week. We have progress!


I admit to not watching what everyone was doing because I got rolling along making a couple of little polymer clay canes and pieces. Sadly, there are no pictures of this but they will form the basis of a class I am lucky enough to be teaching at the gallery on April 17th!

Interested in polymer clay bead making? Check out the class by contacting Laurie at the Gallery.

The Inaugural Meeting

The very first Tuesday with Laurie! The first group of Makers met up Tuesday, March 9th at 1pm in the gallery classroom. I don't think any of us, including Laurie, were quite sure what to expect but we hit it off.


There were several of us that first day including Cindy, a wire crochet jewelrymaker, Laurie, a fiber artist, several collage and assemblage artists and me, a polymer clayer. We had a few stop by to check it all out and visit.

Here we have Michelle and Jean, our collage artists! And then we have Laurie's needle felted sculpture: