Sue Bleiweiss

Lots of stuff...

Couldn't come up with a good title for this post so "lots of stuff" will have to do!  First up I have very exciting news to share.  My good friend Terri has written a book!  It's called Creative Paper Quilts: Applique, Embellishment, Patchwork, Piecework and it's available for pre-order on Amazon here.  I'm so excited for you Terri!

My other good friend Sandy has agreed to be my official tester for my lessons for the Creative Mixed Media Journaling Techniques class and she's posted her sample from the first lesson here.  Keep your eye on Sandy's blog as she'll be posting more samples as I give her more of the lessons to test for me.

Remember the white embossed paper that I showed you in my last post.  Well I got a few pieces painted up yesterday:

Copper...

I'm not sure that this one is done yet, I think it may need another layer or two.  It feels a little too bright for me.

Black:

I was going for an embossed black leather look with this one.   Not entirely sure it's there yet.  This photo isn't the best, it's actually a bit darker than what you see here. 

Silver:

This silver surface is very shiny in person.  I think I may leave this one the way it is and make a wedding memories journal from it. 

Brown:

and here again I was going for a distressed embossed leather surface.  I think I like this one the way it is.  Not sure though, I think I need to leave it for a day before I decided if it's finished.

Thanks to all of you who emailed me about my foot both through my blog comments and directly.  Once I get used to this clunky boot I think I'll be fine.  I'm just grateful it's not my hands so I can still be active in the studio.   Now if we could just get rid of all this snow and cold I'd be really happy!

a little change of plans...

Been having some trouble with my foot lately and today after a trip to the foot dr and some xrays I found out why.

A fractured bone in my foot ...

so this will be my footwear for the next 6 to 8 weeks.  Hopefully it will heal, if not the bone will have to come out.  I'm really hoping it heals!

So that means my weaving project has come to a screeching halt because I weave with my right foot.  Not a happy camper about that.

But the good news is that I did some fabric cutting testing with the  Cricut
By ironing a piece of fabric between two pieces of freezer paper I was able to get a pretty close to clean cut.  So yes, a Cricut will cut fabric.  Not as cleanly as it cuts a piece of cardstock but it will cut it.  I'll be playing with this technique a bit more.    By the way, I bought my Cricut from the very nice people at crazyscraps.com.  After much shopping around they seemed to have the best deal and they're very nice to deal with.

So now that the weaving project is hold for a bit I'll turn my attention back to working on some other things that I don't need my foot for.  First up is this:

I picked up this roll of embossed textured wrapping paper at the gift store last night.  It's actually a pure white but it's a gray snowy day so I didn't get a great photo of it.  It's a gorgeous roll of paper and I'm thinking that after I transform it a bit with some paint and other things it will make a fabulous surface for a journal.

presents for me!

It's been a banner week for me for getting good things in the mail.  First off this gorgeous gourd bowl from Terri. 

I just love this bowl.  The shape and the colors are just perfect.  It makes me want to sign up for her new Gorgeous Gourds class that starts in April.

and I treated myself to a new bag from a wonderful Etsy seller that I met through the  Etsy Boomers group.

Don't you just love this bag?!  And it's so well constructed and sewn.  I can't wait for spring to get here so I can use it and show it off.   Check out Kimbuktu's Etsy shop here.

And last but not least, the UPS man delivered this on Thursday:

a new Cricut Expression machine!  I'm having a lot of fun playing with this.  I also managed to get some new notebooks and journals added to the etsy shop this week.

But now it's back to the loom.  Handwoven magazine loved the pillows that I sent them that I blogged about here.  They liked them so much they asked me to weave one more so that's what I'll be working on for the next few days.

Have a great weekend everyone!

F&S subscriber spotlight and some new journals

I got some very exciting news in my inbox today about one of the Fibre&Stitch subscribers.  Betty Donahue is having a showing of her quilts (80 of them!) at the Isabel Anderson Comer Museum and Arts Center in Sylacauga, Alabama!   You can visit Betty's flickr site here to see more of her wonderful work. 

That's Betty on the right in this  next photo standing next to one of her incredible quilts:

Betty has also raised a lot of money with her quilts for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt initiative which you can see here.  Congratulations and best wishes for a great show Betty!

I finished off a couple new journals today.  Remember the purple surface I posted yesterday?  Well today it became a journal:

More photos here.

and a new paper bag surface journal.

This one has actual paper bags for some of the pages and you can see more photos of the insides here.

And this just in... I've been featured on the Haute Innovations blog!  I'm so flattered!  Thank you Mimi for featuring me!

Now I'm off to do some work on the Journaling Techniques workshop.   Stay tuned for some sneak peek photos...

What I did this past weekend...

Well I spent a good amount of time playing with paint and making up some new painted backgrounds to use in my journals...

And got a couple of new textured surfaces ready...

This photo doesn't do this surface justice, there's some wonderful layers of copper & golds in this.  Unfortunately it's gray and gloomy here today so photo taking is a bit of challenge.

and a surface will become the "purple haze" journal:

I've also got several new brown paper leather journals in the works too but those won't be ready for a couple of days yet.  I also spent some time hanging out with a new etsy group that I joined:  The BBEST (that's the group name)  team!  You can find a list of all the shops in the group here.  There's some incredibly talented people in the group who make some fabulous things.   Check out these treasuries for just a few highlights of the groups members:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=1743
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=1829
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=1849
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=1819

Have a great time shopping!

A good cause and a new journal

I don't know if you are aware of Ami Simms initiative to raise money for Alzheimer's research or not.  You should really pop over and visit the website to learn how you can help support this very worthy cause by purchasing a donated quilt.   I just bought myself one by the very talented Annie Nordmark (who doesn't have a blog unfortunately).  This quilt is is called "Wild Dreams"

and it's perfect for my living room, although I am very tempted to hang it on the wall and display it.  But it looks so good draped over the edge of the chaise I might just leave it right where it is.   You can click here to read the artist statement that goes with it.    Annie I just love it and I'm so glad it's mine! 

And I added a new chalkboard journal to the shop this morning:

Detail photos in the shop.  This one comes with journaling tags made from the chalkboard fabric!

Have a great weekend everyone!

a winner and some new notebooks!

and the winner of the notebook in my previous post chosen by the random number generator is....

 Sequana!

congratulations!  Email me with your snail mail address and I'll ship it out to you first thing tomorrow.

And here are two new notebooks that have been added to the shop:

"How green is your garden"


Inside pictures here.

and "Love is in the air"

inside pictures here.

Thanks to everyone who played in the One World One Heart giveway! 

One World ONE Heart give away!

Have you seen the posts about the One World ONE event? 

What is it?  Well it's a worldwide blogging give away event intended to bring bloggers together from around the world who may never ordinarily meet. It closes the gap of the blog community and enables us to interact, discover new and wonderful people, and in the process possibly win a prize or many prizes along the way.  You can read all the details here and see the list of all the blogs that are participating. 

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post between now and valentines day.  I"ll draw the winner sometime on 2/14/08.  Make sure there is a way for me to contact you by email to let you know that you've won. 

 Well I decided to jump in and join and I spent this morning creating the item that I'm going to give away.

A spiral bound doodlers notebook!  The front and back covers have been covered in cork paper and the front cover has a piece of chalkboard fabric bonded to it.  You can see I doodled a bit on the cover already (I'll clean it off before I ship it to the winner!)  Here's a look at the inside:

It opens and lays flat and has 100 pages of really nice quality heavy white paper on the inside.

Good luck!

Blue

Two journals from the blue tissue paper surface that I blogged about a few days ago:

A regular sized one:

filled with lots of blank pages and some of my hand painted papers.

And a new sized journal that's a bit smaller at 7"x7":

Both are in the shop.

Now I've got to get working on a custom order and work with some of these:

yummy sheets of silk fusion.  I think I see a journal or two in this pile!

Paper bag journal

It's been a bit of a crazy week here so I haven't gotten as much done as I planned but I did manage to finish off a new paper bag journal:

and inside:

More photos in the shop.

Hope you're having a great weekend!