Fabric Vases

I taught a Fabric Vase class this week. 

I've made fabric bowls before (lots and lots, a few years ago), but had never tried my hand at fabric vases, which seem a bit tricky due to their tall shape (I had to figure out how to get them under the sewing machine).  Here are a couple of my simple ones:

The more advanced vases took a little longer to make, and were more intricate:

And here are the ones made by the 2 ladies who took my beginners vase class:

Mixed-media doodled cards

More of the doodled zentangle-like designs, turned into notecards.  I'm playing around with some mixed-media collage, adding bits of scrapbooking paper, stamping and using painted watercolour paper.  Some stitching as well, for texture.

The 2 large cards below (dimensions about 6x8") were really fun to work with.  Because they were large, and not standard-size, I made custom-sized envelopes for them from colourful calendar sheets. 

Echoes of the Group of Seven

I love impressionist art, and over the past 6 months or so I tried my hand at replicating some impressionist masterpieces.  My first try was one of Monet's poppy fields, but with the second attempt I stayed closer to my Canadian home, and painted (in acrylics, on canvas) Tom Thompson's "The West Wind", from a printed card I bought at the ROM a few years ago.

And because I'm still going through a doodling or Zentangle phase, I also doodled the painting.

In a separate post I'm going to go into more detail about some woodburning I've been playing with as well, but here is a peek at Tom Thompson's West Wind done in pyrography, with some acrylic paint for colour (and a slight stained-glass look - because making artwork in a mix of media makes my life so much happier!)

But, back to the doodled designs, the West Wind piece experience led me to try zentangle-type doodling another Tom Thompson painting, the even more famous "Jack Pine". And that was followed by F. H. Varley's "Stormy Weather Georgian Bay".  I've been using the doodled sketches in several variations of cards, and even matted a few.  Choosing different background papers to print the designs on (scrapbooking paper, various shades of tan, parchment, aged-looking printer paper) and varying the colouring (in markers) of the trees, can result in unique, one of a kind pieces.

Doodle Colouring sheets, and cards

I've been busy doodling again (or, still), the past few months.  Colouring books for adults seem to be all the rage in arts and crafts circles these days, so here are a few sheets of my Zentangle-like contributions:

I've added these for sale (as downloadable PDFs) on my Etsy shop as well:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/MichelleDobrinArt?section_id=10423993&ref=shopsection_leftnav_1

More notecard designs have come out of this doodling phase too.

 

 

And again, some of them are posted on my Etsy site:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/MichelleDobrinArt?section_id=10423993&ref=shopsection_leftnav_1

Cards

Some cards I've made lately (mostly with my doodled designs printed on scrapbooking paper), and a few older cards from last winter.

  

More Zentangles

My range of stitched doodles looks pretty limited, I realize - but I seem to mostly like to do these shell shapes for now.  In my other life as an aquatic biologist/taxonomist, I work with quagga and zebra mussels from time to time, and these must be inspiring the doodles.