tree of life

i have been watching out my window each day as the leaves have turned their autumn colors and begun to fall. with a hundred trees in the park behind my house it is quite the show. the late afternoon light has a golden glow to it reflecting off all the colors in the leaves. a little stack of wool on my desk just became this needle book. i wasn't even thinking about what i was sewing and then there it was. this delicate tree with leaves of many colors and shimmering silver fruit. i embroidered tiny seed beads on the leaves and added two of my favorite vintage glass beads for fluttery leaves high in the tree.



i love how the seed beads along the binding turned out. i made this needle book for my sisters birthday this week and felt such joy giving it to her. i know she will keep it always.
enjoy the leaves swirling outside your window and the lovely warmth of this autumn afternoon. julie

wool felt gifties

simply irresistable:

a stack of wool felt scraps on my desk
my new wool embroidery threads in a vintage square plastic sewing container
needles dangling colored threads over the edge of my pincushion



two sketched designs on the back of a receipt!
a little blue flowered candy tin from england with all my favorite tiny glass beads


fall break and four days off. . .



i tell you, i did see my neighbor putting up his christmas lights this weekend so it's ok for me to post these gifties in my shop!

keeper of the light

i had such a wonderful week in portland at art and soul. i enjoyed so much seeing again friends and staying with the gals from my art group. this year i got to see more of portland as cassondra and michelle took us out for dinner several nights and then we spent the day in portland shopping at some fun antique stores. the schedule we took with us said vendors night began at 7:00 pm so we were an hour late when we arrived as it started at 6:00 pm. . .
we still had a great time shopping and i came home with some very lovely vintage velvet ribbons.
i loved taking a class from misty again. the little books we all worked on turned out so amazing. we painted over faces and collaged with the coolest images. i created backgrounds for 12 pages and finished 5 in class. here are the first few:





i did sneak this photo of deb working away at her book


the booksigning for north light was such a fun event! i brought lots of felt samples from the book to display and i enjoyed so much talking with everyone. i got to sit next to stephanie for the evening as we were at the same table.! she had such beautiful pieces of jewelry on display. i got a first hand look at what she would be selling at vendors night. i bought a lovely necklace with blue beads and a raven under resin. we each got to take home our book poster, imagine carrying that through security. . .



in my class with katie i worked at really breaking out of my normal color scheme and made these two pieces. the faces were sketched randomly with my left hand on phone book pages. i picked out two that i liked and used them for these two paintings. both are coated with wax and resin for such an amazing finish.
pushing daisies


two hearts are better


and here are the two pieces i made in susan's class.



the ring has the coolest green stone tucked inside the copper discs.
wishing i had taken more pictures.
the great news is we have the rest of the week off school for fall break and nothing planned. i am looking forward to marina coming home for a few days and hanging out in the studio.