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.

haunted and mysterious. . .

it all began with a wonderful old encyclopedia. 'M' is for Mysterious

i have been plotting for over a year now a book exchange to document all things haunted and mysterious. well, it has finally begun. our books have been mailed out and i am starting to see a few peeks out there. melissa posted today about her book and you can see marilyn's here. still waiting to see where candice and cassondra will post.

for a project i have been mulling around for months you would think i wouldn't have any trouble pulling it off. however, i have had the rockiest beginning ever. at one point i emailed the group and admitted the agony of defeat.
after staying up till 3:30am one night working on my book and then ripping it all apart i finally started over. what started out as a serious exploration of the mysterious has turned into a playful romp into the haunted past.






I have been cleaning up the disaster in my studio today. I had suitcases with all their contents strewn around, teetering piles of things, and bins spilling open as I have been digging. . . .
a neighbor girl wandered in yesterday and said 'how come this is such a mess?'
'because I make messes' I told her. especially when I am working on a deadline.

the cover is from an old encyclopedia with a raised design on the front that reminded me of symbols and signs. i really like the flocked wallpapers i used as endpapers and i only sewed in the page signatures so it would be easy to remove, but i already sent my book off to cassondra, what should i do?? i am wishy-washing drastically on this one.
here are two pages from the serious book that i ripped out. they don't seem to fit any longer but i still like them.
she is titled 'creature of the night' i didn't finish her background.





here is a peek at all the wonderful goodies that came in the mail last week to get us thinking about the realm of the haunted and mysterious. this first goodie bundle is from marilyn. that face really freaked me out, i had to use it on the sugared skeleton!


here is the fun collection of black and white things from cassondra. she printed the old cabinet card photo faces onto silk.


melissa created such a fun package of patterned papers and wrapped it all up in the greatest striped tissue.


candice tied this great black skeleton man on her package. i ate the licorice caramel she tucked in first thing!


Until Later. . . . keep your eyes open for black cats and ghosties, julie


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end of summer flowers

this feels like the last long weekend of summer. already i think my roses are blooming their last wave and it is getting cooler at night. the the late afternoon sunshine has that fleeting golden glow we get at the very end of summer is here. it is wonderful for taking pictures and has a light all its own.
it is a melancholy end. i will be sad to see the flowers replaced by wind blown leaves and frost. so i have gathered a few photos to last me through till spring. . .


pink taffy crocheted flowers with mint green leaf.



one of my favorite little zipper purses. the tiny pom pom is off an old hat


a note i mailed off to a friend


these beautiful wool flowers came in the mail from cassondra! her shop always inspires me and she has the best eye for lovely things.


the page 'blossoming' from a linen book i made over the winter.


aqua blue applique daisies wrapped around an old remnant card from valarie. i nearly fainted when i unwrapped the pink tissue off and saw this. . .


bundle of millinery buds, can't wait to do something with these.


wool bead ring with silver beads and a pink millinery flower. one of the projects in my book coming out in a few weeks. i got my advance copy in the mail and couldn't believe i was finally holding my book!! i took it to art group and we made felt beads. I can't wait to make some more of these rings.

i can't help it. . .

i just can't help it. . .
i am already thinking christmas. maybe it is the gorgeous glass garland that arrived last week and is sitting in a glass bowl on my desk.

it could be that candice and i are going to be vendors at silver bella this november, lots to get ready for that.
or i guess i could blame it on the vintage sequin cherries and the candy striped trim i bought.



the tags for these little millinery fruits could be the culprit.



i know i should get a grip here, it is only the middle of august. its just i adore everything vintage and christmas, sparkly and shiny, and all the lights glowing in the snow.




no, i am not wishing snow on anyone right now. but the heat is dragging me down and i want to come in all chilly and have a cup of cocoa with creme and snuggle in a big blanket and read a book.
hard to enjoy that right now.
so until everyone else is with me on this christmas thing i guess i'll just hang in there a few more weeks. . .

summer days in new york city

a summer thunderstorm is moving through the valley out my window and streaks of lightning are flashing in the sky. it is a perfect evening. the kind when neighbors sit out on their porches and comment on the weather and the kids ride around on their bikes. we are to the slow crawl here at the end of july. the heat is beginning to break a bit, thank goodness as anything near 100 degrees has me wilting. i have been wanting to post about our week in new york but i am just relishing these last few days of summer. once august hits we are gearing up to go back to school and i am getting things ready for my classes.
so this week i spent a whole day reading a book, went biking up the canyon, stopped at the corn stand, did things that i love to do in the summer without a schedule.


we didn't take enough pictures on our trip to new york of course! this time because i didn't want to look like a dopey tourist or i didn't want to drag my big camera with all the walking we did. this is the view outside our hotel window. looked like gotham city. in fact we tried to go see the new batman movie on opening night but it was all sold out. as it turned out one of the places i wanted to go manhattan costume supply was right across the street. everything a person would need to be a costumer on a movie set. one aisle had 15 different kinds of fake blood, non-drying, drying, light, medium, dark, it was crazy.



central park was beautiful, one of the places marina wanted to see. we asked a lady to take our photo and she didn't speak any english, but the photo turned out to be our best one together. thank you nice lady. . .
one of my favorite stores of course was tinsel trading. they were moving to a new store so i think i caught them not on their best day but i loved digging through the cardboard boxes they brought up from the basement that were filled with old button cards with all the paper turning to dust. the wall of flowers took my breath away. imagine me digging through all the lovely boxes of vintage flowers.




china town was amazing! we went to pearl paint a five story art supply store that had everything i could ever imagine. a whole floor of paper, a whole floor of paint, an aisle of masking tapes. it was fantastic. we both spent hours looking at every thing. lunch was at the excellent dumpling house. noone spoke english, we just pointed to the pictures on the menu. the food was the best chinese i have ever had. wish that place was close by :)




on the streets there were vendors selling fruits we had never seen before. i stopped and tried everything. at the open air fish market however i did not. a big plastic tub of octopus basking in the heat. the smell was suffocating. the markets were so fun to walk through, we picked out a whole sack of chinese candy to bring home for the family to try. the packaging was too adorable to resist.




we went to lots of museums to take in all the underground art we could find. the museum of modern art had a big salvador dali exhibit going on, what a weird guy. his photo was fantastic though. the museum docent said there is a book just on salvador dali's mustache.
this was my favorite exhibit. a room full of light fixtures that had been dipped in the dead sea until they formed salt crystals. they had them hanging in front of a big screen where a silent film was running of a woman swimming with 100 watermelons strung together making weird formations.


in soho we found the coolest small galleries. we saw an original character sketch by tim burton of the corpse bride he had done on the cardboard inside of a cereal box along with the designs for the original disney sleeping beauty, signed dr suess originals and an original pencil sketch of winnie the pooh. the energy in these works was unmistakable!
i bought this piece from an artist the had a table on the street during the saturday art fair. her name is Vartouhi Pinkston. the etching is so tiny and hand watercolored. marina bought several pieces as well. magic. . .



mood fabrics was another three story wonder. i didn't know where to even begin. here are two photos from the bottom floor of upholstery fabrics. it was so fun to see pages from fashion magazines with top designer fashions on the walls with swatches of the original fabrics stapled to the paper. oh to have this magical store at my backdoor when i needed it.


just before we left town we stopped at dylan's candy bar. three stories of candy. the stairs were poured resin with candy set in. each landing had a saying spelled out in candy. 'stairway to candy heaven' and 'may each step you take be sweet'.
a wonderland, you can find everything there imaginable. old fashioned candies from your childhood. i brought home some ultimate sour war head drops. sorry, they are long gone. . . .