This is just a random post to discuss some art finds and vintage things I recently collected (and a small AI art experiment). This month, I attended Interwoven Expressions again, and was a wee sad to not see one of the artists I was hoping to. Aside from something she made, I kept my budget to only include craft supplies. I picked up this towel dyed with pressed flowers. I love the colors and texture in it. I think it came from Tammy Tyler of knit one, purl too.

I also grabbed this silk ribbon by Winding Wool Creek Fiber Mill. I don’t have any silk ribbon that is variegated in this way, so that will be fun when I finally think of a project for it.

But then I couldn’t stop myself from picking up this little owl; I already purchased something from Denise Benczik the very first time I went to the event, but I simply had to have this because I was quite attracted to her mix of textiles. I don’t really need more things just sitting on shelves to collect dust, but since it inspired something in me about creating art, I rolled with it. Funny how easy it can be to justify our decisions;)

Then, whilst visiting my home town recently, I met up with a friend at a peddler’s mart. Here I also wanted to keep my purchasing to crafty bits. I scored a nice ceramic dish for my upcoming dye experiments, and this little doily thing that I hope to use in an upcoming Stitch Club workshop.

I also couldn’t turn down this teeny tea cup pin cushion.

I grabbed some other fun things that hopefully will turn into art, but I’ll save photos of them for their eventual outcomes. I did buy a nice tea cup for my gramma, having brought a jade plant clipping that needed a home. I had gifted one to my brother in a red tea cup (I think it’s since died), and my friend in a stoneware mug already (her green thumb might keep it alive), and left tiny clippings in case my parents had room in their RV. The plant is my MIL’s and I’ve tried to grow my own clippings a few times now without success. Let’s hope this version makes it!

A super nice surprise from the peddlers mall were these two little wonky deer.

I picked them up and was explaining to my friend how my gramma has a big version sitting on her shelf that I’ve always been quite fond of. Then, my friend offered to make them mine as a Winter Solstice gift in honor of our friendship. Can’t say no to that! 😉

—

To end, this item doesn’t really deserve a blog post all by itself so I’ll just stick it here. I have been learning Adobe more thoroughly as you may recall, and wanted to see if I could use their AI generation (Firefly) as a basis to make art. Not in and of itself, but as the sketch to build upon with paint or stitch. I also recently purchased the Camera Lucida app after much thought, so I combined these two ideas together. In Firefly, I typed something like “creepy cave” for the background (it was more wordy than that, but I forget exactly what I typed). Then, I made another image of a “Female RPG ranger with torch” (or something). I had the spiderweb border pulled from the internet forever ago (I try to be much better at marking where I got items to give credit now). In photoshop, I combined the three of them then printed it out on my B&W printer. I set up my Camera Lucida app to view the image, and then traced around it on normal computer paper. So far, so good – I think this combo-technique will help me create the images I have in my head that I can’t seem to get out into real life. But, since I had nothing else to do, I decided to just play with this, so I outlined it in a sharpie. Then I used a set of water color pencils to shade in some color, but there were only 8 colors to choose from, so that added some limitations. And, because I had used regular paper, I knew adding water would make it very crinkly. I couldn’t find my rubbing alcohol to see if that would work, but I found witch hazel. It crinkled the paper some, but not like water would have. And it spread the color out some, but also not like water would have. Overall, from start to finish this might have taken about 30 minutes – a very quick experiment just to see the process. And as such, I give this experiment a passing grade, but not a very high one;)