Author Archives: Sheba

November Beaded Journal Project Begins

november BJP 2008 b4

November 2003 is when I became a dog lover, when I was completely won over by my first BIG dog. So this month’s page will honor Charger and his big stupid grin. This is the fabric quilt prior to beading. I have some scrabble letters to spell out the word “love” and then plan to bead some borders, bones and his hat and scarf. Not sure what other beading I will do, this one will probably be pretty simple.

See my other month’s pages here (plus theflickr album) and more about Charger here (plus HIS flickr album) .

I had contemplated doing something election oriented but decided that at this point, Charger is more of an influence… perhaps January will be about our new President.

BJP October in Progress…


My October page in progress, originally uploaded by Charger’s Mommy.

I still have more work to do but got a lot done yesterday and will do a little more tonight. The dress and jacket are done, but I want to do the hat and more on the white swirls area.

Already thinking about November’s page. Which will be something about Charger, since we got him in November.

bones~n~butterflies

Another digital mandala for ArtSoMoFo.

Do you ever make something that you don’t like, but still post or share it? I have many pieces that I don’t care for, but I always hope that someone else will see something that I don’t. What do you think of this one? What do you notice? Does it grab you or speak to you? I played with it changing it over and over again, but it is still not meeting my vision.

I haven’t been feeling good, a sinus infection has been dragging on for over a month. It is hard to feel the spark and energy to create when health issues add their toll to regular daily life. I had high expectations of making a new mandala every day for the month. I do love to work in a series with a theme, color or other commonalities.

Something This Way…

I love Halloween and perhaps I even like Fall. Actually, I do love the smell of fall leaves, wood burning stoves filling the crisp air and the colors of bright reds and oranges that fill the trees and skies. But I hate the dark, cold and wet, which is what fall mostly is around here. I have always loved Halloween because I love making costumes, becoming someone else for a short time. I love dark stories and poems. Like Poe and King NOT Saw and chop them up type movies.

This Fall has been a roller coaster of ups and downs for me… The teaching has been going so well, but physically I have been suffering from an endless cold for almost a month now. It has been hard with the increasing bad weather to get in the needed healthy exercise and nutrition (don’t you just crave those comfort foods that are oh so bad for you when its cold?)

What is your favorite season? What do you like about Fall?

Today’s Mandala is about Fall. Photos are some creative commons photos (one, two) altered in Adobe Photoshop Elements along with some of my own. I have a really simple mandala tutorial that my students use to create this type of digital art. If you are interested in giving it a try yourself. be sure to share the results!

ArtSoMoFo October 2008

These are my first couple arts for this year’s challenge of making some art everyday for the month of October. These are just some quick examples I was doing for students in class as I showed them how to use Photoshop. But I pretty much make art everyday at school, so I might as well show it off here too.

artsomofo2008_03

artsomofo2008_02

artsomofo2008_01

Although the above were made at school as examples… this one was made at home. The girl in the center is from a photo shoot I did in the early 90’s when I was actually still developing my own film and printing my own photos. The other images are from a great photo sharing flickr group that posts images to be used in collage.

artsomofo2008_04

The Start of October’s BJP page

The beginning of October’s Beaded Journal Project page. This has pieces from 5 different fabrics pieced together and using some cool decorative stitches on my machine. I like the eyelash type stitch that I did on the edge of the glow-in-the-dark eye fabric, which will also be the backing for this one. (Click to see a larger view, or make it a favorite at Flickr.) This is also my art for the day for ArtSoMoFo. I need to post my other work from this month so far as well. Now to select some beads and begin that phase.

Local Washington Voters

We now take a break from our regularly scheduled art content for a political message.

Local Washington Voters, Please be sure you are also educating yourself on the important local election issues!

Our current state superintendent of public instruction needs to be replaced. If you support teachers and education you will want to support Gov. Chris Gregoire for Governor and Randy Dorn as the new state superintendent of public instruction.

Randy Dorn, is a former legislator, teacher and principal, who is executive director of the Public Schools Employees of Washington. Randy Dorn: http://www.randydorn2008.com.

The teacher’s union has put together their list of candidates to support if you are interested.
http://www.ourvoicewashingtonea.org/recommendations/candidates.php