Week one wrap up...

I stitched and glued some of my fusion sheets together for this collage. Here's a picture of the finished project - I mounted the fusion sheets on a 12" square stretched canvas.

The fused sheets I made last night turned out great but, when I ironed all of them I noticed that some of them looked a little bubbled. My guess is that I didn't get the layers completely wet when I made them (though there was sure a lot of water on my work surface!). They will be fine to use, I'll just remember to wet them more when I make more in the future.

For this collage, I machine stitched two pieces of silk fusion together and stitched on a piece of cotton fabric that I had painted Lumiere circles on (I used the round erasers that are made for white erase boards - I love using them for painting dots! Available at Staples, three sizes to a package). After the paint dried I used an ultra fine point Sharpie to draw messy circles around the dots. I love the way it turned out! I'm using that fabric as part of the blocks I am making for a 4" square quilt block exchange.

The small squares are folded book pages - on top of them are small pieces of matboard that I inked & stamped. The colorful paper is from the watercolor paper scraps I save and the whole bundle is tied together with red waxed linen cord. I made about a hundred of the squares - another addition to my stash of ready-to-use embellishments.

Alot of people are always looking for what a piece of art "means" and, honestly, that is something I often struggle with. I recently read an article where the artist said that art often has no definiable "meaning" - it just all looks good together. I find that pretty freeing.

Week Number One has gone well, I think. I am feeling encouraged about moving forward with "Bookworm 52" and am excited about doing my next project. So far, I'm feeling like this was all a good idea ... here's hoping I'm still saying that 51 weeks from now!

Off to New Jersey tomorrow for a concert & overnight at The Water Club, sister hotel to The Borgata - both with the smooshiest, cushiest beds with big piles of pillows and super-soft sheets. Always a treat. I'm already thinking about Sunday mornings room service!