Leanne Shawler, Artist

So this is the sampler I made for my Mum for Christmas. Thankfully, I had an extra few weeks before seeing her. So it started out as a review of my year (one thing of each month), and then I found this cute owl on etsy by Michelle Palmer , and bought this cute stitching template of a turtle by Charlotte Lyons (funds raised to help Gulf wildlife), and a cute mini fabric collage by Pam Garrison . I got things back on the rails, though, and then filled the gaps with flowers and stars.... My "suzi blu" La Sirena mermaid. (I took this before I was finished, so her mouth isn't there.) A lace scrap to symbolize my mori girl interest: From my November vacation: Charlotte's turtle: V is for the Young Victoria project from the start of last year.

One of the prompts was to share a favorite photo. I chose the top one of this strip from Photobooth (a cool iPhone app that Hope turned me onto!). Just a bit of silliness.

Mary medals (and a brooch from Karla Nathan's shop). These would be perfect strung with some twisted and knotted seam binding, wouldn't they?

This is taking much longer than I planned. I posted the background earlier . This is my colored in sketch of my mermaid, using one of Suzi's templates: And this is where she was at as of Saturday morning... I tinkered some more Sunday after church ... hopefully I will be able to show you the finished painting soon....

Last week, my planned workday went to h*** in a handbasket (hey, I work in a church, remember?). The priest's vesting room stunk to high heaven of mold/mildew from the recent downpours, the carpet had been soaked in one place, and my hubby recommended we get the vestments outta there before the mold/mildew spores transferred as we knew the smell was coming from somewhere . So we start hauling out vestments and transferring them to a couple of other closets....they were dry and untouched (and not smelly, apparently I have a nose for it) .... But found that we had a pile of mildewy clothes on the floor of one of the closets, and the wet had wicked up from these.... Alas, two gorgeous black wool cassocks were completely ruined with mildew up to the knees. I have a bad feeling that can't have occurred in just the last couple of weeks and that this has been an undiagnosed problem... Fortunately, the vestments currently in use were spared and weren't even damp, but...

I wasn't planning to share any pages from the #reverb series, but I thought I would share a couple that I don't mind, well, sharing! I filled up this entire notebook, mainly because I chose to glue pages together to prevent leak-through. The cool this is there are 2-3 more in this set that I can use in upcoming years for the same/similar purpose. I don't remember which two days these were. I decided not to date them as I went. I'm sharing this one because of the right-hand side page. That, my friends, is what the salt and pepper comes in when you fly United. So it's this cool little double-sided window! (great for a subpage, but I didn't think that one ahead) I kept it pretty simple. It was more important to me to respond honestly to the prompts (ok, am not sure about the jumping jacks part below) than to go all out with prettiness. But the Pitt artist pens did the job pretty well, I think. I still have one page left of the #reverb10 to finish, and that's th...

So for various reasons, I had put off making a sincere start on my first "La Sirena" painting for Suzi Blu's La Petit Academy class (which was supposed to end December 31, but we all got an extension!). Last weekend, I really got started. I drew and colored in my mermaid, sent her off to Suzi for a critique ... and then started on the background. The pictures are a bit blurry because it was a race between me and the dying camera battery.... Spraying paint christened the easel well and truly.... Oh, I also managed to spray my iPhone which was sitting to the far left of the easel. Really fine spray, so I'm going to have to be a little more careful next time. Don't worry, it survived. So that was the weekend of Christmas' work. This weekend just gone, I've added my mermaid and done some more painting, and the goal today is to fix the fix from Saturday (my shadows were a wee bit too red, so I managed to use acrylic glazing medium to blend it more and take ...