Leanne Shawler, Artist

So I signed on for "Pay It Forward" and TinyBear 's thank you arrived in the mail last week: It is the most beautiful felted heart! Thank you!!! Now about this Pay it Forward thing. I have to "pass it on" but nobody's signed on yet! Follow this link to do so. My lovely heart is now hanging on my inspiration board (aka the always-open shutters)...

I love wisteria. Loved it since the flowers covered an arbor at university and dropped into our food. Love them. So when our house came with a wisteria, what a bonus that was. Until it didn't flower. And then gave us one flower. And didn't flower again. And then we got a few more. Each year, the results were pretty pitiful. Last year wasn't too bad, but this year. Take a look! This is the wisteria two weeks ago.... And this is the wisteria last week! It's loaded with blossoms!! Welcome, Spring!

I had shared with a friend my love of things old and pretty... While I was at her place for an Oscars party (yes, it's taken me a while to get around to posting about it), she brought out this: (although the ancient, beautiful hanger is mine--a family heirloom if you can say such things of clothes hangers!) I'm guessing its circa 1930's/40's given the little gusset that you can't see in the bottom and the hand stitching. My friend couldn't remember the story that went with it. It's kind of like a one piece. I've no idea of its worth, but currently the idea of chopping it up for art is making me recoil. With this and the christening dress, I may have to start a wall of clothing shadow boxes. But you need at least three for pleasing harmony, right? Hmmmmm..... [Oh, I know, it's St. Patty's Day. Can we just agree that I'm a Miss Opposite and so have posted something peach-colored instead of today's ubiquitous green? (I am wearing green thoug...

It's in progress, am happy to say. I drew and colored a face I liked, put it onto big canvas and sketched it in, not in great detail, and put down the first background layers which I think is really spooky cool, although the top half of the painting is a bit flat. The sheen is from where I went mad with Glimmer Mists :) I've since added some stenciling in since the above photo, and I think I'm about ready to start painting the mermaid (you can probably barely make out the sketch through the paint). Am a bit worried I haven't got the proportions right, so it's off to Miss Suzi Blu (as this is part of her class, although I'm not following her painting exactly with this one) to see if its okay or if it needs more tweaking.

The next to last project we did in the Mori Cupcake class (which I miss already) was to put together a journal. Mine's not finished yet, but I thought I'd share the cover and a few pages. I made the cover from a David Austin Roses catalog... I brilliantly managed to stitch in one signature upside down (and also used too thick cord to do the binding), but I kinda like the haphazard rusticness of it. The spread below has a page added by using rings, because it was a pretty card I'd been hoarding and always wanted to use. But here's the other side of it. The Red Riding Hood image is a creation of my Mori Cupcake teacher, Natalie Neumann (so all credit is to her!), to be included in an altered clothing project (confession: still haven't made it), and I added it here on top of some experimenting I did with alcohol inks for the La Sirena class! Below is the first spread I did with fabric, using a left over piece from my embroidery sampler and images from the net of the M...

Have you seen this out there on the blogosphere? Pay It Forward 2011 . The only thing is: I am not sure where it started! I saw it on Tiny Bear's "From a Danish Bearmaker's Studio" blog and I checked out where she got it from and well, it seems like an infinite journey back, which is how it should be! So here's how it works.... The first five (5) people who comment on this blog post will get a handmade gift from me. In return, though, you must do two things: write a blog post that explains Pay It Forward 2011. spread the love and send handmade gifts to your first five commenters! "It's not the size of the item that matters, but the spirit of paying it forward." OK, there's a third thing -- the first 5 folks will need to be contactable in some way so I can get mailing info and the like, or use my "About Me" blog page to reach me. My goal is to get those handmade gifts out, um, by the end of the year. God willing, before summer's ove...

I did a simple gluebook page for the Green Paper challenge this month. I spent the rest of the day working on the journal prompts from the Artful Pages class. My plan was to do garden prep (actually, my plan was to go visiting but my plan before the visiting plan was to do garden prep), but I managed to break a braces wire (I have an invisible retainer-thingy) while biting down on my last bite of my "everything" bagel thins for breakfast this morning, so I had to try and get it fixed (not until hopefully on Monday), and the I figured, what the hey, lets do art for the day (and laundry). Right now I have dental braces wax back there because the wire's annoying. Don't know why they insist on making it mint-flavored though. Bleaugh. And it melts when you eat hot soup. (ick) Yep, I'm on a small bites diet: soup, smoothies and by golly, I managed to eat Tim Tams by using the side of my mouth to bite them. Where there's a will, there's a way!