if you’re planning to get any gifts from the Etsy store Made by Mixy, please don’t leave it to the last minute, the postal elves are scurrying as fast as they can 😉
Dear Santa,
if you’re planning to get any gifts from the Etsy store Made by Mixy, please don’t leave it to the last minute, the postal elves are scurrying as fast as they can 😉
For shopping on behalf of folks from any of these places, these are the last chance mailing dates from the UK:
Monday, December 9 for Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Far and Middle East Wednesday, December 11 for Eastern Europe Thursday, December 12 for Australia and New Zealand Saturday, December 14 for Canada and USA Monday, December 16 for most of Europe Wednesday, December 18 for UK & Ireland
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You’ll get a confirmation email when you sign up (check you junk mail folder – cos sometimes the good stuff gets swept away by mistake). I’ll pop into your inbox about once a month with news on what I’m up to in my colorful little corner of the universe and what’s been inspiring me.
“Seven days. Seven black and white photos of your life. No people. No explanation. Challenge someone new each day.”
Seven days without color: day 4
“Seven days. Seven black and white photos of your life. No people. No explanation. Challenge someone new each day.”
<No explanation> that’s part of the challenge. As a serial-explainer-of-things and reason-finder-extraordinare this is the real challenging part to me. Pffffft!
“Seven days. Seven black and white photos of your life. No people. No explanation. Challenge someone new each day.”
Seven days without color: day 3
“Seven days. Seven black and white photos of your life. No people. No explanation. Challenge someone new each day.”
I’m juggling so many color-themed ideas right now:
I published the revised version of my Year Full of Color eBook yesterday, meanwhile TWELVTY 2018&TWELVTY-EXTRA are in the final planning stages ready to launch next month. So a bit of black and white photography is just the fresh air I need right now to nourish my thought processes!
(Hop onto my email list below if you’d like a free copy of the ebook)
“Seven days. Seven black and white photos of your life. No people. No explanation. Challenge someone new each day.”
Seven days without color: day 2
“Seven days. Seven black and white photos of your life. No people. No explanation. Challenge someone new each day.”
A few days of monochrome abstract photography is the perfect counterbalance to all the richness of color I usually spend my days playing in. Today I’m revising my ebook ‘A year full of color’for 2018
(scooch on down to the end of this post to grab your free copy if you’ve not already done so. If you’re already on my mailing list you’ll be first to get the all new version)
(But more on that in a moment… first let me set the scene…)
I was telling you about how TWELVTY has begun to take on a life of its own.It’s just a few weeks into its year long life and it’s not going the way I imagined…
Instead of being the set of 12 individual colored months, like I first planned, TWELVTY is turning into a story made of 12 chapters. They are woven together and already I can see that taken separately they lose the essential essence of the story. The full year of color has a life the months alone can’t provide.
To begin I wanted to make this program available to join throughout the year, but what I didn’t know then was how all-encompassing it was to become! It’s grown beyond my imaginings, and to be honest if someone was to join later in the year I don’t think they’d get the full magic of being a part of TWELVTY just by accessing the material retrospectively.
So I’ve decided to close the doors on TWELVTY at the end of this month. No more new recruits after the end of February.
But wait up!that’s not all….
Before the doors close, as today is my birthday ………
I’m going to gift 2 FREE PLACES in TWELVTY 2017 in a Prize Draw.
The prize draw runs from Friday 17th Feb for ONE WEEK. Winners will be notified Saturday 25th February.
Are you someone who gets all lit up about color?
Would you love to join a tribe of creatives who are just like us?
If so, just jump on my mailing list here and reply to the welcome email with the title “I’M IN!”
to add your name to the hat for the prize draw.
(and as a welcome, you get this little ebook all about color when you join my list)
Want to find out more about what’s in TWELVTY – it’s all over here . I also did a big ole Q&A postover here. Or ask me in the comments – I’m massively excited about this – ask me anything! (anything about TWELVTY…I don’t have answers to much else!)
I don’t know if I’ll be offering this program again. Next year has different adventures in store for me, so this could be ‘now or never’, folks!
Lordy, where has the time gone since I last posted….? I’ve missed our chats.
Student life is going from strength to strength – initial doubts replaced by a deep joy of the challenges. This week has been ‘reading week’ so college was closed, I’ve caught up on the day job & finally replaced my creaky 8 yr old computer in the office. In the odd moments in between I’ve been busy-ing on the quilt which has grown dramatically since I last showed you….
Also I got myself some Easy Batik I plan to play with this weekend – I’ll show you how it goes – I’m intrigued!! I also found out we can do real batik in school, and am super excited about this!
I have a question, I hope some of you textile-y folks may be able to answer…
I’ve got the urge to batik, and seen this stuff online, Dylon Easy Batik. My question is: have you ever tried it out, and how did you find it to use?
Although I’m still painting and all – this quilt is obsession de jour. There’s a real autumnal feel in the air the last couple of days – so stitching away!
Having trimmed, washed, de-fluffed and thoroughly considered my stacks of velvet patches I deceid the best way forward would be to take the smallest length and cut all the other patches to this size.
(First use of the rotary cutter – it you use fabric a lot and don’t have one I highly recommend trying it out.) I’ve now got a good size pile of offcuts which I can see are just waiting for a project of their own…!
Experimental layouts, fluff induced sneezing. You’ll see there’s quite a bit of fluff and threads on the fabric – I battled with it a while, but it keeps coming back while there are unfinished edges!
The patches are 9cm (3 and a bit inches) square, in 5 x 5 squares. Each of these squares takes about 30 mins to machine together (inc time for fiddling about. The pile of 2 velvets together makes the patches ‘walk’ a bit. Some of them take a bit of battling with!)
I’ve machined 8 of these squares now, and begun hand embroidering over the machine stitching in places. Relieved to report the fluff levels are subsiding too!
September’s just round the corner and me and the Inner Kid are looking forward to some cosiness. We reeeeeally want a velvet quilt in which to snuggle.
Now, something like 15 years ago we made one. It was a patchwork of scavanged velvet from car boot sales and charity shops, excuses, impatience and scant attention to detail. I didn’t have such a balanced relationship with IK back then, so handed over almost all the decision making, which culminated in a lovely colorful quilt, full of hurried inaccuracies, apology and shonky stitching. It began to develop holes almost straight away.
Fast forward another 10 years or so: We decide to re-incarnate/up-cycle said quilt into covers for floor cushions. Some long while after this they ended up in that limbo of ‘waiting for next idea’ space. The ragbag. The months of scavanging fabric, sorting and choosing, cutting into squares, sneezing from the fluff were so long past, but still fresh enough that we couldn’t totally let go.
Fast forward again to yesterday: I left IK sleeping off the excitement of the previous day and snuck upstairs with scissors and freshly washed quilt/cushion cover remnants.
Sssssshhhhh…. don’t tell, but I actually began trimming down the pieces to the same size (yes, measured not guessed)…. layed them out on the (ironed) backing fabric and pinned them. Just like a proper grown up would do!!!
I’ll post up some picks as we go along – meanwhile IK is yelling in the background: I have to paint the dream I just woke from. QUICK before it escapes!
Mixy's Art Blog 