Busy with New Journals

Since my last post several months ago I have been VERY busy creating and selling at various venues.  I've done some weekend sales locally and continue to sell at 2 galleries and an art school here in the SW VA area.  One of my sales was in central NY at a quilt guild show.  In looking at how some of those same sales went last year I certainly have sold more this year!  I have one weekend sale left which is next month so I have some room to breathe, I actually created a journal for myself.  I had been given, by my mother, a large quantity of crazy quilt fabrics and in among the pieces was the beginnings of a blue crazy quilt that she had started so I decided to make it a little bit bigger and use it for a cover.  I practiced embroidery on it and had fun finishing it.  The best thing was that I finally figured out the elusive bullion knot which is basically a french knot done horizontally.  I have been attempting this stitch on and off for several years and for some reason figured it out!  The bumble bee body is black and white bullions:

 I also inherited, from my sister, a large bag of fulled wool sweaters and made several more tri-fold journals with lots of hand embroidery as well:

 My satin/velvet rosette journals are pretty popular so I grabbed some satin from the previously mentioned gift of fabric and worked on some pink journals:

 Quite a few people comment on the aluminum tape journal that I have for sale so I decided to make a few more.  Here's one:

 I recently purchased some colorful coordinating fabric at the local fabric store for some needle books.  I love the colors:

 Since I rarely throw scraps away I used the smaller pieces from this fabric to create free motion flower journal covers.  The larger one has flowers:

 The smaller one has circles:

I've also been making bracelets with wire weaving using Parawire.  They are going much more smoothly now after much practice.

One of the other reasons I have not posted lately is that I have been working on replacing this blog with a website on which I can sell my journals (and possibly jewelry).  At every sale I have people ask if I have a website so I'm jumping in and creating one.  I'm moving slowly on this project but hope to have it up and running by the first of the year! Stay tuned.