Roy Reminder and Summer Fun

I'm a bit behind in my monthly Roy reminder. You can see that I've been busy having some summer fun with family.

So...here is the reminder...The Search for Roy G Biv (the colors of the rainbow) continues this coming Thursday, July 17. The color of the month is VIOLET. Hope you are out searching and plan to post up to five photos featuring VIOLET. When you do, leave a comment here or on Jennifer's blog and we will link to you for our monthly blog hop. It's lots of fun and we are always looking for more to join in.

Here are a few photos of this summer's project...small books of summer textures featuring teabag pages. If you want to know more about printing on teabags, read about it here. We made covers from brown paper and painted them...all the colors of the rainbow!

Poppy working hard on two book covers.

Kai's stripes became a plaid cover for his book.

Grandma printing leaves for the inside of her book.

We also printed with shells.

Poppy made tracings for one of her books.

A colorful selection of books!

Hope you are enjoying your summer too. I'd love to know about your summer art projects.

Prepping for the Summer Art Project

Drying teabags on fabric.

I spent some time in the kitchen today preparing for this summer's family art project.

Teabags waiting for the boiling water.

Black and green teabags soaking.

Why waste tea? The teabags are drying on cloth and more cloth is soaking in the tea.

Every summer, I put on my artistic thinking cap and come up with a project to share with my nieces and nephew and other family members.

In the past we've:

• made Jazzy dolls
• created woven bags on an innovative loom (my design) for collecting summer treasures
• painted and sun printed silk scarves and created story bags
• printed fabric squares for a 60th anniversary hanging

This summer, I was inspired by one of my Story Cloth students, Susan P. For one of her story cloths she printed designs on dried teabags. I even decided to write my upcoming Newsletter about Deconstructing Tea...using dried teabags, the little envelopes they come, the tags and string and even the boxes to create little pieces of tea art (Hope you'll sign up for Julie B Booth Surface Design News (if you haven't already) to find out more about it!)

Some of the teabag prints from the next issue of Julie B Booth Surface Design News.

My plan is for all of us to make little books using teabags for pages. We'll collect small leaves and other nature textures and print on the teabags. The covers will be made from softened and painted brown paper. As usual, I'm already getting excited to see what my nieces and nephew do. They always surprise and amaze me!

Rich Stories

I've been eagerly awaiting this last class of Fabric Painting, Printing, and Stitching to Tell a Story with Cloth (aka Story Cloth). I was not disappointed...

As Barbara, Susan and Jane pulled out their projects, I felt overwhelmed by the rich colors and beautiful stitches.

This was Barbara's first experience with stitching freely, letting the emotion of her story carry her needle and thread. She grew up in Hungary learning traditional stitchery so this was a new experience. She is certainly a natural!

Susan brought in two pieces with her printed figures. The class enjoyed interpreting all the possible stories reflected in this simple (yet really complex) piece made from printed tea bags.

The second piece is also very mysterious...who are these figures? The stitching is quite beautiful and rhythmic.

Jane continued to work on her humorous story of the moles and her son's dog. She has wonderful plans for this piece that is coming together. She has a deadline...her son's birthday in mid-June. I can't wait to see the finished piece!

We are planning to get together in a month to see how the pieces progress. It might be time for me to join in with a story of my own!

Thank you students! You were such a rewarding group to teach!