Colorful Give Away!

Where is everyone?? I was surprised how few people guessed how much money I would spend at IQA Long Beach. I know that I must have more than 4 people reading my blog. I would love to hear from all of you. I'll announce the winner on Saturday.

I spent part of the day making this colorful jewelry pouch as the give away prize. If you look really close at the interior photo, you'll see that there's an extra surprise attached to a sterling silver chain and hidden inside one of the compartments. Did I ever mention that I am also a silversmith?

I had a great time at the IQA Long Beach show in Long Beach. It consisted of Special Exhibit quilts (mostly art quilts) and 500 vendors. That's a whole lot of vendors! I'm real excited about an Olfa circle cutter that I bought. It cuts any size circle between 1-7/8 t0 8-1/2". I love circles and use them a lot in my work. This will definitely make it much easier to cut them.

I was in a fabric booth and heard somebody say, "Was that shirt on a blog?" Turns out it was Doreen K all the way from Nevada. It was so surprised that somebody recognized my shirt!

Lucky, Lucky Me

Sue Bleiweiss pulled my name out as one of the lucky prize recipients in her latest give away. I chose one of Sue's beautiful journals that has writing on the outside similar to my t-shirt.We both used the same curved syringe to do the writing. It's a fun technique to play with, you should give it a try.

The journal has three signatures inside, some pages are painted with metallics and some have been left white. I can't wait to start filling it up with something special, but I'm not sure what yet. Thank you, Sue; you are very generous and I LOVE it.

I would like to start teaching some classes locally. I'm planning to teach a variety of stenciling and printing techniques. It's a lot of work to get all the samples and directions made up. I hope it works out.

Kathy and I are driving to Long Beach in the morning to the first IQA show. Many of our friends are already there; Susan Italo is giving demonstrations on how she makes her beautiful jackets and I'm hoping to meet up with Ruth Rae in the QA booth. I want to check out the Stewart Gil paints I keep hearing about. I'm excited, it's going to be a lot of fun!

How much money do you think I'll spend? Hmmmm . . . that would be a good contest. I'll give a prize (unknown at the moment) to the person that guesses the closest amount. Even though it seems like I own every product ever made, I keep finding more to buy. Why is that??