I just finished taking an 8 day free course from Louise Fletcher.

This is the second time I took this course and still, learned (or re-learned) a lot.  Louise is a talented artist and an excellent and enthusiastic teacher.  Thousands of people all over the world were enrolled in this free course and it was fun to see everyone's response to the 4 assignments.

For me, the 4th assignment was the best and here is what I worked on today.  

She has lots of videos on YouTube so I encourage you to check them out when you need a little encouragement or some inspiration.
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OK.  After a couple of years hiatus, I'm back to the joy of stitching.

I still love mixed media because it's so fast but slow stitching is more meditative and relaxing.
This piece was created in a mixed media format where I made a design using a glue gun on cardboard, covered a gel plate with acrylic black paint and pressed the "stamp" onto the plate to cover it with paint and then pressed the cardboard onto a white cotton fabric to create the design.  I then used a different acrylic paint to color the background.

I stitched all the black lines with pearl cotton and then added stitches to create the total piece.
If you know me, you know I love making French knots so all of these pieces have a LOT of them.

These pieces are 5 inch squares and I don't know what I will do with them yet.  But making them is very satisfying!
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​Happy stitching!

I spent the day making "stamps" from using a glue gun on stiff cardboard.

I loved the results of this experiment since I couldn't control the glue gun so the prints that resulted were unpredictable and definitely showed the hand of the artist.

I used two Gelli plates for this process.  One used as a "stamp pad"  and one to pull a print from.  I used black acrylic paint for the stamp pad and several transparent acrylic fluid paints for the background.

I will use these prints as a basis for collage.  Try this.  you will have fun!
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