Princess Bubbles Creates

 My Radical Botanical Challenge piece is finished.  I am not sure that it is radical but it is botanical and it is different for me.  I enjoyed stitching this piece and using recycled materials.  I will get this image sent off to the San Fransisco School of Needlework and Design now.  Their stitching challenges are interesting.  I don't always know what I will do with the piece once it is finished though.  Oh well, it was a pleasure to create it.

 Mandalas are such a beautiful way to play with colour.  This mandala is all about colour. When it comes to my paper mandalas I haven't really explored adding texture all that much.  It might be interesting to do more of that. I have tried using some embossing powder and micro glass beads.  Those mandalas turned out okay but not great.   More need to be tried.  I would also like to explore more substrates for my mandalas.  Mostly it has been paper or cloth.  Those are my two favourites but for sure there have to be others to explore.

 I am going overboard creating my floofy book pages.  It is so fun for me to go through my bits and pieces and find things that look good together.  I hand stitch them into miniature collages and then they wait for further stitching.  I am imagining them being stitched together to form a long scroll.  Possibly there will be more than one of them.  Actually, most likely there will be many more than one. These little pages travel easily.  Only a few minutes of stitching makes a big difference on something so small.  I love that small things can come together to make something big.  Bite-sized pieces I can handle.  Big projects can intimidate me.   I am linking to https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/  

It is good to be home and participating in I Like Thursdays again!  Thank you to  Lee Anna   and all the lovely ladies that play along.   Prompt June 1, 2023 what is your favorite flavor of ice cream at the moment? who makes it? do you have more than one favorite? soft serve or dipped? Do you buy it in the huge box or a pint at a time? I am not a big fan of ice cream.  Now, having said that I did partake in gelato while we were in Italy.  More than once.  The pistaschio came highly recommended in Milan but I was not a fan.  The lime gelato I had in Switzerland was much more to my liking. When I was a kid I loved going to Laura Secord at the mall and getting orange sherbert.  Yum.  I definitely prefer sherbert over ice cream.  I do like to go to DQ for a banana split once a year.  Well, not so much any more as they have become wildly over priced and just not worth it.  I will get a Skor Blizzard instead.   When my first niece was two years old I bought her an ice cream cone.  It was a h

 I have been thinking about doing another whole cloth crazy quilt.  I have dug out a linen napkin that I hand-dyed a while back.  Yes, it desperately needs to be ironed but I haven't fully committed to it yet.  I also have the butterfly motif that I am considering.  The butterfly is stitched in silk thread on silk fabric, luscious!   So, is the linen napkin too pale?  It looks more grey in the photo than it actually is.  For the other whole cloth crazy quilt I used black fabric and it really made the stitching pop.  Maybe a more muted piece would be okay.  I am dithering.  I know I like bright and bold colours best but it is good to do something different.  I just want to be sure I am going to like it!

 It has been a long time since I have done any calligraphy.  Thinking about it I am surprised to realize it has been ten years since I have belonged to the Royal City Calligraphy Guild!  What!  How!  Nevertheless, I do appreciate the beauty of calligraphy and illumination.  I was excited to see the beautiful manuscripts at the cathedral in Siena, Italy when we were there.  They were remarkably well preserved.  I was surprised at the size of the books.  They were quite large, each page being about 12 inches by 22 inches.  I didn't measure obviously so that is a guess.  I tried to find that information online but wasn't able to access it immediately and didn't want to go down a research rabbit hole! The books are beautiful.  There weren't a lot of people there at the time so I did get to enjoy them for a bit longer than usual.  There was just enough light in the room for the gold to really gleam.  How wonderful that these treasures have been so lovingly preserved.