New Hearts

One of my favorite things to make every year is the small danglies (or ornaments) that we put in our holiday show. The centerpiece of our show is a bare tree branch, and each artist hangs some of her own danglies on it. I also display some at my own booth.

In the past I've made owls, birds, wooden and fabric houses (which I can't find a picture of), and hearts. I wanted a simple pattern this year, so I returned to hearts again, using a new design.

They will come in 3 flavors. Cool:

Warm:
And earthy:
The design was inspired by this wonderful bag of strips and selvedges that my friend Cindy sent me:
I have bags of strips that I've kept from other projects that I pulled out too. I like the challenge of building something out of such small pieces that might otherwise be headed for the trash.

Danglies 2010

I've been slow getting back into the swing of things after my last vacation, but finally got moving again.

Every year in my art group's Dec. show, we set up a bare-branched tree that gets covered in a variety of artist ornaments. It's one of my favorite things in our show, and I love to participate. In the past years I've made houses, birds, and hearts. This year after collecting many pictures of owls out of catalogs and seeing these and these which I love, I decided to play with my own.

Lots of tufts of texture and graffiti fabrics as I pulled from my favorite elements:

Took quite a few false starts, but I'm finally happy with these funky little guys:

I'm also considering doing a second ornament this year using painted faces, but they still have a long way to go until I'm happy with them: