A Lovely Weekend and a Journal

Sunny Autumn days. Perfect for riding a bike! 🙂

And going to less urban areas.

But also great for making journals!

Handwoven fabric, lace, cotton, beads etc. Mixed papers inside. Hand and machine stitched, my big fat white journal, perfect for writing quotes and other inspiring things from the books I read.  🙂 My current “book stuff” journal is almost full, so this new one will be just perfect for that. Do you write down interesting stuff from the books you read? When I was about nine or ten, my mother suggested I should do that and I have been doing it ever since. I wish I also wrote down a title of every book that I’ve read, but I didn’t. 😦

Anyway, here are the photos:

Have a great day! 🙂

A Shawl, a Journal and a New Bike

This shawl was made using all kinds of different fibers, and with some pattern manipulation.

It didn’t turn out exactly as I wanted it to, but I like it anyway.

I wanted the “skipped” parts of the pattern to be more visible. I guess I should’ve done those in a contrasting color. Oh well, maybe next time.

More pages from my Art Journal:

We’ve had a nice weather over the weekend so it was a perfect opportunity for me to ride my new bike! 🙂

After a long ride one must rehydrate. 🙂

I also like the woven table. 🙂

Have a great day everyone!

Scarves

I’ve been knitting!

I am not a great knitter, I can knit only simple shapes such as scarves and other things with straight edges 🙂 and maybe an ugly sock or two. But I do plan to learn more and be able to knit a sweater (maybe one day).

As I was organizing my studio I found a lot of yarn that just wasn’t “speaking” to me anymore. Not for my weaving, that is. But then I thought  I could knit something with it. So I took three strands of yarn, and made this chunky long scarf:

It’s wide and soft and just perfect for cold weather.

The other one was made for the gentleman in the photo (you can’t see his face because he wanted it that way), my husband. 🙂

He wanted it striped so that’s what I did, but I added the pattern just for fun. Actually, it’s only a simple change of stitches every two or three (or twenty) rows. But it looks good, and hubby loves it. So I am happy.

The third one is a handwoven scarf.

But it actually started as a set of table runners! I took a fine greyish cotton I almost forgot I had, added a bit of lime green cotton, and wove my table runners. Then I washed the fabric (and prepared to cut and sew it), but it shrunk! And not only that, it softened too! So magically, a scarf was born! 🙂

Well, why not?

Looks great to me.

Before I Go

I don’t know how to travel light. I always carry a million things with me, “just in case I need them”. And I’m not talking about clothes or shoes. I’m talking about my favorite coffee mug, my favorite coffee 🙂  (we are not hotel people, we are camping people), all kinds of lotions and medicine, books and more books, journals and pens, etc.

This year we decided it would be easier for us to rent a tent in Greece instead of going with a caravan or our tent. Long story. But I hope it will be a good vacation. And I also hope the weather will be good as this whole summer was pretty messed up – we had rain almost every day. We’ll see.

Anyway, I wanted to show you some of my latest works. The ones I managed to photograph. 🙂

I made a journal with fabric cover made from scraps.

I like how it looks and how it feels in my hands. 🙂 All those fabric pieces that I’ve stitched together, each having it’s own story and now making a cover for a journal that will hold another story. Wonderful.  And it is quite big – 25×20 cm.

Here is the back:

I wanted something different this time, so I made a velcro closure. It’s something that I’ll definitely do again.

Mixed papers inside, of course, because it’s more interesting that way. 🙂

I usually get inspired by the upcoming trip and make a travel journal that represents that destination in some way (even if I’m the only one who can see that, lol!) but this time I didn’t think of Greece, the sea and the sun while I was making it.

But all these fabric pieces with wavy stitching do remind me of waves, and the colors are those of the Sun and the sand. Not to mention the heart on the cover. It definitely represents my love for Greece. 🙂 So, I guess this journal had it’s own ideas that lead me while I was making it. I do like to think that way.

Another thing I wanted to show you is a woven project, my waffle weave towels. Now, those are some serious ‘seaside’ colors LOL, but they are not going to Greece with me!

I’m still not sure if I’m going to keep them or give them as a gift. I must say they would look beautiful in my bathroom. 🙂

Have a great day everyone!

Handwoven

I finished weaving two table runners, and they look beautiful! The pattern is very complex and takes quite a bit of time to weave but the end result is gorgeous.

This one will stay in my home as it was done for this particular dresser.

I haven’t done it in a very long time, even though it is one of my favorite patterns. It feels good to weave something complicated from time to time. 🙂

I wove another one in a honey color with cotton/viscose yarn, and this one is going to travel to a dear friend of mine as a gift. 🙂

Honey and sunshine. 🙂

Have a great day! 🙂

This and That

I have two new books to show you! I made them for a swap themed “Mini book of proverbs”. I have been obsessed with texture lately, as you can see here. 🙂

I actually filled them with quotes and poems. 🙂

I added pressed leaves and flowers to this one. The combination of flowers and the colors I used (homemade alcohol inks and acrylic paint) reminds me of fairies and enchanted forests.

Another thing I have to share with you is my new recycling project. Actually, two projects! The first one is the scrappy yarn I’ve been slowly making for quite some time now.

Every now and then I take my bag of yarn scraps and while watching listening to TV, I tie them into a new ball of yarn. It’s a slow process, but kind of meditating. I even separated cotton from viscose, black from white, and all those chunky woolly bits were tied together to make that crazy big ball of “everything else”. 🙂

So I decided to use some of that lovely crazy yarn (the off white cotton to be precise) , and on top of that I recycled and old bed sheet to weave this rug!

Look at all those knots coming through and giving a nice texture to the rug! That’s what I wanted to achieve!

They are a bit shy now but they will come out even more after I wash it.

I am happy with my new rug! 🙂 Imagine the possibilities with that scrappy yarn, not only in weaving but also in knitting and crocheting! Oohhh, so many ideas are coming to my mind!

Have a great weekend everyone!

 

My Messy Heaven

As promised, here are the photos of my studio! It’s clean and tidy and will probably never look this nice again. 🙂

This is my Heaven, my space to weave, make books, paint, drill and glue and repair things, sew; also add an office to that and you get the idea. 🙂 That’s why I can’t organize it any better than this.

On the other side of the room is my sewing and office space. Office space is shared with hubby, but he is getting slowly pushed out of the room completely, LOL! He works on his laptop computer anyway, so he doesn’t need this desk anymore. 🙂 My computer is terribly out of date, but I don’t care.

As you can see in the first photo, I keep an old T shirt at hand to clean my brushes on it. And I managed to turn a computer desk into something more functional. You can’t see it on the right (the chair is in the way, sorry), but the CD rack now holds sanding papers. Very useful!

I also have a “primitive” but functional pressing station 🙂 in one corner, by the bags filled with recycling materials.

Some of the gifts I received from dear friends are always with me to inspire me and to warm my heart. I wish I could have everything I received over the years on display, but unfortunately it’s not possible.

A poem I love…

My art and travel journals, completed:

And the ones I’m currently working in:

Boxes with beads:

My jewelry nicely displayed and not entangled in the bowl anymore. 🙂

And my old friend, the one who opened the door of the art world to me, the loom!

I am so happy with the studio! It’s not the prettiest studio in the world, and yes I do need to change that curtain :), but it’s mine and I am having so much fun here!

Now you know where I do what I do. 🙂

Have a wonderful day!

A Giveaway!

I have been busy lately making all kinds of things, including jewelry. It relaxes me, but it also makes more room for new beads in my bead boxes, LOL! In my next post I will show you new earrings and bracelets made for moi, but now I want to share with you a little summer set that I made for this giveaway.

A stretchy bracelet made with shell beads

And a pair of matching earrings (the left one looks more yellow than it actually is, don’t know why)

And that is not all! I am also giving this journal I made some time ago. Your support means a lot to me, so I would like to send you my love with this journal.

If you’d like to win, all you have to do is leave a comment and I will pick a winner on Wednesday. 🙂

Thank you for visiting my blog and for sharing this journey with me.

New Stuff

I need to work and play. I can’t just think about the floods and disaster. For over a week I have been focused on danger from the water and on helping others, and even though those worries are still present, and helping continues, I also need to work. But equally important is to play and let go of all the worries.

My spring cleaning odyssey is getting close to summer, but a lot of work has been done! First of all, my studio expanded! 🙂 My husband and I decided that we wanted a smaller bedroom and larger studio (for me) so we switched two rooms and man it is amazing! The bedroom is so warm and cozy now, and my studio is airy and less cluttered. I love it all! I will take photos one of these days, we just need to paint the walls first. But that change was a LOT of work! Moving and cleaning every little bottle and jar, finding new place for things to make everything organized, trying to make everything look neat and most of all reachable! I have to say, with the furniture that I have (I didn’t want to buy anything because this apartment is already full) I did a pretty good job. It took me ten days to finish both rooms, or to get close to that, but I am very pleased with how it all looks.

So, until I take those photos and show you the space, here are some of my latest creations.

A shawl made with scrap yarn that needed to be transformed into something beautiful. 🙂

I used thick yarn, thin yarn, shimmery one, wool, cotton, all kinds of yarn! I love to experiment and this shawl turned out very nice!

Another one is also woven with different kinds of yarn, but this one is way more colorful.

I also made an album for a customer who wanted it as a gift from the kids to their teacher, so she said it needs to have thirty blank pages, one for every child to do something on it. I had so much fun making this album. The only thing I knew I had to do is to put IV2 on the cover, but the rest was left to my imagination. So I thought a heart is a must because kinds love their teacher, then a bit of lined paper, a filmstrip frame because there will be photos inside, some crackle and some shimmer and glitter…

It’s quite big, almost A4 size, but there had to be enough room for the children to draw and glue on. 🙂

The most important thing is that the customer loves it! Yay!  You just have to imagine more ribbon for the binding, because I didn’t want to tie it all now as it would get wrinkled, and also it needs to be all untied so that every child can have it’s own page to work on.

That’s it for now, even though I have more things to show you but they will have to wait. I don’t want to drown you in photos. 🙂

Have a great day!

New Scarves

I’ve finished the year 2013 and started 2014 with weaving scarves. Does that mean this year will be all about weaving? 🙂 I don’t know.

But people wanted scarves, so of course I made lots of them. The problem is that some of them went to their new homes without me taking photos (the mistake I often make).  Grrr…

Anyway, here they are.

And here we are, the Milojevic family. 🙂

Have a great time everyone!