New Project(s)

The diorama is finished and now I'm on to new projects.  I haven't had time to write out part two of my thoughts on the diorama because I've been away on holiday, but I'll get to it soon.  In the mean time, I'm already on to new projects.  So many ideas, so little time.

One of my new projects I've actually had planned for some time.  I am decorating another walking stick.  It's name will be Wild Roses.  I drew a pattern of rose leaves and wild roses which will spiral up the stick.  I think I have enough room to have a double spiral of roses up the stick.  The design will be transferred onto the walking stick.  Then I will burn the design into the wood with a  wood burning tool.  After that, I will paint the leaves and roses.  When all of the wood burning and painting is complete, I will stain the wood with antiquing medium and varnish the stick. 

I've started an embroidery project as well.  I embroider when I am watching television in the evening.  This project started because I purchased a shirt through mail order.  It looked nice in the catalog, but when I received the shirt, it looked rather plain.  It was one of those items of clothing that was destined to sit in the closet and never be worn.  I could have sent it back, but by the time I paid postage and the restocking fee it almost equaled the cost of the shirt.  So I decided that embroidery was the answer.  For whatever possessed me at that moment, I decided to do embroidery of Pennsylvania Dutch folk art designs on it. 

I had drawn and painted a number of the designs on wood in the 1980s.  I kept the patterns all of these years.   The geometric shapes, primary colors, and repeating patterns have always appealed to me.  When I thought of what I might want to embroider on the shirt, the patterns came to mind.  I traced a pattern onto the shirt, purchased some embroidery thread, and started to embroider. 

In hindsight, picking this pattern was probably a mistake.  I lost track on how much time I have spent on it after forty hours.  As a guess, I'd say I'm closing in on eighty hours and the primary design is only half way finished.  I still have more designs planned that aren't even drawn on the shirt yet.   The colors which looked okay when looking at embroidery floss are incredibly bright when so much of it is in one place.  The shirt has gone from being totally drab to ridiculously colorful.  It is way too late to turn back at this point, so I plan to embroider until the end of the project just for the heck of it.  At least embroidery thread is relatively inexpensive compared to other art materials.

Pictures will follow of the projects in my next post.  I'll post some pictures of completed projects while I'm working on these to keep my readers from being bored.