The other evening a friend visited me, wanting to learn how to make stamps. She´d brought a photo of her daughter, which we via Photoshop turned into a black&white version to base the stamp on.

Cutting it in fun-foam, and after about an hour, it was ready for printing

Here´s my sample, very near-sighted old man (who kind of looks like a tiger).

Bømlo Theatre´s 3rd efficient choir-project: 2 weekends, 2 concerts, 65 singers, 7 band-members, 15 hits from the 1960s and 1970s… this can quickly turn into a lot of fun

I didn´t start taking picture until today, but the view is the same today. Cold and grey outside, and not really all that festive on the inside either. This is the window at my studio, which is more like my warehouse for storage.

Apart from Michelle´s wonderful clock and Tyler´s cheerful ribbon-curtain, there´s not much going on in the cosy-department here. I´ll show you why:

Three big, wooden boxes filled with art ready to be shipped off to India. Another two boxes ready packed for Monday´s trip to Søvika. And another 4-5 boxes of frames. There´s hardly room to think in here now

But back to the challenge.Today´s challenge is words. And where better to find words than in my favorite arts and crafts-books? My much loved & used library:

Yesterday, all the kids in 3rd and 4th grade at Meling School made this picture. That is, they made two squares each, each about 4 x 4 inches. Today, I pieced it all together. Thank goodness for overlocks! (sergers) A couple of hours intensive sewing, and it´s done. I need to get a fabric band to finish the edges, and then I´ll give it back to them.  It´ll be a nice memory of our day together.

Some of the paintings turned out quite amazing! They had never had anything about mixing colors / color-theory before, so I just quickly had a show-and-tell, no more than 4 minutes tops, and let them loose. Some of them just instinctively got it, not only how to mix skin-color (which is the hardest of all), but even experimented and found their own solutions to the the challenge.

Like the guy who painted the grinning guy with the glasses. What a priceless expression! There were so many cool animals here too, from flying cats to creepy spiders.

I´ll show you more of their work when I piece it together

Another baby-sized pink silk satin duvet- and pillow-cover suddenly appeared on my worktable  this weekend. Let´s hope one of my soon-to-be-relatives will be a little girl The inlayed fabric is silk brocade from India.

I combined it with a small enameled bead I made at Art & Soul (top left) and the 1368-bead. Which is part of a painting I made a couple of years ago, and had made into a MOO-card, which I in turn used under a thick coat of resin in a metal frame.

I found some mini-canvases, which they thought were REALLY small, but we finally agreed that they would be perfect for painting a small picture for their coming cousin.

Anders made a beautiful landscape with steep mountains. Underneath the mountains he made a scary crocodile!

He also made another one with a big, green lawn, where he would teach his cousin to play football. They football itself was a bit hard to paint though, so he simply kicked it off the field.

Andrea also made a beautiful landscape, mixing the colors wonderfully into a sea that looks warm and welcoming for bathing.

The girl is a collage I made for an If-theme a while ago. The print is a HP iron-on transfer. Honestly, I am not sure how much washing the transfer from these packages can take, so putting them on a baby onesie should be a good test for it Mind you though, I´ve tried a lot of different qualities in transfer-papers, and HP is WAY better than most others!

The text is stamps with fabric paint, so that I know will hold.