When I opened the wordplay envelope from Blair at the beginning of July, I was really excited to see the word she chose was cover.  There are so many possible interpretations and the first one that jumped into my mind was covers, as in bed covers.  Quickly followed by, "Oh crap.  I just made a quilt."  Strike that idea.  The remainder of my initial thoughts were phrases:  under cover and cover me, both of which have a strong police, spy connection.  It got me thinking that maybe I was watching a bit too much Law and Order.  Hmmm.

A few weeks later, I found myself thinking more about this word.  I worked it round and round in my head and on paper.  I can't tell you how many times I wrote the word and sketched ideas.  I thought about a photography project/flip book, but as my deadline drew closer, I knew that I needed something with more depth, something that I was more excited about.  My original thoughts kept coming back and so I embraced them.

I chose to work with "cover me", but not in the guns drawn, police crashing through a door sense.  It came to me one night when I made my rounds through the house before bed.  I turned off the lights downstairs, climbed to the second floor and went into Kate's room to turn off the night light and sneak a kiss before traveling across the hall to do the same for Jane.  There she was, curled up in a ball, cold from the overhead fan, but completely uncovered.  I pulled her sheet and blanket up and there it was:  cover.

I like that I was able to take this one word and use it for inspiration for my piece and in my process, too.  I layered, or covered, many parts of this piece with another material hoping to get a bit of dimension even though the base is watercolor paper.  I am very happy with how it turned out.  I know I will explore this more - I already have another idea how to use this word.  Luckily, I have another willing model.

Thanks Blair for joining us for this round of wordplay.  I am anxious to see what Tracy and Emily come up with.  When they post their projects, you can read about them on their blogs or visit our flickr group.  It's always amazing to me how we interpret one word in such different ways.  The next word has already arrived in my mail box.  I haven't opened it yet - I'm excited by a whole new round of possibilities.

And if I told you that Heather Smith Jones sent it, wouldn't you be excited too?

Hey there.

A couple things:

1.  I didn't take any photos of the items I received at the craft swap on Tuesday night, but Caroline did.  Pop over to this post if you want to see how talented my friends are.  Psst....she's having a giveaway too!

2.  I changed the links that are over in the top right side bar.  It had been a long time since I changed them.  So now you have some fun and some new blogs to check out.

Aren't these dahlias pretty?

I'm off to knit in the carpool line.  It's Friday which means the girls and I are going out for ice cream.   A nice way to end the school week, if you ask me.  Have a great weekend!

Some people call it the carpool line.  I think of it as 20 minutes of peace and productivity.  Happy Thursday.

You are good guessers!  Congrats to Meg, who had the first correct guess.  I'm going to make a second pair for qalballha also.  Ladies I will email you later today for some info.  If you didn't win, don't despair. I have something else to give away in the next week or so.

Here's a shot of the eight pairs of lounge pants hanging on my deck.  I made them using the pattern in In Stiches by Amy Butler.  The cuffs are made with some of her Midwest Modern prints.  This was plan B.  Plan A wasn't super successful, but I will tell you more about that at another time.

My to do list is crazy long today.  See you all later!

I'm finished making my craft for my local craft swap tonight.  I have supplies to make one extra item and so I thought I would have a little giveaway.  First person to post a comment with the correct guess wins the extra item.  Those of you who know what I am making are excluded of course.  I'll give you a clue:  I have made this in the past year and I am very comfortable with it.  The photo above might help you, too.  Good luck!

I'm in a sewing groove.  And let me tell you, it's about time!

Jane had a birthday party to go to yesterday.  I made this sweet t-shirt using the dog stencil from Lena Corwin's book.  You can barely see it here, but the pup has a crystal eye.  The 8 year olds like their bling.  Can you blame them?  I enjoy a little sparkle too.

Back to the sewing machine.  I'm on a roll.

While the kids were at school on Wednesday, I worked on my note cards for Sarah's Art of the Note Gocco Swap.

I had ordered my paper back in July from Paper Source.  There was a reason why I choose an aqua note and an orange envelope.  I wish I could remember what the reason was.  Somewhere between mid-July and Wednesday, my brilliant idea was lost, never to be found.  So there I was stuck with a color palette and full of ideas that wouldn't work so well in blues and oranges.  Figures.

I ended up getting out the spirograph and made lots of random shapes on different papers.  One of them looked a lot like a flower to me so I added a stem and some leaves.  Voila - a flower!

The screen did not burn as well as I had hoped.  I knew Dana had a hard time with her spirograph screen too, so I didn't think I would get any better results burning a new one.  I went ahead and printed with the one I had.  The ink dried a bit dark, but I think it still looks good with the envelope.

Thanks for organizing the swap, Sarah!  I loved having an excuse to get the gocco out and get printing.  Speaking of which, I have another stencil to cut.

Happy weekend to you all.

Not much to report.  The girls are in school and all seems good.  Well, at least their first day was good.  My first day was good too.  There was one point in the day when I was wandering around the house aimlessly, not sure what to do with my freedom!  After much hemming and hawing, the gocco came out.  More on that later.

I have printing on the brain.  I'm working on a big project inspired by Printing by Hand by Lena Corwin.  I spent Tuesday night working on a stencil.  I am not a natural with the exacto knife.  Give me a pair of scissors and I can work magic.  The exacto - not so much.

Of course, my imprecise cutting had nothing to do with the wine.

I'll dish more on this next week.  Some things just need to be a surprise.