Taking time to take a deep breath and say thank you!

I have been at the International Quilt Show in Long Beach, CA the last three days working the show with Gingers quilt shop showing my patterns. I saw so many great friends and met new ones! I had so much fun sharing my "Fabulous Folded Bag" pattern which was well received. It's so much fun to be able to make such a unique gift in such a short amount of time! They loved it! I can't wait to see what everyone makes with it!

Today, feeling a bit tired I decided to take my paints outside and paint my yard which looked so beautiful with the morning light glistening off the leaves and water in the pool. I sat and drank coffee while painting in the early morning sun. It is a beautiful day and it was so nice to sit outside and enjoy the beauty and thanking God for all the wonderful blessings he has sent my way!




- Desiree

What are you doing this weekend?

This weekend is the international Quilt Festival at the Long Beach Convention Center! It's filled with amazing quilts, Exhibitions, fabric, patterns, notions and so much more. I hope you will get a chance to come by and what me demo my amazing Fabulous Folded Bag Pattern! I will be working all week in Gingers Quilt shop booth in the 1500 aisle. Come by and say HI!
I am also honored to be a part of the "Ritual" Exhibit by the dinner at eight artist. The quilts are all wonderful and they each tell a story of how the artist interpreted the word "ritual". There is even a book available at the blurb shop.
Hope to see you this weekend!




See more on Jamie's blog!
http://JamieFingalDesigns.blogspot.com
Book cover art (Left to Right) by - Susie Monday, Susan Fletcher King, Judy Coates Perez, Desiree Habicht, Yvonne Porcella, Gerrie Congdon, Gayle Simpson RITUALS An exchange between friends.



- Desiree

New goodies!

Yesterday I received my package from Moo! I treated myself to new business cards,postcards and some stickers for the backside of my artwork. Although the business cards were printed on the wrong paper the vibrancy of color and the images turned out amazing! At Moo.com you can put up to 50 different images on each set of cards so for us artists it's a perfect way to advertise your artwork. I also have ATC collectors who ask to go thru my cards and select one for their collections, but be careful, they aren't cheap! Next weekend I will be working the Long Beach Quilt show in Gingers booth, booth #1300 something,can't remember the exact number, if you are in Southern CA for the show stop by and say Hi and get a card or postcard from me!










Happy Moo cards!

- Desiree
www.desireesdesigns.com
www.artboxcsa.com

Taking time to smell the roses or daisies!

When life gets crazy, and your time seems to keep disappearing, your priorities get all jumbled up due to deadlines it's time to just stop and take a moment to be still. I had one of those weeks and by Sunday I was tired and felt drained but I gathered my sketchbook and paints and walked around the garden looking for inspiration and picked a beautiful gerbera daisy. I got a cup of coffee and settled down in my chair outside to just relax. I sat for the longest time just looking out to the yard and thinking about how thankful I was and how blessed I felt for my life. In all it's craziness I still love my life,don't you love yours?! I then took my sketchbook and started to sketch and paint, the little still life of brushes,paints and my daisy were perfect. Here is my breath of renewal, my moment to regroup and feel grateful for everything!



- Desiree

Sketching Class July- Collage, Color & Composition

Saturday was our monthly sketch group. An amazing group of talented women get together every month and I teach a new technique for our sketchbooks. This month I did the sketchbook challenge tutorial I shared last week. This time we used sketches of flowers to do our two page layout.  I really love the layers and textures you can achieve with this technique.  The pages can be done ahead of time, ready and waiting for some journaling. Sometimes I just feel like painting and sometimes I just feel like writing! Our sketch class is open to anyone wanting to explore the joy of keeping a sketchbook, learning new techniques, exploring different subjects.

Christa

Deborah

Karen

Marianne

Judi

Penny

Our sketch group this month hiding from the heat!

My contribution and demo piece

Those crazy, wonderful women in Sub Q!

Ann Turley and I co-lead an amazing group of art quilters in our group called Subterranean Quilters, or Sub-Q as we call it. We meet once a month and do a variety of art quilting projects and challenges. Every other month we have a play day and one of the members chooses a method or technique for us to try. This month was Phyllis's month to host and she did an amazing job, thanks Phyllis! She organized the day, bought all the supplies for class and jump started our adventure. The day was so much fun painting as we painted on some long pieces of primed canvas, a super fun class conceived by Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison. The finished piece are then cut it up and shared with all the artists after it was over. The meeting was at my house where we set up the tables on the lawn area and we all brought food and swim suits (NO MEN ALLOWED) so we could cool off while the paint dried. It was so much fun moving around the canvas, painting everywhere, all over. We started out painting large shapes with a few colors, then moved to more detailed shapes and different colors with smaller brushes and so on and so on until we were happy with it and called it done. We then counted the people and divided up the piece amongst ourselves. We each ended up with a large piece that we can make into any different things. I sat last night and decided to continue to add detail elements to my piece and I love it more and more the more I do. That is always a good thing! LOL The pool felt great as the weather turned hot and muggy so a cool down was in order. Lots of food, burnt pizza, sangria and laughter made this an amazingly fun, relaxing day! Here are some pictures and some of our final fabulous art!!

Nancy and Marianne were our guests today!

Music helped us keep up our inspiration!

cut up pieces that we shared

Thanks Jamie and Leslie for thinking up this fun class!

Lunch!

This is my piece and after everyone went home, I finished cleaning up, I couldn't wait to continue to play!

I grabbed my new white pens and a black marker and sat down to enjoy the process!

I am not done yet, but this is it so far! I love these art pieces. I think I will do some sketchbook covers and other fun things! Those white pens are amazing! Do you want some? You can find them here
Thanks Phyllis for a great day!

Long Beach Quilt Show- Rituals Exhibit

Book cover art (Left to Right) by - Susie Monday, Susan Fletcher King, Judy Coates Perez, Desiree Habicht, Yvonne Porcella, Gerrie Congdon, Gayle Simpson

The Long Beach Quilt Show is right around the corner now. I am busy making kits and getting ready to show my newest quilts and Fabulous Folded bag in Ginger's Booth. Also at the show will be many art quilts and quilt exhibits. One of them will be "Rituals" an invitational juried exhibit by the "Dinner at Eight" Artist. I am honored and excited to be a part of the exhibit this year. I cant wait to see all of our quilts hanging at the show and also, Loris Bogue made us a blurb book. It is a wonder way to preserve the exhibit and get to know a little bit more about each of the artists and show curators. My quilt was also one of the ones featured on the cover! So exciting, can you see the little house, thats mine! I will post the links here but it will also be down on the right side as a permanent link for the duration of the show season. Feel free to follow the link over and check out all of the amazing quilts!!! I hope you will all come by and say "HI". I will be the one acting like Billy Mayes in Gingers booth, selling, selling selling!

                                                      RITUALS 
An exchange between friends. A handshake. A kiss before bedtime. The artist at work.  A sun salutation. The wave before boarding the school bus. A song, a word, a meditation. A habit, a custom.  The traditional toast at a gathering. A rite of passage. The sacred moments of the ordinary.  Rituals:  What are yours?
A collection of 42 Art Quilts 

                                International Quilt Festival, Long Beach, CA  - July 26-29, 2012
                                                  sponsored by Moore's Sewing Centers

The Big Unveil, the secrets out!!!

As most of you know by now I have been working on several pieces of fiber art for a secret project, well here it is! I am so excited to share it with you now. You've heard about CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture), but have you heard about Community-Supported Art? I'm excited to announce that I am a member of an 8-artist "Art Box CSA" project that is launching today. This project has been in the works for a couple of months, and the results are so much fun I'll have a hard time resisting the urge to pick up one of these for my own enjoyment.

Each artist has created a series of work mounted on 8x8 stretched canvas frames (1.5 inches deep). It is possible to purchase half or full boxes per order. These pieces will look great in a mass grouping, or hung individually. I hope you will stop by our website and spend some time looking at all the work, which includes an artist statement and description of the materials used by each artist.

Participating artists:

Jamie Fingal http://jamiefingaldesigns.blogspot.com/

Judy Coates Perez http://judyperez.blogspot.com/

Lyric Kinard http://lyrickinard.blogspot.com/

Deborah Boschert http://www.deborahsstudio.com/

Desiree Habicht http://www.desireesdesigns.com/

Kathy York http://aquamoonartquilts.blogspot.com/

Sue Bleiweiss http://www.suebleiweiss.com/home.html

Leslie Jenison website

I hope you will go over and take a look at this wonderful site, filled with art from todays top fiber artists and then let me know what you think. See how many you can correctly guess, can you tell which artist did which piece by looking at the names and then the photo? Try to guess before you jump over to the site. Thanks for taking a look!

The Sketchbook Challenge

As many of you know I was asked to become a contributing member of the Sketchbook Challenge online. I am thrilled to be a part of this amazing group of women sharing their talents with everyone. I  enjoyed putting together my first post last month and realized I am taking more time putting those together than the ones here, guess I am trying to make a good impression. Well I am going to share my posts here also. Its a great group, with opportunities to win gifts and prizes as well as some original art. I hope you will stop by, and oh, by the way, my second post hits tomorrow!  Here is a glimpse of a tutorial I decided to publish, it is also a class I am teaching.

Its a double spread journal pages done with tissue paper, glue and some circles that have become fruit. I hope you will take a minute to check it out at the Sketchbook Challenge. I always appreciate your comments, it makes my day!!

Its that time again, peaches galore! Yummy

Summer brings with it the promise of hot days, cool nights, abundant veggies and lots of fruit on my trees. We have been having some pest problems and found a new organic spray that seems to have solved my problem. This year, unlike last year, the apricot tree produced big, healthy fruit and my peach tree is doing the same. We also lost a major limb on my small tree and it forced me to prune it back severely and to my surprise it liked it by rewarding me with a crop of huge, juicy, white flesh peaches. I am now busy going through recipes, gathering supplies, jars, pectin etc.

I ended up picking flowers for the house as I was picking the peaches, its going to be a Suzy homemaker day I can tell.

Which brings me to my next point, cost of canning your own jelly and jam. I think that most people don't realize the cost involved or the time when someone hands you that $30.00 jar of jam. I also always tell myself I don't want the fruit to go to waste so I need to put it up but the cost these days isn't for the faint of heart. Then after you have mortgaged your house to get the supplies you still are faced with the job of picking, cleaning, preparing, cooking, sterilizing, processing all the recipes and goodies. Phew!

 But then as you look across your counter and see those jars filled with beautiful, jewel colored manna you instantly fall in love and all the money and time seems well worth it! It kind of reminds me of childbirth, all that time, the pain and then the reward!

Now I am working on labels, they will all have one along with some decorating and I have my Christmas gifts for this year. I couldn't sleep and was up at 3am painting labels, which if you notice I have to redo the lettering on since I misspelled a word on each tag, duh! Note to self:Brain can paint but can't spell in the middle of the night.

 I think I will probably spend a few more days canning, I found some new recipes I want to try. So far I did peach jam, jalapeno-peach, cantaloupe-peach almond preserves, peach salsa, peach bellini jam and corn relish! Yeah for me! I saw, I gathered, I conquered!

Hollyhocks

My hollyhocks were beautiful this year, they must have gotten 8' tall. They are on the side yard and sway in the breeze. The flowers are doubles and almost look like peonies, I got pink,dark pink and white this year. I am waiting to collect the seeds now. The blooms start opening at the bottom of the long stem, as those get old new ones continue to bloom so you end up with a blooming bunch somewhere on the long stalk. Here is my international postcard that I sketched and sent to Liz last month. I need to do this months and get it in the mail.
- Desiree

New projects are emerging!

I have been working on a new series of butterfly fiber art pieces. They are for a new project that is scheduled to go live the first week in July. I can't spill the beans quite yet but it should be exciting and a lot of fun as well being a great opportunity for all of you, more later on that.
The Alliance for the American Quilt has a yearly challenge, this year I did mine and I love the way it turned out. I don't know if I mentioned that we had raised some butterflies lately, from caterpillars to butterflies. The twins loved this and we spent many hours observing these amazing insects transform into their winged finale. This was my inspiration for the AAQ's challenge, we had to make a house shaped quilt approx 19"x15", so I decided to do a butterfly house. Although we didn't raise monarchs that is what I painted since they were a bit more colorful than the painted ladies we ended up with. I placed them onto Matilla poppies which are also in bloom in my yard. These quilts will go on tour around the country to build excitement and interest for the auction which will help raise money for the group. If your a member I would appreciate your vote for my quilt since the awards are based on members votes, my number is 103. The quilt is painted, beaded and quilted by me. Here is the link to the quilt and description along with the website.

Home again, home again, rig a gig gig!

I can still hear my mom say that every time I pull into the driveway after a trip. It didn't matter if it was for the day or a week, she said it every time. I truly felt that way too.  Spring market was a huge success for us, newest bag and patterns were very well received. Then it was on to our vacation which was packed with fun and adventure. I will have another post for that part of the trip. The thing about vacations is its always nice to come home to your own bed and your clothes come out of a drawer verses a suitcase. Only a few mishaps like our washer breaking and overflowing, flooding our back laundry room and bathroom. Thank God we were home, doing our first load of laundry after our trip when it decided to spill its guts. All fixed and laundry all done in the middle of trying to make some end of the month deadlines. I was so excited that I made it!!! Yeah, see even me, the worlds worst procrastinator can get it done!

I need to catch everyone up on my busy, crazy life, this post will be about the garden tour. The weather was amazing and we had over 1200 people come through the yard. It was a fun day, filled with people who love the garden and plants as much as we do. My garden was called "The Artists Garden" and I had several friends sketching or painting on site. Selling cards, paintings etc. I had intended on sketching with Pat but was just too distracted with all the questions and people wanting to talk. It will forever be one of my best memories, giving back to the hospital that saved Jennifer's life and having such fun doing it. Be a cheerful giver!!!

My girlfriend Marta, is an talented photographer and came during the tour to photograph and help me capture the day. Most of these photos are from her, thank you Marta!! She managed to capture all the activities of the day.

our fountain all planted

Sally Holmes rose climbing up our arch in front yard

The side gate that leads to the rose garden

Our giant pot that sits behind the Playboy roses.

The bees love the yard and help me keep things going.

People milling about

My Bacchus man fountain that is also planted

more of the crowds

Pat came up to sketch with me

Hummingbirds love the Coral Trees that were in full bloom

Jennifer and I having fun visiting with Pat for a minute

My moss roof house full of succulents I did at Mariannes party is growing!

Looking over the pool

Randy greeting people

Pats view  as she sketched

Randy spent lots of time giving out his secret rose food mixture

Susan painting on site

The twins tea party table all set for guests

A bubbling fountain tucked into the rose garden, trumpeter roses are in front.

Betty Prior rose

Little birdhouses that the twins painted and sold to help raise money for abused children

 

My artichokes were loaded and so big that the guy writing the garden description wrote "artichoke tree"!

Pats sketching supplies and sketch, awesome!

Chatting

More chatting

Susan selling artwork

One of my favorite pictures of my smoke tree backlit.

My stain glass hanging in the barbecue area

A perfect ending to a perfect day, thanks everyone that came and helped to make our tour a success!