I ♥...a variety of things

I love this new blog - only started September last year. A group of VERY talented women sharing their delicious stitchy experiments and creations : 

And other stitching ♥ : I always delight in seeing Frances Pickering's work.

She recently took a workshop to the Halifax Embroiderers Guild - click HERE to see beautiful work from that day, and some lovely bloggers have shared their experiences in more detail...this is by Anne Brooke - see more at her blog post : 

and this by Rachael Singleton - more at her blog post.

New Art Journal artist discovery :

Take a look inside via Amazon HERE.

I borrowed this book from our local public library. Nichole Rae has a fresh approach to art journaling - she uses lists, and her pages are simple but appealing. I ♥ her use of words.

Get a feel for her work via quite a long list of projects which she has shared at the Creative Mixed Media site- including some of the projects from the book. And she also has a YouTube video where she demonstrates and talks about her process with her book editor. I enjoyed her list approach, and starting journaling with phrases like "I carry" and "I am" can yield a variety of responses.
I can recommend this DVD - humour and some wonderful truths within.

Here are a couple of examples of Hector's list for happiness :
**Making comparisons can spoil your happiness
**Happiness is being loved for who you are
I'll let you discover the rest yourself :-)
And I especially ♥ that today I got a new sewing machine! 

It's my birthday next month, and there are great specials on Janome sewing machines in New Zealand until the end of June. I have long loved my Janome Memory Craft 4000 (seen HERE), but have had it for at least 16 years and it is tired. I will still be using it for stitching of inky paper, books and cards, but my new Janome 8200 QC is a quilting machine. Here's a photo of it with my 4000 in behind

You can see what a wonderfully large quilting space it has compared to what I've been used to. More to follow as I test it out and hopefully make lots of lovely quilts. Can't wait for this weekend - a long Queen's Birthday weekend with time to stitch and play.
I've been thinking about quilts and sewing machines, researching sewing machines, dreaming about a new sewing machine over the last couple of weeks so have got a little behind in my art journaling! Wanting to remedy that very soon and hope to share more later in the week. But first I'm off to watch the instructional DVD for my new machine :-)
Hope you've got things making you happy this week.