The Traveling Goddess

The Raven Mavens have had their traveling goddess kits for a few months now.  Susan supplied each of us with cardboard, stickers with art provided by Liz Lynch, and a blank passport.  What a fun way to record our thoughts and adventures for the summer! 

 I haven't heard news from any of you ladies of the adventures your goddesses are having!  I must be honest, I just got mine out of the bag and started working on it this week.  After a very hectic summer, it's nice to finally spend a bit of time in the studio.

A bit of torn up foil, some tape, mod podge.......

and a glass of wine should help get me going!

Some paint and found objects are making their way into the project.  Mine sure won't be a masterpiece, but I'm having fun!  How about the rest of you?  Are your traveling goddesses having some fun?

Posted by Nancy

LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION

I had been unable to find inspiration for the Walk in the Woods show.

After many starts I decided to try something different.

I have been wanting to try some points with

paper piecing.

I have collected MANY patterns soooo

decided to try this runner.

This is the top ready for more work.

I am doing some stitch in the ditch

and hoping to add beads and/or

hand work before adding the back.

This way that stitching wouldn't

come through to the back.

I'm  ready to try that now.

By the way, I'm now also working on something for the

Walk in the Woods show.

If it doesn't work out I'll have something for our

paint, cut, stitch, cut, stitch, and then

whatever piece.      g

Element 7

The Raven Mavens were up for another challenge, and revealed their creations at the last meeting.

Angela proposed the challenge to the group at last month's meeting.  Some struggled with this, but everyone seemed to enjoy the creativity that evolved.  After all, that's what these challenges are all about!

 Angela called this challenge Element 7.  Everyone was given three templates, shown above.  We had to use all three shapes in our composition, and were able to use them as many times  as we wished.  We were limited to four colors, and were able to use any medium we wanted.  Angela chose this project because she admires abstract composition, but says she struggles with it in her own work. I feel we all learned something from this great challenge.  Thanks, Angela!  

Angela's collage piece. She's got the abstract going!

Trina got very creative with her shapes.

Jan's got the abstract thing figured out!

Susan's lovely tribute to the Twin Towers.

Kathleen was the ambitious one with two pieces!

Nancy saw sailboats with her shapes.

Suzanne's Fruita round about.

Rita's background makes the flower and bird sing.

Gjeneve's interactive design.  She opted to keep her pieces loose, with black felt as the background, so she could move them around.  What a great design exercise!

Kathleen also shared the scarf that she overpainted.  She was very unhappy with the original colors, so solved the problem by overpainting it with Seta Colors.  Beautiful!

So, another great critique exercise!  We will all be working on a six month challenge proposed by Susan, called the Traveling Goddess.  This is going to be fun!

What's in a Word, You Say?

The Raven Maven's revealed the results from their latest challenge.  We all picked a random word from a hat, then interpreted that word into a piece of art.  It was so much fun to see what everyone did with their challenge.  These monthly challenges that we have seem to be jump starting a lot of creativity in the group!  Here are the results of the word challenge.

Gjeneve got ambitious and did two.  Her word was ADORN. 

Nancy's word was COIL

Jan's word was FLOW.  

Kathy's word was JAM

Susan's word was LEVEL

Kathleen's word was ORDER

Trina's word was PUMP

Angela's word was SPARKLE

Rita's word was SPRING

Sandra's word was WHISPER

Next month we will reveal Angela's challenge to the group, which is an abstract challenge.  Should be fun!

What's in a Word?

Arch......It could mean more than one thing.  If you saw the word arch, what would you think of?  A rock arch?  Someone doing a back bend?  That's an arch, right?

The Raven Mavens latest challenge is a word challenge.  Nancy wrote random  words down on paper, and had everyone draw one at the last meeting. We will reveal what we've come up with at our April meeting. Hopefully, everyone has had a creative boost to get them to finish their word piece!

Try you own word challenge.  It's a lot of fun!

The Mavens Second Challenge Revealed!

The Raven Mavens critique group had the big reveal for their second Chinese Whispers challenge.  

A New Blog!

The Raven Mavens agreed that it would be fun to start a blog to keep track of our challenges and photos.  We'll be adding photos of challenges and design exercises as they occur.

Our first challenge was a Chinese Whispers Challenge.  This was a fun project for the entire group!  It started with a photo that one of the members had taken.  The first person used the picture to create a quilt interpreting the photo as she wished.  She passed her finished quilt to the second person, and they created a quilt interpreting what they wanted from the first quilt.  It continued until the last person on the list has finished a quilt.  The big "reveal" was very exciting, and it was amazing how the subject changed from the first to last quilt.  Below is a picture of the finished pieces.

We had so much fun with this challenge that we decided to do a second one.  We'll post photos of this one as soon as they are available.