Thursday Special

We interrupt this Thursday's Theme with a special message.  Today is a special day.  This day, January 3, is my Mom's birthday.  Happy birthday, Mom! *throws confetti*

At this point, we've been to dinner, given her presents, and rolled home.  But I still had a blog post to write, and I want to dedicate it to her.  Don't worry, there will be closeups of that tag up there.  Patience, pocket padawans.

I want this blog post to be about my very awesome Mom because without her, I might not be the artist I am.  With a different Mom, I probably wouldn't know how to sew, or knit, or crochet, or sort-of-but-not-really-well-so-I-don't-bother cross stitch.  I might not have gotten into stamping or mixed media.  I might still be artistic, but would probably have stuck to traditional 2-dimensional art forms.  And that's great, and I love sketching, but there is so much more to unlock. 

My Mom is super creative.  She didn't really know it until she married and moved away from home, but she has always been an artist and had a particular eye for color.  She started with embroidery and moved on to all kinds of fiber arts, from regular sewing to quilting, and crochet to knitting, and from sewing and quilting and knitting to wearable art and beading.  She loves papers and ephemera; we used to read Victoria magazine together and she started buying Somerset Studio when I was in middle school.  As a kid, spending time with my Mom, I was surrounded with all this stuff and I wanted to play with it all.  So she taught me, and encouraged me, and told me I had a talent.  She was always so adventurous with art and that encouraged me to be so too.  And we always had fun, whether taking a class together or just putzing around in the basement with fabric or yarn or stamps.  She gave me my own space in the sewing room, and when I outgrew having a play room, we turned that side of the basement into a "studio."  We designed a yarn room together when my brother's old room became the new guest room and the old guest room was suddenly available (and our combined yarn stashes threatened to take over the house otherwise).  And now, even though I have my own place and my own supplies, I still go back home to play with Mom and share tools and ideas.  She'll show me what she's been working on - nowadays it's usually either new tags with cool techniques she's been experimenting with or bead and metal jewelry that she's designing and making with her ever-growing arsenal of metalworking tools - and we'll have some tea and talk about what we want to do next or what's been inspiring us.

The best times, I think, are when you can just be friends with your Mom.  And creativity has always given us a place to be friends. 

Well, after writing all that, the tag will seem awfully simple.  But it was really fun to make, and Mom liked it, so I guess that's all that matters.

Here's what I used:

(The stencils are, of course, by Michelle Ward.)

Here's what I did with them:

Happy birthday, Mom!