My Own Private Art Retreat

That's right... an art retreat for me, myself and I... a private art retreat... in my own home... and it won't cost me a dime! :)

I love to hear about all the great art retreats, meet-ups and conferences going on in locales near and far - I mean, who wouldn't want to go to a bead retreat in Cortona, Italy or sail around the Caribbean on a fancy cruise ship for a week learning the latest mixed media techniques? Yea, sure... if you've got a few thousand dollars sitting around and don't have things like a mortgage or food to buy. Shheeesh!

So I decided to host a 4-day retreat for a very special person - Myself! No dishes, no laundry, no cleaning (except as necessary) - only art. Over the past few months I have been saving interesting tutorials found in blogs and on craft websites but I never seem to have time to actually use them. I gathered those together and made a trip to the library to check out some crafty books that sounded interesting.

The subjects/projects I wanted to try my hand at were:

Tea Staining linens

Making the spiral scarf from a tutorial by annekata

Taking a crochet refresher course

Making some crochet edging and ruffles

Starting work on a few beadwork ideas

Fabric Dolls

Hand sewing and Embroidery

It's only the end of the 1st day and what a great day it has been! Armed with the first 6 "Harry Potter" flicks, I got started at 7:00 this morning with crochet. After a few refreshers on the basics (my grandmother taught me how to crochet when I was 10 or so but I haven't done it since grade school) and learning how to read the charts, I was off and running! I did figure out that I needed a smaller hook and made an emergency trip to Hobby Lobby.

After a quick (and healthy) lunch...

It was on to the Spiral Scarf tutorial. This great tutorial came to me from Anne Kata's blog - called, appropriately enough, annekata. Be sure to visit her blog! You'll love it, I promise!

 

And, finally, tea staining some lace and linens. I only wish I had remembered to take a "before" shot :-P The wonderful shades of the tea stain are hard to capture in the photos but, trust me, the fabric turned out really nice. WARNING: this is addictive - I'm going to do another batch tomorrow (and remember to take those "before" shots).

 I want to start another fabric cuff during my retreat. After green, turquoise is my favorite color. Pair that with chocolate brown (do I really need to explain what I like about chocolate brown?) and it's simply heaven! I started by putting together treasury of some faves from Etsy:

Visit the treasury here and be sure to click and comment! :)

Here's the selections of goodies for my next fabric cuff:

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to tomorrow! :)