By Carrie Bloomston
We had a business for seventeen years, my husband and I. It wasn’t a scalable or glamorous business. It was just him and me in painter’s clothes working in houses one by one. We painted murals and did faux-finishes and generally painted and glazed all of Scottsdale a warm Tuscan gold or medium taupe.
I can finally share my next fabric collection with you. (You know it is so hard to wait nine months before I can share.) But here she is…World, meet DREAMER!!!
This sweet, fresh, bohemian collection is filled with layered patterns I made both with my typical collage technique and by hand-painted watercolor. This collection is a love song to the earth and to our ancestors around the globe who were MAKERS and who lived in harmony with nature.
Hello! I’m so excited to announce that Windham Fabrics printed my Newsprint fabric in 108″ wide quilt back cotton and it is zooming to stores near you…in fact it might already be there!
When I created my newsprint four years ago, I made a print that I knew I needed in my own stash. I LOVE newsprint and words and text. At that time, I only had one or two newsprint options (one was a linen which I had bought on etsy and which arrived a month later from China in a little brown paper package covered with lovely markings). But the newsprint fabrics I had seen were filled with inappropriate content…kinda like a real newspaper.
Hello and happy summer. I hibernate in the summer–I take time to unplug from media and obligations, be with my family, and clean and organize the corners of my house. I did this long before I fell in love with Marie Kondo’s Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up (which I did last summer). If you haven’t read it, you might want to. So, I’ve been hibernating a bit. But I wanted to share a cool thing in case you haven’t seen it. I was honored to be featured in the Summer 2016 of the stunning, inspiration-fest that is Where Women Create magazine. They completely captured the depth of my artistic life and I’m honored to see myself on the pages of such a richly nourishing creative magazine.
Hello there. Long time no see…or I guess I should say, long time no say because I haven’t posted here in a few months. I hope you are well and good and emerging from nature’s cocoon of winter. Our spring here in the desert has been warm and lovely. The garden bed is singing to me–the heirloom tomatoes ripening, the dill flowers are shoulder high, and the sunflowers are showing us their faces now.
If you read this blog, I just want to thank you and wish you happy holidays.
I honestly don’t know how to interpret backend blog analytics or to understand if my numbers of readers are good or bad, high or low. I’m kinda low-tech.
But still, if there are ten of you (other than my mom) who read this blog and support my work then that feels good to me. And if there are a hundred then that’s pretty awesome. And if there are 1,000 then that is amazing. But for some people, 1,000 would seem insignificant.
Are you ready for the new year? I’m thrilled and honored to be teaching at Craft NAPA in gorgeous Napa Valley, California at an incredible new retreat created by Pokey Bolton. She is bringing together many fabulous teachers for this event to get your creative juices flowing and help guide you into your creative passion. The teachers are textile designers, fiber artists, sewinistas, painters, mixed media artists and art quilters. During this three-day retreat, you will have the opportunity to master your skills in collage, quilting, sketching, printmaking, painting, art journaling, and mixed media, all the while enjoying outstanding cuisine and wine, too.
I’ve been making art a lot for a few months and that process plugs me into my essential nature. In that space we meet all the aspects of the self. All the biggies pop up when we head into the unknown land of our true creativity. (If you haven’t yet fallen in love with Jason Silva you’ll probably want to watch this. And then watch all of his Shots of Awe videos. But read my post first.)
Remember our Happy Flag Project?
A year ago we were heading to Birmingham, Alabama to see the Dalai Lama. My mom and I had spent the previous five months collecting handmade, artful prayer flags in honor of the visit. We led workshops in Alabama and Arizona. The whole city of Birmingham got involved–it was part of the University (UAB) curriculum in many departments. The Sculpture department created an installation with 1,000 flags.
Good morning and happy Monday.
Isn’t Mercury in retrograde? I can already feel it, how about you?
Last week I found out I didn’t win the Blue Moon label contest. I made it all the way to the top 10 thanks to all of your support! Thanks for taking the time to vote for me. It meant a lot to feel your love. I thought I had a decent shot. So, I did feel hopeful for those few months during the process.
