St. Francis Elements Masks

Sister Earth Mask

Brother Fire Mask

Brother Sun

Sister Water Mask

Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures,

especially Sir Brother Sun,

Who is the day through whom You give us light.

And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour,

Of You Most High, he bears the likeness.

Sister Moon Mask

Brother Wind Mask

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,

In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,

And fair and stormy, all weather's moods,

by which You cherish all that You have made.

Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water,

So useful, humble, precious and pure.

Praised be You my Lord through Brother Fire,

through whom You light the night and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You my Lord through our Sister,

Mother Earth

who sustains and governs us,

producing varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.

Praise be You my Lord through those who grant pardon for love of You and bear sickness and trial.

Blessed are those who endure in peace, By You Most High, they will be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord through Sister Death,

from whom no-one living can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Blessed are they She finds doing Your Will.

No second death can do them harm. Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks,

And serve Him with great humility.  

I'm not even going to go into how difficult it is to put multiple pictures into a blog post without chopping up all the text like crazy.  I just spent a week painting these masks, and don't want to put a full day fighting blogger trying to get them formatted right.  Yes, I can do it.  No, I don't feel like it.  I just want to do more painting right now!

Wonderful Ice Cream Duster

Wonderful Ice Cream Duster

This is the first full scale garment that I made for fun.  Up to this point I've been making performance vests for the singing group I'm in: Happy Notes!  The group performs a variety of songs around the High Desert.  We usually perform in black vests, but for holiday shows I wanted to make something a little more entertaining.  I created 5 reversible vests which show festive and holiday themed patterns.  I'll post photos of those later on.
There was a duster that I bought ages ago from Fredericks of Hollywood, back when not only did Fedrick's sell clothing for men, but also at a time when clothes were actually made in the U.S.A.  This should give you an idea of how old this duster was.  I loved it like crazy but time was not kind to it.  It was black, but after awhile the black dye started to bleed out, so it was a mottled black color.  Still cool, but not the image that I was looking for.  So the duster stayed in the back of my closet for years and I've been carting it around to multiple states, unwilling to let it go but not really ready to put it on again.
Then I took a sewing class and had an idea.  Maybe, just maybe, it would be possible for me to take the garment and take it apart piece by piece and use it as a template for a new duster.  Could I do it?  Sure I could!  After about a week of messing around with material, I made the Wonderful Ice Cream Duster!

To make the look complete, I put the QR code which leads to the Talent For Raw main website.  This is something that I knew that I had to do, bu was also aware that it could ruin the jacket but good.  After all, I was putting an untried (by me) method of painting on material.  The design I wanted would have the look of actually being branded onto the material.  When all is said and done, I think the results worked out pretty well!

I didn't realize it at the time, but imbedding a QR code into a jacket isn't really a new thing.  It's been done a handful of times before, but I really like my approach the best.  There are some sites where people have cross-stiched the pattern onto the garment, or made a new textile out of the blocky pattern.  But my idea was to have something that looked added on after the fact.  So while it's not incorporated into the design of the garment, it really stands out on its own.

Wonderful Ice Cream Duster QR Code