bamboolioness

I am a textile artist working in reclaimed materials. Mostly, I dabble in wool sweaters. I make hats from sweaters and embellish them with flowers created from felted sweater scraps, cut up silk blouses and scavenged yarns for needle felted details. I also like to make greeting cards out of old books, magazines and junk mail. Lately, I've been working with reclaimed jewelry. I like to take things apart and put them back together in a new way. I also like to sketch with colored pencils and permanent markers.
I'm hopelessly addicted to chocolate. I eat a little every day. I live in Portland, Oregon with my husband and teach swimming lessons to pay the bills. Plus, I love working with kids. I care deeply about protecting our environment and often volunteer on projects to help improve our natural resources.

I really like the idea of making new things out of discarded items. So I love anything that uses reclaimed materials. I adore bright colors and primitive style art. Soft and fuzzy items please me as well as shiny items. I'm interested in Buddhism so anything with Buddha images or an Oriental flair is intriguing. Handmade items are of particular interest especially those that reuse materials in a new clever way. Animals that I like include birds, especially owls, monkeys, cats and pandas. I also like dragonflies.

Lavender is my favorite fragrance although I also like citrisy things. I love chocolate, ginger and black licorice candy.

I don't care for fussy, frilly girlie things. I also don't like things that are rigid or symmetrical or realistic looking. I'm not a fan of gumdrops or jelly beans unless they are lemon. orange or black.

I have loads of sweater scraps, felt scraps, buttons, ribbon, wool jacket scraps and yarn. The yarn is mostly acrylic, just for embellishing. I also have a lot of buttons and an odd assortment of beads.

I don't really need anything but if folks have stuff they don't think they'll use, here goes: I'd like to start making stuffies, so far I have only made Dotees, so some patterns would be great. Also if anyone has an extra embroidery hoop that's the large size, I would surely use it! I only have a smallish one. I love really fancy buttons, but only have a few, so if you have extras, I'd would use them. I keep scouring thrift stores for jewelry that I can take apart and refashion easily, just using jump rings and simple tools, so it would nice to have more jewely findings.