Creativity

If you follow my blog, you know that I have a pretty severe case of ADD. I cannot stay with one activity for very long. That includes my creative endeavors. I have posted about fabric art such as quillows, nap mats, and pillowcase dresses. I have made many kinds of jewelry, including statement necklaces, beaded brooches, and team spirit jewelry. My love for other people’s discards has sparked an interest in wood creations. That includes furniture and yard art. I cannot stay with one medium for very long.

Family Influence is very strong. My mother was creative and my father could not sit still. So I move from one unfinished project to another. One creative outlet that I have not talked about much is painting wall art.  I have taken watercolor lessons with my mother and I recently won a local art contest.

I have painted for friends and family and also for myself.

The following slide presentation shows some of my work that is for sale.

Enjoy and Share!

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Pretty in Pillowcase

Recently a friend gave me a stack of vintage, hand-embroidered pillowcases. I had no idea what to do with them, so I just put them in a basket in my shop in Pasadena. They are cute and somebody will be nostalgic and want to buy them, right? Well, there they sat and sat and sat.

I don’t have any little girls and my grandSON isn’t very  feminine. So, I didn’t know about the latest rage, pillowcase dresses.

 

My sweet young friend, Maria, came to our quilting, sewing, craft night with material to make a Halloween dress for Liliana. I went home,  searched the internet and started making pillowcase dresses.

They are so easy to make. The original pattern said to measure up from the bottom 20″, so that’s what I did. I then notched out a “J” for the armhole. I used the material that I had cut off to make a binding for the armholes. The last sewing step was the casing for the ribbon tie.

Last Sunday, I took the dress to church to check sizes and get some reactions. Everyone loved them. The suggestion was to make them a little longer. I tried it on a 2T and a teenager. The neck is a drawstring, so it can be tightened or loosened. As the sweetheart grows, she can wear leggings or pants under the dress. During the winter, she can add a t-shirt under it or a sweater over it.

Hopefully I can send more pictures later. This weekend I sent everything I had to the  Old Time Trade Days in Winnie, TX. Marcy from M’s Boutique and More in Orange, TX had a booth. I was so busy working, getting it all together, that I did not do a very good job of taking pictures.

Here are some of the things I sent:

quillows

Nap mats

Seashell art

Painted “Stained Glass” bib necklaces

and of course, pillowcase dresses.

I am also very excited about adding my creations to a really cute children’s resale/consignment store in Friendswood, TX. Funky Monkey first caught my eye because of the name. We called our grandson Monkey Boy when he was little. I went in there to find monkey stuff and ended up selling my creations.

I am really going to be busy between now and Christmas. Hopefully I will also be making some money.

Longhorn Etsy Treasury

Today Corky Crafts included one of my stained glass windows in Texas Longhorn Fans Treasury. She does a great job of highlighting Texas shops in these treasuries.

This listing is especially close to my heart. Our family has a long history with THE UNIVERSITY. My dad, known as POP, graduated from UT in 1943. He then left to serve our country in WWII. When he returned, he bought season tickets for the UT football games. I wonder how much they cost at that time. As I was growing up, we spent many weekends, or at least Saturday, in Austin. I did not get to go to many games because I had 2 older brothers. They always got to go to the games if Pop was not taking clients. I don’t think we ever has a real Thanksgiving day celebration until they changed the day of the UT/A&M game. I remember one Thanksgiving we had sandwiches outside Kyle Field in College Station. Pop passed away in 2006. My mother still gets the tickets and we still enjoy those games.

In 1975 my brother, Larry Speck, joined the faculty of the School of Architecture at University of Texas at Austin.

Larry helped to found the Center for American Architecture and Design in the School of Architecture at UT where he was Director from 1982-90. In 1990 Larry became associate dean of the School of Architecture at University of Texas, and in 1992 he became dean. He was in that position for 9 years. Over the last decade Larry has “expanded the range of his teaching in the School of Architecture and has been a potent agent for change in the larger University of Texas community”. In 2008 he received the UT Most Interesting Professor Award. Can you tell I am proud of the influence my brother has had on this great institution? He is also a great guy.

Our connection to UT continues. My son, Barry, and his wife, Emily, both received their master’s degrees in education from UT. Barry Bacom is the Assistant Principal and Director of New Tech High at Akins High School in Austin. He graduated from Abilene Christian University with a B.A. in Secondary Education and later from the University of Texas at Austin with an M.Ed. in Educational Administration. Emily earned her master’s in Language and Literacy and also works for Austin ISD as a literacy coach. They are the parents of the next great longhorn, our grandson.

I have created several things to go with this UT Longhorn theme.

Visit MMB Creations on etsy to see it all.

Connecting Our Community

As I have said before, I grew up in the small Quaker community of Friendswood, TX. We moved there in 1955 when I was 1-year-old. My parents bought 25 acres and sold off pieces to build our house. This was the first subdivision in the town of 911. My dad was busy building a business, a family and also a community. He was on the school board for 25 years and the city council for 2 years.

In 1960, a nearby city decided to annex our small community. The men of Friendswood worked hard to stop this. On November 1, 1960, Friendswood became an incorporated city. This week I was at the library where I saw a poster about a contest for the 50 year celebration of this date.

I began to think about what kind of picture I could paint. The first thing I thought about was a picture we had of the Fourth of July Parade in about 1960. Friendswood has been having a Fourth of July Parade for over 100 years. It is a really big deal. When I was little, the parade would end up at the old city park. Some of the men of the community had been cooking BBQ all night. The ladies brought their best pies. There was a rodeo. It was great fun. Now the parade ends at the new Stevenson Park and everything is catered, but it’s still great fun.  Well, back to the contest.

Several years ago Joyciana Baker, the docent of the museum called to say she had a poster of our family in the parade that she would like to give to us. I went and picked up the poster.

 

I am in the wagon with my mother. My dad is the one with the donkey ears. I think that my 2 brothers were in the back carrying shovels. The next year my mother pulled the wagon with a sign that extolled equal rights for women. Judging by my size in the picture, it was about 1960. I wanted to incorporate this into my painting.

There are several other important things in Friendswood that I thought would represent “Connecting Our Community”.

City Hall:

Stevenson Park:

The Liberty Tree :

So this is what I turned in today:

 

They will announce the winner October 31st.

Wish me luck!

Greatest Before and After

My brother-in-law, Gary, has really had a rough year. He only has 22% lung capacity. Then he found out he had blockage in his heart. Methodist Hospital in Houston did a great job repairing his heart while keeping his lungs working. He was sent back to Vidor doing well. Then he started having trouble with low blood pressure so he made the mistake of going to St Elizabeth’s Hospital in Beaumont. He developed pneumonia and they put him on a ventilator. He was medically sedated and left that way for 45 days. He dwindled to almost nothing. They were talking to us about taking him off of life support and letting him die. A very smart nephew advised us to move him back to Houston. This is a picture of him when he was really bad.

When I saw him at Methodist after his return he was worse than this. Well he is now in a long-term rehab facility in San Antonio. Here are some after pictures.

God really does the best Before and After.

This is truly the power of prayer.