Such great fortunes were submitted for a chance to be featured in one of the glass ornaments for this season. It was difficult to narrow them down to only eight. But we have and now you get to help decide the winning fortune that will be featured.

Vote for your favorite.
Voting will end on July 7 and we will announce the winner.

Just like narrowing down all of the great fortunes submitted to the top 8, we had to narrow down the great ornaments to the ones we will be presenting to you. Every year we ask artists to submit ornaments to be considered for the ornament season. This year we received hundreds of ornaments from artists. They are all so beautiful and each one stunning in it’s own way. But with much care and consideration, we were able to narrow the selection to just over 100 ornaments we will be presenting to you. The colors are stunning - from bright blues and vibrant reds to sweet pastels and glittering metallics, from the traditional globes (large and small) to spires, animals, trees, and more. There are ornaments you’ve never seen before and the return of some favorites. The artists have truly out done themselves this year. And there will be one special ornament which contains the fortune written by one of you. The entire ornament collection will be available in late August … stay tuned.

Chocolate by Cathy Kleeman

All week long I’ve been putting stuff in boxes, getting ready for the Quilt Surface Design Symposium. We’re leaving tomorrow and I’m taking a 7 day class with Elizabeth Busch. Today it’s time to really get serious, finalize my packing, move stuff up out of the studio and into the car. This class I’m taking is called a “Master Class”. It’s more of a mentored studio where we have the benefit of input from both the instructor and all our classmates. We bring our own projects and pretty much do work of our own choosing. There are usually group critiques and one-on-one critiques plus other art-inspiring activities. We’re also going to be doing some painting on cotton duck, something I don’t usually do.

I been thinking about my years of attendance at QSDS. My first class was in 1993, when it was still run at the Josephinium Seminary, a college for priests in Columbus. The facilities were primitive, to put it mildly. Our rooms were the cells in the dormitory, no air conditioning, big enough for a single bed and a dresser. The showers were down the hall, and two rooms shared a toilet and a sink. One quickly became acquainted with one’s “sink-mate”. The class I took was titled “A Problem-Solving Approach to Design” and it was a series of small projects that taught us how to boost creativity. The best lesson I took away from that class was to not be afraid to experiment and to not let the work become so dear that you’re afraid to try something for fear of wrecking it.

It was my first exposure to Quilt National and I was gobsmacked. These “quilts” were like nothing I had ever seen and I wasn’t even sure I liked them. At that point, I wasn’t even ready to call myself an artist. If someone had told me that my work would one day be hanging in Quilt National I would have laughed and laughed. Now I feel very comfortable calling myself an artist.

I didn’t attend QSDS again until 1997, but I have been there every year since. For a long time I took different technique classes: low water dyeing, stamping, machine quilting, screen printing - lots of surface design techniques to add to my repertoire. After a while I realized that I also needed education in design principles and how to think like an artist. Luckily, QSDS began their Master Classes, just what I was looking for. At some point you have to really start doing your own work - take all those different techniques and make them work for you.

To digress a bit… I don’t remember what quilts were the first ones I entered into Quilt National but I’m sure they were deserving of rejection considering the competition. Here is one of my entries from QN 2001. It’s titled Rx: Chocolate. It’s a self-portrait of sorts. I stamped words that come into one’s vocabulary as one reaches a “certain age”: menopause, bone density, mammogram, yadda, yadda. Quilted into the background is my own prescription for these facts of life: chocolate. Doesn’t solve the problems, but it makes them more bearable.

I’ve always thought this would be a great piece of art for an OB/GYN’s office, but so far there haven’t been any takers.

Visit Cathy’s blog.

Constellations Necklace by Estyn Hulbert

My first encounter with working with small beads was as a child in summer camp, and I find that that first encounter (think tiny beads spilling everywhere) can color my desire to even consider looking at works using beads and small stones as the primary medium. Nonetheless, I was absolutely stopped in my tracks when I was introduced to Estyn Hulbert and her breathtaking pieces at the Philadelphia Buyers Market show in February.

While she is an established professional in her field, Hulbert is a new artist with Artful Home. She works with tiny freshwater pearls and turquoise, the size of tiny glass beads but far more precious, steel wire and gold chain, taking the most delicate of elements and fashioning them into dramatic and elegant jewelry.

When building a piece of jewelry from pearls and wire, Estyn Hulbert describes the process as working with single units, adding and subtracting them to create shapes, the materials providing a palette of textures and contrasts. She thinks in terms of the architecture of a piece, striving for structural integrity and a seamlessness between the material and the form.

I was fortunate enough to see her pieces again at our recent photo shoot for the Fall Artful Home catalogs. The on-model photo above gives you a sense of the scale and refined drama of both the Constellation Necklace.

Constellations Necklace by Estyn Hulbert

Great fortunes have been submitted and if you haven’t yet submitted yours, tomorrow is your last day to do so.

There are three ways to submit your fortune.

1. Tweet your fortune and include either #ArtfulHome or @ArtfulHome in the tweet.
2. Post your fortune on the Artful Home fan page on Facebook.
3. Or post your fortune as a comment to the blog.

All entries must be received by midnight central time, Wednesday, June 24. On June 26 we will present the top 8 fortunes and you can vote on which one will be printed in the ornament.

If your fortune is chosen, you will receive a set of this season’s fortune cookie ornaments with your fortune printed inside.