I have been keeping pretty busy with new projects and I'd like to share the latest. First a call out to Jan Southard, a great artist friend that I often work with at Kooky Girlz Studio ( see on face book).I will probably be showing some of the things I do there as well as things I do on my own. You can also check out what Jan creates on her website: www.jansouthard.com.
I am a dog person and our first dog was our baby before children. She lived 18 long years and when she died I just couldn't get another. The kids, I have three, were at the stage of constant activity and it just never seemed a good time to add a dog in the mix. Well now they are grown up and starting to spread their wings to leave the nest. So it seemed like the right time to start looking once again. I like to check rescues and after searching the net and seeing who was out there, we found Nina.
I love to show animals in my work and I especially have a thing for black and white ones, so I saw that Nina was perfect to include in my work. First I made a needle felted Nina which I gave to her shelter mom at Dogs of Destiny (also on facebook). She loves to play ball so this piece has a ball in her mouth.
Next I used her patterns and expressions to create some fabric designs, which you can see on www.spoonflower.com (my designer name is Valcheck). It's a great place to take your two dimensional work and make it go a little farther in your other projects. 
Here she is in four basic poses that I then repeated in a few different ways to make a Nina collection which you can see on spoonflower. Now I can take this fabric and make a quilt or dog bed or even have it made into wall paper. Good Dog!