Alternative Creativity - Painting a Bernina

Life presents you with some very interesting creativity opportunities sometimes. I was presented with one of these opportunities very recently - I had the opportunity to decorate a Bernina sewing machine to be auctioned off.

This sounded like too much fun to pass up. I didn't really have time, but this was really something that sounded like it could be a lot of fun - and I don't get to have much creative fun lately, so I jumped at the opportunity. Bernina offered this opportunity to 12 designers (and I am so honored to be one of the chosen). I know Laura Cater-Woods and Robbi Joy Eklow are 2 of the other designers.

I knew I wanted to paint it with some DigiBobbE styled designs and I didn't want the base coat to be white. I used a plastic paint as the base and then added a automotive metallic blue paint. My husband took the whole machine apart so it would be clean and neat.

I sketched the DigiBobbE style designs with chalk and then painted it with Testors paint - it took at least 2 coats. Way cool! Added some rhinestones and then according to the Bernina guidelines it needed to have something sewing related - so I made some machine embroidered butterflies on tulle with Tintzl between the layers, cut them out, and added them to the gold painted wire curls.

This machine still works. I think the lucky winner of this machine will be thrilled to have a beautiful piece of art that also works as a sewing machine. If you want to bid on this machine, you'll probably have to go through a Bernina dealer that is going to BU (Bernina University).

So you see, life may present other opportunities for creativity other than fabric. Do what you love!

Bonnie Lyn McCaffery http://BonnieMcCaffery.com