One of my Favourites

This necklace is the latest addition to my Etsy store . This would have to be one of my favourites. I love using combinations of found things and wire. There's great satisfaction in transforming something from it's original purpose into a piece of jewellery. The silver shoe charms were a real find.
The second photo shows how it hangs when worn.

Found object earrings and rusty fabric

These earrings are the latest addition to my Etsy store .
They have jets and onyx beads, with some very old cut crystal beads. The main features are the beautiful old silver filigree pieces that came from a bracelet.




I've also been busy 'rust dyeing' fabric as seen in Lesley Riley's article in Cloth Paper Scissors. Lesley does some magical things with rust. This piece was created by putting white muslin into an old baking tray that was starting to go rusty. I added hot water, vinegar, rusty objects, including an old bike chain and then the muslin. I made sure the cloth was covered by the water. After two days this was the result. I'm going to use this in my altered books.




This piece was taken a step further. I painted the background with diluted fabric dye and then stamped the fabric with my home made stamps.

My Etsy Store is now open

Wow, after many trials and tribulations my Etsy store is now up and running. I have three pieces of jewellery for sale and will be adding more soon. I also hope to have some decorated paper packs and home made journals for sale, as well as the occasional painted canvas. Hope you can pay my store a visit, I welcome any comments. Thanks everyone.




This is typical of the journals I hope to have for sale. They will consist of decorated original papers of varying sizes, with the occasional piece of art, fabric etc. The rest is for you to decorate or use as you please.






These are pages from my journal, I tend to use this one as a dairy, although the dates are in no particular order. I also add quotes and notes, sketches, images I find, business cards, tickets, whatever. I keep going back and adding to the pages, they never seem finished.

Altered Book Workshop

I have another Altered Book Workshop coming up on Sunday the 25th November. If anyone's interested please email me or give Hann Made Studio Mentone a call, their phone number's on their web site.



Remember this page? It was on my blog a few days ago, well, after 'squinting', this is what I came up with.



I used oil pastel to fill in the shapes and then scratched in the design with a piece of metal, through the layers, to take me back to the gesso background.



These little things are my hand painted tea bags. I drink the tea and then carefully take out the staple at the top of the tea bag, or just pull the tag and staple off. I then gently open the bag out at the seam,usually down the middle in most bags. I wash them under running water and then paint or stamp them. You can do this while they are still wet for a water colur effect or wait until they are dry for a sharper image. I then use them as pages in some of my jewellery 'book necklaces' or add them to pages in my journal. Visit Judy and see what she has done with them.

I'd like to thank everyone who takes the time to visit my blog and also to the people who leave comments, it means so much to me. I try to get back to those who's details I have, but I'm not always able to find contact details for some of the people who comment. To all of you a very big THANK YOU.

My Etsy should also be opening this weekend, so I hope you can drop by.

Best scissors ever, plus this and that

I've just discovered a fabulous pair of scissors, Judy told me about them so I bought a pair from her Red velvet elements Etsy store . They are made by Tim Holtz and are incredible. I've cut all of the objects shown on my cutting board in the photo, the pieces are all metal and the really thick copper I usually have to cut with my dremel, not any more, not now have these babies, just amazing. Thanks Judy and Tim.



This is a pair of earrings to go to one of the galleries. I'm just fixing up my Pay Pal account and then I'll have some jewellery to sell in my Etsy store, hopefully by the end of the week.



This is a section of a mosaic column I have in progress at the moment, it's taken a back seat for awhile, but I hope to get back to it soon.






These are all photos of parts of my studio and some of my art materials Mary Harris nominated me some time ago to show my studio desktop. As I've already shown a fair portion of my studio recently I thought I'd just show some close up snippets. Hope you're watching Mary, sorry it took me so long.

I was also nominated sometime ago by the fabulous children's author and artist Jackie Morris or her cats actually, to state five collective nouns, I gather they relate to what I do.
Well Jackie provided the first one
a rainbow of colour, a necklace of beads, a library of altered books, a recycling of found objects and lastly a yarn of wool.
Too much thinking for this hour of the night. I would recommend a visit to Jackie's web site, she is the most fantastic illustrator and has great photos of her studio. Jackies cat's have their own blog too which is great fun for all the animal lovers.

Buys, swaps and journal pages

I've been receiving lots of lovely mail recently. Firstly some great things from Judy's Etsy store . What a fabulous selection Judy has, look at the 'piece de resistance' in the centre, how cool is that, Judy knows me well. There's something for everyone, and Judy's so generous, she gave me some extras and some beads that she'd had in her collection, which will come in very useful in my jewellery making. Go visit her. I'm sure there will be something for you.



Next I did a swap with Leighanna . I made her some of my stamps and a journal and look what I received in return, a terrific selection of things for my jewellery, look at the optical lenses and crystal drop, papers and butterfly wings and some great paper from Albie Smith, only I've used it already so can't show it here. The icing on the cake was a beautiful painted canvas of Leighannas that looks even better in real life. Thanks Leighanna.



I also did a swap with Gisele . They are three beautiful ATC's joined so I can frame them, again they are so much nicer in the flesh. Giselle also sent me some great pages out of an old stamp album and pages of symbols and music. Another great swap. Thanks Gisele.




Thought I'd show a couple of pages from my decorated pages journal. I have three journals in action at present, all three different styles. The above pages are a conbination of paper napkins, transfers, my stamps, my altered photos and some scribble to finish off.
Now, back to jewellery making.

Oil pastel journal pages

I've started my next altered book, this time I've glued some pages together, added torn paper scraps, scrunched up paper napkins, pieces of muslin, anything that will help created a texture. I've used gel medium to attach the texture materials to the page. When the gel medium is dry I then paint the pages with gesso.



Now comes the fun part, I've used oil pastels and water soluble oil pastels. I add splotches of colour at random all over the pages. At this point lots of the gesso is showing through, I then rub the colours into the page to hide all the white, I let the colours merge to reveal new colours. The only draw back is if you do too many pages at once, you end up with blisters on the ends of your fingers, I speak from experience.



The next stage was interesting, I studied the page to see if it revealed anything to me it didn't to start with, but when I squinted through partially closed eyes I could just make out the dome shapes. That was enough for me, my favourite buildings. I outlined evrything in black, coloured in the domes and walls, then used a thin piece of metal to scrape back the outlines and highlights. I'll probably add other things later, but for now I'm waiting for it to 'speak to me' again.



This is the next page, I think I see a person on either page linked by a pink heart. Well it helps to have a good imagination.