Felt, seed pods and workshop

I've been busy doing some needle felting onto circles of felt then stitching them to leather with my sewing machine. I'm adding eyelets to some of them and will add some of my jewellery embellishments to turn them into necklace or brooches.It's another great pastime to do the needle felting in front of the television. I'm going to have start watching more so that I can get them made.

This is closer to the real colour, I scanned these with my scanner.

I've also been making some resin elements to add to jewellery.

This one has an ad for a movie from a very old newspaper. I've added coloured thread and some solder balls to the resin. I want to incorporate one of my very old small light globes into the necklace to follow the theme of Edison.

Artist Sophie Munns is calling for people to create a post card for Open Studio Week in the Brisbane botanical gardens Queensland in July. The theme is paying 'homage to the seed'. The invitation is here. I think the only thing you need to be aware of is not to send actual seeds or vegetation as our quarantine laws are very strict. This looks like a wonderful project. Sophie has some beautiful art on all of her blogs.

On Saturday I had eight wonderful students attend my Vintage canvas workshop. I love teaching and seeing the beautiful creations evolve. The art produced by everyone was amazing as you'll see in the following slide show. I remembered to take photos of their work this time. They all certainly excelled.

Round Robin and lunch

Today, Sunday I had a wonderful day out with Patsy, Jacky, Dot and Julia. We all met at this divine little cafe called 'The Bunyip Kitchen and Vineyard'. It's a huge shed that has been converted into a shop and cafe, ooozing with atmosphere. The owners travel overseas and bring back fabulous treasures to sell in their shop. They've just returned from France with some lovely wares.
It was wet and cold today so we sat around their newly installed fire place and had the most delicious lunch. Their cherry cheesecake is to die for.
The five of us are having our own round robin with altered books. Mine is a book on Africa so I decided that my pages would follow that theme.
Below are the pages I've completed, it's now passed on to Patsy to weave her magic as only she can.

This is the inside cover. I wanted to make it appear like water with lots of rushes and weeds.

This page uses some of my hand carved stamps, papers and fabrics.

Again more of my hand carved stamps, lots and fabric and stitching. I drew in the giraffe and then faded it out slightly.

This page has gum leaves stitched to a band of painted watercolour paper, with more hand painting and fabrics.

Finally this page had lots of lions sitting on the branches of a tree. I've kept three of the faces of the lions, (two are well hidden) and then I've created my own versions of the trees with collage and paint.

We always have show and tell when we get together and these are some of the wonderful things we had to look at.

Jacky has been taking Jude Hill's online workshop creating a 'slow cloth', it's amazing. We were all so impressed and inspired to create our own.

This is a stunningly beautiful piece of Dot's art, there's so much work and detail in all of Dot's work. Stitching, beads, sequins, buttons, felting and in such fabulous colour combinations, just amazing.

Everyone gathered around to discuss this magnificent piece of Patsy's art. Her work is amazing and comes straight from the heart, she's one of a kind.

This is the piece they were looking at. All of the detail is in pen and ink over watercolour paint. My photo definitely doesn't do it justice, it's magnificent.

This is Patsy with another fabulous piece. We keep trying to talk her into starting a blog so that she can share her work with everyone, we're slowly convincing her.

This wonderful triptych of three beautiful collage canvases is Julia's work and guess what. I was the very lucky recipient of these fabulous works of art. They are absolutely gorgeous. 

I was very lucky and received a gorgeous hand knitted scarf from Dot, a beautiful brooch from Jacky, one she'd purchased from the amazing Jacky at Dog Daisy Chains. I also purchased a beautiful piece from her recently. I will have the photos on my next blog post.  Patsy, Julia and Jacky also gave me some beautiful fabrics. It was a really, magical day had by all.

Journal and stamps

I've just added a new small journal and a hand carved seed pod stamp to my Etsy store. The journal has some fabric pages as well as my decorated and collage pages.

These are some of the pages in the journal.

This is the hand carved seed pod stamp

I'll have more photos of what I'm working on at present later in the week.

Thanks for stopping by.