Sun printed fabrics

I've decided to add some of my sun printed fabrics to my Etsy store, I currently have three packs for sale. Each pack consists of ten pieces of fabric all with different designs. They can be used for quilt making, journals, collage etc.  The pieces are approximately 6 inches by 8 inches, some slightly larger or smaller.

This is typical of the fabric in the packs.

and this.

These are the packs.

I'm also working on my embellishing machine between creating my new journals, this is what I've been working on.

close up detail

another view

There's still quite a bit more hand stitching to add before it's finished.

New Chair

I've been busy getting ready to teach a workshop this weekend, so my journaling a day has missed a couple but I managed to get one page done today. I also revamped an old chair I have in my studio. This is the result.

This is it finished.

This is what it looked like before I started. I was going to cover it with fabric but then decided to paint it. If it didn't work I could always go back to idea one and cover it with fabric.

I painted it with gesso and then attacked it with acrylic paints and just kept going. 

I seem to be obsessed with circles. I spent a day in Elizabeth's studio last Friday and we decided to do a two person version of the painted canvas that I made with my art group. This time we worked on our own canvas whilst we listened to music, at the end of each song we swapped canvases, it was great fun.

This is my piece in progress.

These are our finished canvases. The top one is mine. Elizabeth developed a tree in mine which was wonderful, I loved that idea so added two more, she also added a cute little bird, bottom left, so I added one at the top right. Elizabeth's was a beautiful swirl of colour, very much like lollipops. It was a great day and I can't wait until we can do it again.

My journal spread.

Close up of the painted page.

I'd also like to send out best wishes to all of the people in Victoria now who are suffering from the floods. They have covered over a third of our state. They say you get what you ask for and for the last ten years we have suffered severe drought, so much so that people have been asked to pray for rain, well it worked, well and truly, more than we can handle. 

I'd also like to thank Angelia at 

Angelia's Art Journals

She very kindly did an interview with me about my life and art, if you'd like to check it out click on the link above.

Latest pages

These are my journal pages for the past two days. I ended up taking my journal with me to a cafe today and worked on the pages, it's a great time to catch up with journaling and very relaxing.

I love adding decorations to the sides of the pages.

These are nasturtiums that were in the garden at the Heidi gallery.

I add a few of my stamps for decoration and more words for my goals for 2011

This is a beautiful native plant we have growing in our garden, I don't know it the berries are edible.

It has very long leaves similar to a flax plant. 

The photo and the sketch.

A Land of Extremes

After ten years of severe drought in the north and east of our great land, a HUGE area of Queensland is under water. Floods, the likes of which have never been seen before. Nine people have died and 66 are missing. The torrent of water is amazing. There are some graphic video clips and images here on the ABC news web site. We have been having rain almost everyday but nothing like they are having up north, we don't mind, while it rains it won't burn.

This is a detail of the sketch in my journal. I've decided to try to journal everyday. 

This is the complete page showing my interpretation of the globe artichokes in the photo below.

This is one of the photos I took in the garden at Heidi gallery last week.

These are the two pages together. I've decided to work on a double page and add a border to both edges.

I'll then add one of my photos to one of the pages and then do a sketch on the other adding text that represents my goals for the year. That's my aim, I hope I can keep it up.

What a Bargain.

Today I visited my local Spotlight store to purchase fabrics for my next workshop, when what did I spy all of these wonderful products going out for 50cents an item. There are transfoils, silk dyes, paints, dyed fleece and bags of tapestry yarns. The goodies in the photo came to the grand total of $23.50, a true bargain.

Again thanks to everyone for your comments in my previous post, I'm still trying to answer as many as I can, I really do appreciate your support. I'm hoping to blog more too now I'm working from home.

Five Take Flight

'Five Take Flight' is a possible name for an exhibition that our little group of five art friends will be holding later on in the year. On Saturday we had our art get together at Patsy's home and what a day it was. In spite of the very hot weather, we had a great time, fabulous food and lots of laughing then down to the business of the day, to 'create a large piece of art'.
We started with this huge piece of canvas that Patsy generously provide, along with the paints, and just walked around and around the table adding paint, changing colour, not even thinking, just letting our minds go. This was a fabulous way to paint, no planning, no inhibitions, just freedom. Below is the result. This will be the banner for our exhibition.

This is the start with the blank canvas, Jacky, Pats and Dot.

The progress, Jacky, Julia and Pats.

Almost enough.

The finished piece.

We were so 'in the zone' we decided to cut another piece of canvas into five sections, go around the table painting at random, then after about ten minutes we chose a section each and just continued on our own piece. Below is the amazing results, all very individual pieces.

Julia's panel, Patsy's, Dot's, mine and Jacky's

Part of Dot's, mine then Jacky's

What a great day, I could definitely recommend this to everyone, go and grab some friends and go for it, so liberating.

This is the second page I created in Julia's book in our round robin.

 Patsy loves textiles and stitching, so I made this button necklace for her birthday with lots of red and purple buttons. Happy Birthday Patsy for tomorrow.

Change of direction

I decided I would use my journal that I created in Traci's Discovering You workshop to use for my daily journaling, that way I avoided the blank pages, however, Traci's prompt number two is to make backgrounds, so I will go back to my journal in the last post for that. Confused, I am? In other words I will be keeping two journals running simultaneously, for awhile anyway. Below is the first two pages showing my goals for 2011 in my business plan journal.

Yesterday we went to the Heide Gallery in Templestowe to see the Mirka Mora exhibition. I've been a fan of Mirka's for years, she creates wonderful mythical creatures in her paintings, her dolls are amazing too.

She's now in her eighties but has had a fascinating life, from her days when she escaped the holocaust to migrating to Australia and starting a new life here, you can read an interview she gave on the ABC here.

Here are three of her paintings from other exhibitions.

Mirka also painted some of the windows of the Gallery as part of the exhibition.

See this link.

I couldn't resist taking photos of the gorgeous globe artichokes in the Gallery's cafe kitchen garden.

The colour is so intense, the camera hasn't come any where near to capturing the brightness. I think this could end up as a new stamp design.

Today was a glorious day, balmy warm weather. We visited one of our favourite beach spots at Mornington. They are re building the jetty so there weren't as many boats as usual. They have some fabulous street cafes and shops along the main street, all doing a roaring trade today.

A bit of everything

During last year I joined Traci Bautista's online classes and found them extremely inspiring, especially her 'Discovering You' course, all about starting your own business and marketing yourself. Traci is now running an Art Journaling Daily event on her blog where everyday you spend 5-20 minutes journaling. I make lots of journals but haven't made one for myself in a long time. Now I'm working full time at my art I decided now was as good a time as any to start. My journal is very basic as you can see, the only art is on the cover, this is going to be a real challenge as I always start out with decorated papers. I'll be posting the progress along the way. Visit Traci's site, you might like to join the event too.

The cover.

The inside cover.

All of the pristine white pages.

Art Journaling Daily link

I received this magnificent piece of equipment for Christmas from my husband. I've been working on two journals, one a commission and the other a secret for the time being, this little (or should I say not so little) piece of machinery is helping me add some wonderful embellishments to the pages. I've been using a hand felting embellisher for some time now, but this one is the way to go, it saves so much time and embellishes pretty much anything that stands still long enough for me to get it under the needles.

This is my new embellisher.

I've still managed to find a little time to do some hand work on my gelatine printed quilt. I love the fact that this was just a pile of plain calico before I started printing. It's a lovely feeling to have created something from your own fabric, making it totally unique. I'm adding circles of varying sizes, these are cut from some very old pure linen (the dark blue) and raw silk (the khaki green) pants I had many years ago adding to the 'aged' look.

The buttons are very old linen ones and the label is from a brand of 'hippy' clothing I used to wear some years ago, although I still have the clothes and they do make an appearance on occasions.

 These circles will all be linked eventually.

I'm never one to pass something by if I think I can use it to create texture, and these little bamboo goodies jumped out at me today and said 'take me home'. The other end is actually tongs but I'll be using this end to decorate paper and fabric, at 3 for a dollar I couldn't resist them.

Finally I regularly visit blogs and gain so much inspiration along the way, and every so often a technique comes along that knocks your socks off. Susan Lenz has a textile technique that does just that. I did a textile swap with her some years ago now and was most impressed with her piece but what Susan's doing now is amazing and if you go back through her blog files she actually explains how she does it, a very talented, generous lady.

'Ancient' quilt

I've worked like crazy over the past two days, tearing up fabric strips, laying and pinning the design out, all ready to take in the car with me for our two hour trip to visit friends on New Years Eve. All in vain, my husband came down with a very nasty chest infection, causing the cancellation of our planned trip. Alas we had a very quiet celebration at home which enabled me to complete the preliminary stitching of the quilt. I'll probably leave it for awhile to decide what additional stitching or embellishment I'll add to it. I was pleased with the 'aged ' look of the fabrics. I might even add very old linen buttons here and there.

The torn strips waiting to be assembled.

Pinned and waiting for stitching.

A close up of some of the stitching.

Now waiting for more stitching or embellishment. It's about the size of a cushion.

I'll be teaching a workshop from home in February on gelatine printing, so if you're interested

please email me for details.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

have a very Happy, Healthy and Creative 2011