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

Lace printing

A very dear friend gave me a huge amount of white lace recently, she'd had it in her stash for quite a few years and decided she'd never use it, so I was the lucky recipient. It was in my house for around half a day and boy has it had a transformation.

I resurrected my gelatine plate from the fridge, the one I'd made and used in an earlier post and the images below are the results.

I've mixed the dyes to create 'old fabric' colours, they have a slightly oriental feel. They really do look ancient in real life. I want to turn them into a hand stitched quilt.

These were made using other fabrics and stencils. The gelatine plate now has a flaw in it which appears in the prints adding to the aged look. I've also noticed the plate has shrunk. I'm amazed at how long it's lasted, it's now back in the fridge waiting for it's next work out.

And this is the lace that was used to make the lace designs on the plate. I love the colours and intend to use these in my journals.

Finally another section of my re-arranged studio, this is now my journalling desk. The book I'm working in is one that belongs to a fellow member of our art group. I decided I needed to work in it and not leave it until the last minute as usually happens.

I'd like to thank everyone for your support over the past twelve months, I really do appreciate your dropping by and especially leaving comments. They make me feel it's really all worthwhile.

Also a huge Thank You to everyone who supports my Etsy store, I'm hoping to have lots more items available now that I'm doing my art full time.

Have a fabulous New Year and I hope 2011 will bring you all even more Happiness and creative success.

The domino effect

I think I've bitten off more than I can chew. I decided on Sunday that as I'll be working in my studio full time now it needed re-arranging to make it more efficient. Well I'm still going, I needed to move one of my steel plan cabinets to get to my very long work table, this required me to move a smaller table out of my studio altogether while the move was on. I moved boxes, books, fabrics, papers and tools out into my workroom where I hold my workshops. Things were thrown out, that was very painful, others went into a give away pile. Now you'd think after all of that I'd have a very tidy, neat studio. It's now Thursday night and I've just found the top of my work bench, all of the furniture is in it's new position. I'm not sure what went wrong but I still have a pile of stuff left in my work room that now won't fit back into my studio, even after I've thrown all the other things out. It looks like I'll have to do another cull before I can hold my next workshop.

This is the new home of my fibres and sari silks. I have strung them from an old metal film reel that my lovely son-in-law found for me.

The ribbon reels are now housed on an old skirt, pants, tie rack, not sure what it is. I've had it for years and new it would come in handy for something one day.

Tonight was the first time I've done any art all week. I made some 'leather look' paper above and did some more gelatine printing below. I'll be putting together some paper and fabric kits in the new year to add to my etsy store. These can be made into small journals or used for collage and card making.

I'm going to over print this one as it's a little stark.

I'd like to thank you all so much for your lovely, encouraging words re my new career. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time now. I'm really looking forward to going to my studio each day rather than all of the travelling I've been doing over the past twenty years.

I'd like to wish you all seasons greetings and I hope you all have a very creative and happy 2011.

Full time Artist as of Friday

This Friday will be my last day of working as a full time graphic designer. I've travelled two hours a day, there and back for the past twenty years. I certainly won't miss the travel. I will still be doing some work for them from home, but it will only be on a part time basis.

My new full time career in art is about to begin, I'm really looking forward to being able to get some of the ideas that keep spinning around in my head out and onto paper. I started today by making some gelatine prints, something that I haven't made for awhile. I'm thinking that might become a workshop in the new year.

I will now be concentrating on more teaching and I'm hoping to start creating some online classes too.

I haven't been near my jewellery table for around a month, now that's all about to change as well.

These prints were made on paper, the second pair show how I made a blue print on the left, then did a second print which was lighter. When it was dry I overprinted it with a similar design in a rust colour.

These prints were made on fabric. I used my Indian wood blocks for the top four. They look so old and almost Japanese. I love how all the flaws in the gelatine plate add interest. The bottom left was made using a paper doily and the right used some of my pomegranate cut outs.

Our Altered Books and Beyond group are having our Christmas get together on Tuesday night so I've been putting together some little gift packs to hand out. Each one has a small heart decoration made from my fabric papers.

I'll be back soon, blogging more now I hope.

Another small journal

This is the other small journal I hadn't had time to list on my Etsy, it's now in there. I'm still working on orders and one I can't show until later next year.

SOLD

These are a few of the pages in the journal, they feature my decorated papers, printed pages of my art, some original cut out pieces of art, fabric elements and a variety of other papers.

I met with our art group for a wonderful Christmas lunch last Saturday, we always have a great time, so much show and tell we hardly have time to eat. I received some wonderful gifts from Patsy, Jacky, Dot and Julia, all beautiful. I haven't had time to take photos of them but I have a photo of the gifts I made for them. They are hearts stitched using my paper fabric and then they have jewellery elements added to the bottom. The backs are lined with fabric.

Here's a photo of our get together compliments of Dot.

Finally these are the pages I made in Jacky's book for our altered book swap.

This page has many layers of collaged paper napkins, built up to create texture. Jacky loves owls so I managed to add one to the right hand corner. The gold squares are cut up foil chocolate wrappers.

This page features is a fabric collage quilt.