Journal pages

I've been out of action for a few days due to a dicky knee (sorry the Aussie's will know what I mean).
It all started Saturday, I got into my car, drove for fifteen minutes, got out of my car and suddenly felt a tightness in the back of my knee. I walked around our major fabric and haberdashery store, carrying a couple of rolls of fabric, it was still playing up. Had a coffee in a little cafe, went to stand up and that was it. I had to limp out of the cafe, luckily my husband was with me, struggled back to the car and home. The doctor tells me it's tendon problems, I've had a few very relaxing days sitting with my leg up, fortunately that's worked as I'm teaching a workshop this Saturday.

I did manage to get a couple of pages done in my journal. I also prepared the kits for my workshop so not all time was wasted. 

The double spread

Close up of my sketch.

Another double spread

Close up of my sketch

This is a peak of a project I've been working on for weeks, I can't show you any more but hopefully all will be revealed during the year.

This is a new style of jewellery that I've been working on. The fabric is a piece of my sun dyed printing, stitched to a leather backing. I've hand wired carnelian beads to the chain. This and a few others will be added to my Etsy store soon.

Speaking of jewellery the master Keith Lo Bue has a new e book, fabulous value for 7 dollars. It features his blog with step by step processes of his projects, but Keith also includes some additional fantastic photos of his work. There's a whole 352 pages in the book. Better and cheaper than a magazine. It works on the ipad too.

For all of the Aussie Flora Bowley fans she's coming to Melbourne in March to teach, if you're interested in attending please contact Julia for details.

Stamps and Fabrics

I finally made time to carve some more stamps, three of them are now in my Etsy store as well as some more packs of sun printed fabrics.

A series I'm making called simple folk.

Abstract flower

Another abstract flower

Another fabric pack

And another

Summer here has been late arriving but boy has it arrived with a vengeance, hence all of the sun printing, 39 deg c yesterday, 40 deg c 104 deg f today and then within ten minutes it's dropped to 26 deg c, that's Melbourne for you, take your coat to work just incase. Tomorrow's another day.
As if Queensland hasn't suffered enough with the floods, they are now waiting for a cyclone to hit the very north of the state, they forecast it to be one of the worst on record, Thursday morning will tell.

Good Luck to anyone living up there, who stops by here, we'll be thinking of you.

This guy's a regular visitor to our garden along with his friends, he's a black cockatoo. They sit in the tree in the photo and crack open the rock hard seed pods with their very strong beaks. They eat the seed in the middle, then drop the rest onto the metal roof of the shed below, it sounds like a hail storm.

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.