Happy Days

I love the fact now that I can get up every morning and head down stairs to my studio and not have to face the constant stream of traffic to drive to work, as I have for the past twenty years, it's bliss. Every day brings a new excitement, working on commissions, getting ready for our exhibition and creating new ideas and projects for teaching. I love it. I also have regular visits from my little art critic who joins me in the studio, she's now decided she wants to be an artist like Ro Ro when she grows up.

These are two pages from the commissioned journal. I used my embellishing machine and some hand stitching.

This piece was all hand stitched using my dyed fabrics, it will be stitched on to a painted canvas.

I taught a necklace workshop at home last Saturday, see previous post, I had six lovely students who all went home with completed necklaces. I forgot to take photos but Sabine sent me a photo of hers, it's magnificent. Sabine makes wonderful polymer clay beads and she added clay discs to the chains.

We had breakfast in one of our favourite cafes over the Easter break. I can never resist sketching while we have our coffee. This is a small section of a magnificent iron grill that sits in one of the many feature cut outs in the walls.

This is the grill, I see a stamp coming on.

This is another view inside the cafe, they also sell flowers.

After breakfast we walked along one of our favourite beaches, the bathing boxes always add some sunshine to an overcast day.

Back to the studio for more experiments, thanks for dropping by, it's much appreciated.

Necklace Workshop

Just dropping by to let you know I still have two vacancies in my upcoming 'Felt necklace' workshop on Saturday the 30th of April. If you're able to attend just email me for details. Here's photos of the type of necklace we will be making. The class will cover making the felted piece, the fabric beads and making your own wire hook and clasp.

Have a lovely Easter break.

What I've been up to

It seems ages since I did a blog post. I've been going in so many directions. I've almost completed my journal commissions, I held a sketching class yesterday and have another one on Saturday. I've been working on my Flora paintings and creating lots of work for an exhibition I have coming up in June. I thought I'd better show you some of the things just so that you can see I haven't been slacking off.

I spent a day with Elizabeth last week before she heads over to the UK. She showed me how to make these gorgeous liquorice all sorts, they also remind me of Blackpool rock from my childhood in England.

This is how I've used some of them. This is a stitched piece that will be mounted onto a canvas.

This is another  hand stitched piece made from my hand dyed fabrics and hand dyed threads.

This journal cover is also made from some of my dyed fabrics.

One of my Flora paintings

turned into this. I still haven't quite finished it yet.

A very small section of some of my sketchbooks used to demo in class.

Some of my sun printed fabrics

and hand dyed fabrics and laces that I have for sale in my little 'studio shop' during workshops.

Now back to the journals and liquorice all sorts.

Flora Bowley

What a fabulous teacher, fabulous artist and a fabulous group of people. Can you tell I had a fabulous time in Flora Bowley's painting workshop over the weekend. I could only attend the first day but still had a wonderful day. Flora is so open and generous with her techniques. I learned a whole new way to free up in my painting. There was an expectant air when we first started the class but by lunch time we were all in the swing. I met some lovely fellow artists and it was great to meet a lovely lady from north of our state who reads my blog. These events really do bring like minded people together. I have to thank Julia for having the courage to organize such an event, she did a great job.

This was the very start of my first canvas, I loved it like this, but this was the first of many layers.

The second canvas up to layer three.

This was the last layer I did in the class on the previous painting. I still have a few more layers to go.

This is the last layer of the first painting, still not quite sure how many more layers will be needed to complete it.

Flora demonstrating on her painting.

Some of the other students fabulous work, everyone was different.

After the class Patsy, Julia and I went out to dinner with Flora, we had a lovely meal and it was great to get to know a little more about Flora too.

Patsy, Flora and Julia.

Patsy, Flora and me.

Dyeing up a storm

I've got the dyeing bug at present, anything and everything is fair game. I've been over dyeing fabrics I don't like, old cloth doilies, small sample swatches, silk, muslin, cotton, lace, embroidery thread, trims, if it's white it ends up in the dye pot. I have a beautiful golden yellow on the line and soon there will be fuchsia hanging out with it.
I use these fabrics and laces in my journals. Best of all I love looking at them all grouped together.

This is what they looked like before I did some serious sorting.

Some colour combinations.

Carefully stacked.

Some of the blue/teal range.

Love this vibrant orange, sorry to all of you vintage ladies, if this is offensive to your eyes.

Gorgeous purple.

I'm not a huge green fan so I mixed the teal and yellow together to get the lime.

Finally the vibrant red.

The remaining colours are on the line, I hope they end up as colourful.

Painting in the round

At our Altered books and beyond get together last Thursday night we decided to do a Painting in the round session, that's what I call it anyway. We had this huge piece of canvas and then the eleven of us walked around the table armed with paint and brushes and just kept walking and painting.

Doing the rounds.

Almost ready to cut up.

My piece after I'd done some work on it.

My finished piece. I'm thinking of turning it into a HUGE holder for all of my markers and pens.

I've spent the last two days dying lots and lots of fabric and lace, I'll have pictures in the next post.

Paintings plus

I've been working on new paintings as well as journals, the paintings are for our upcoming exhibition in June, the journals are the commissions I'm working on, they take sooooo long.

This is an 8" x 8" canvas painted with acrylics. I've started painting in my graphicy style again.

This painting's much larger, 20" x 24", and it's not quite finished yet. It's at the 'sitting' stage where I keep walking past it waiting for it to tell me what to do next.

I love the colour schemes in both of these and I'm looking forward to starting another one soon.

I made these owls for the rest of the 'five take flight' group when we had our art get together recently. These are made using my fabric paper as the backgrounds, then layered and stitched with fabrics, sequin waste and beads for eyes. The hangers are sari silks wired with beads and a hand made ring at the top.

These were gorgeous chandeliers in the restaurant where our group, Patsy, Jacky, Dot, Julia and I, met for lunch just over a week ago Julia has more photos on her blog. 

We had a fabulous time sharing our show and tell, the food was divine too.

This was part of the garden at the restaurant, there are many rooms inside and lots of garden rooms outside. You could be in Asia, Italy and almost Mexico all here in Oz.

This is another fabulous cafe hubby and I went to this weekend. We have friends living in the very arty town of Daylesford about an hour and a half from here. We spent the weekend with them and visited Cliffys, a great little, very bohemian cafe. I managed to get this picture just before the rush. The walls on the left are fabric panels. 

I had to show you these columns as Patsy doesn't have a blog. They are magnificent, you can see how tall they are. Patsy has been painting them with fantastic images of people, animals, flowers, buildings, lovely words, images depicting everyday life and community. They will be on display in Melbourne outside St Michael's church in the city.

This is Patsy's gorgeous dog Milly who is now with the angels.

Some of the people. Don't you just love the birds in the bag of the lady on the back column.

Another view of the column.

And for the cat lovers.

Finally I added a dash of purple to my hair, nothing too radical.