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.

Scumbling

On the few rare occasions that I succumb to watch television (Midsomer Murder's, Silent Witness and Grand Designs), when they're on, I hate sitting hand's free. So now all three shows are on at the moment I've been getting back to my scumbling, a combination of knitting and crotchet and I've taken mine a step further by now adding needle felting to some of the pieces. I'm not sure what it will be but I'm enjoying the process.

As some of you have joined me in Emma's birthday postcard swap, I thought I'd show you Emma's gorgeous collage card that arrived during the week. Emma's opening one a day on her blog so it's well worth a visit to see all the wonderful array of cards she's receiving.

This is the one I received from Emma.

This is the one I stitched for Emma. It's OK to show it now as she opened mine on Saturday.

Once again I'd like to thank everyone for visiting my blog and for those who leave lovely comments. I do try to get back to as many as possible but I seem to be stretching time to the limit at present. I do appreciate the time you all take to drop by and if I haven't caught up with you, here's a big hug and a thank you.

Vintage canvas and plastic palettes

I'm holding another workshop at home on Saturday June 26th. This one is making a vintage canvas, which uses the back of a standard wooden framed canvas with a small flat canvas, decorated then wired into the centre space. If you're interested in attending send me an email and I'll give you the details. Here's a few images and details of the finished canvas.

I've also found a use for disused paint palettes. When I hold a workshop that requires the students to use paint, I give them a white, soft plastic disposable plate. When I was cleaning up after one of my workshops I was amazed at some of the colour combinations on the plates. I decided to cut out some shapes, flowers, hearts, circles etc then stitched them onto one of my fabric journal pages. I've been using them ever since. They make great tabs for the sides of the pages too.

Here's an example.

The disused palettes.

The cut out flower.

The flower stitched onto a journal page.

I rather like the look of the next palette showing through the cut out. 

I will probably stitch these two together for another effect.

Very long post

I've just finished my latest journal and have added it to my etsy store, these are just some of the pages. There are one hundred in total, consisting of fabric, some hand dyed, my decorated papers and some blank watercolour paper, well as blank as I can get, I hate seeing plain white paper so they all have a little decoration, but still have room to work on. I've done lots of stitching in this journal and have added prints and original pieces of my art.

SOLD

I purchased a beautiful painting from Magaly Ohika's etsy store after reading her article in Cloth Paper Scissors. It arrived today and it's even more beautiful in reality. I love Magaly's style, her work is so unique. You can see her work on her blog The Itsy, Bitsy Spill.

Finally I'm busy working on a postcard size piece of art for Emma. It's her birthday soon and she hopes to get fifty people to swap a postcard size piece of art with her to celebrate a major birthday. If you want to join in visit her blog here, it's a great idea. I can't show the piece yet but will once she's received it.