Fiberpaperarts workshop

Well it was the second Saturday of the month yesterday so it was workshop day at Fiberpaperarts. This is the name of the group of ladies from my college, who also have a yahoo group here. If you live in the south Wales area then join up it is a ot of fun. Yesterday was a playday, we regularly have some experienced tutors, such as Angie Hughes, Enid Davies and we are having Christine Benson next year but yesterday the founding members, Christine and Sandra did us a cheap day, which was a kinda stashbuster. The second half of the day for me was with Chirs, she did some texture using up old lace . I used up some horrid old ribbony trim stuf that has been in the stores for a guzzilion years, and just look how my piece turned out.
I think it needs a focal point but I love it! So will be working on it now to make a focal. In the morning I worked with Sandra on bonding. We worked on bondaweb sandwiches. These were delicate little trappings between painted bondaweb, burning back or not. Really lovely.
Here are mine, love the foil on the bottom right, that one bears more work. The bottom 2 pics aretraping using aqua bond. This is a cold water dissolvable that has a gummed side and this stops things moving around. I had never used it before but it was really easy to use, shame it is soooo expensive. Here's the front
And the back.
Wel it is father's day here in the UK and i can hear movement upstairs so Daddy must be waking up from his lie in, time for Ellie and I to go jump on hi I think! More on recent work later!

Look look look.....

Look what I got!
I got a lovely cuff, crocheted in embroidery cotton, my favourite! In Red and grey and silver and I love it!!!!!! and where did I get it, well my lovely lovely little sister Siani. She has only fairly recently started crocheting, but by god if that girl puts her mind to something boy does she master it. I love this cuff and I want to know how, so she has promised me a dummies guide! (By the way how good do my nails look! Glad I pinched the nippers High school musical nail varnish now!)

Also I have complete my hand stitch lottery ATC for Zoe. The lottery paired me with Zoe again poor thing! I used my first ever piece of felt made at a workshop in school that my good friend Sandra came and did for me. I love these colours, and I am pleased with my card. I got Herringbone stitch in the lottery.

More book progress

I have made a start on the front cover and here is the story so far.....

Don't forget to post your guess for my Music interpretation a coupe of posts back to recieve a gift!!!! Love carol T

Very excited

Well Lynda has got me all excited about my industry unit again, I have been dabbling but not really making a dent in it so i played with some half embellished surfaces today and added misty fuse and Fibre in form foil I have been harbouring. I followed the recipy given in her WOW article. The backing for this is a piece of cotton painted with fabric paints.

This one is kunin felt.
Now this is what has really worked well is I have been annealing copper since the course I went on with Enid my lecturer and so this is a copper diamonds with acrylic rinting over it. The lighter diamonds are kitchen foil made into a fabric paper and painted in multiple layers of paint, incuding some stewart gill metallica which puffs up a little and looks really crunchy and corroded!YEY!
I am playing with cuffs for this unit and am supposed to be using automatic stitches but they are not doing it for me. I need some time to sit and play. I will probably use them to join component parts using solvy eventually. I am back on the horse anyway, having hardly touched fabric for about 3 weeks!
Cosing gambit, setting up the first spread in Ellie's book. No detail yet, except the castle.
But it is building!!!!!!

Competition on Textile challenges

Textile challenges June challenge is to interpret a piece of music and then to take it into a piece of stitch. This is one I did recently.I love my group there are such a lovely and giving group of ladies, so inspirational. We are coming up to our third anniversary soon, I am lucky to have had such a sterling group for 3 years. I had such fun doing it and so I set the girls on TC a competition to work out what piece of music it is an interpretation of. Well I thought it has been a while since I had a give away here so here is your chance. Leave me a comment with your guess for this piece of music and I will send you a postcard and maybe some other goodies, if more than one get it right I will draw a name!

On another note I wondered if you have seen Lynda's article on WOW. Wel wow is the right word, go check it out it is a fab article and well worth a read. I so want to be Lynda when I grow up!

I wanted to say a massive thank you to all of you who have commented over the last few weeks, I have had some lovely comments and these have really been valued. I have been feeling a little insecure of late and so am very glad to hear from you all. Love Carol T

More canvas

WEll if your not bored with them already here is the latest in my series of canvases. This one is built over a magazine cut out and I have to say I love it and hate it all in one! I love the flowers and the background and the hair, but the face needs work and I am going back to this tomorrow as I have painted mysef out I think! It is too flat and the lips, what's going on there! They are far too dark and large. I am going to call her "Lacey" Since the word lace is in there!
Then this is the "Little birdy". Again I am happy with these, I think they are turning out really well, nd I can feel the need to start an Etsy shop soon. I would just like to earn some pin money to cover the amount of materials I consume, then I wouldn't feel so guilty! Well am off to have a cuppa before bed in an Ellie free house, she has gone to Mum's tonight so longgggg lie in in order for tomorrow!

New canvas

Here is where I am with a new canvas. I am loving useing a combination of bought collage papers and magazine cut outs, I have been tearing up old bridal magazines at a rate of knots. This is another birdy, to be. All thishas got me finally! thinking about Sharon's TIF for this month. What do I call myself? Teacher? Textile artist? Embroiderer? Artist? I think I am going to go with artist (in general). Not many of you will know how i got to this stage of things, I have been on a very wandering journey. I started out in school wanting to be a fashion designer, and so I took textiles and scraped a C at GCSE (Cue my kids to laugh their heads off!) and then I was not able to take it at A level so I up and moved school. This was a very big deal as I was in a welsh speaking school up until this point. I only got an E in textiles A level, needless to say I hated the new school.

I went on to a foundation course in art and design and got engaged to a lovely boy, I was going to settle down and live near home. My ceramics lecturer saved me from this by filing in my UCAS form for me, so of I went to do Ceramics for my BA hons. Engagement in my wake and a fair bit of difficulty I got my BA and then didn't know what to do with it, and long story short went on to teach. I then regained my love of textiles, and know now that textiles is my medium, and drug of choice! Mainly due to it's versitility.

However, working on these canvases has reminded me that I like to draw and paint, and have a fair eye for it. There for I call myself an artist.

May arch and postcard by the skin of my teeth!

Well by the skin of my teeth I managed to complete my arch for Mags and my postcard for the calendar girls swap. My arch for Mags was to be on egyptian theme, so I have done a few of these and I didn't want to repeat myself. I have always gone for a tomb wall sorta pale before and I wanted to avoid this. I looked at cartouche and found that lots of them are turquoise, now you know I don't need much of a nudge there! I coloured up some cotton with acrylic and then thought about a cartouche, now the internet is a wonderful thing, I found a site that told me how to write Mags name in Egyptian. So I embossed it into a piece of puree tube and added wire mesh, in brass. I then hand stitched and beaded the binding. I love how this turned out, it was fab to work on.

Close up of the cartouche.
The next piece is a card for the calendar girls swap, I used some recycled card from Ellie's birthday gift bags and then I did the collage and acrylics thing as I have been playing with it. For the focal I managed to nab a daisy from Ellie's giftwrap and stitched this down, added FME and the phrase from the calendar. I realy iked this one and thought it was a must, it reads "Friends leave footprints on your soul". I am really pleased how this turned out even if there is minimal stitch and no fabric!

More layering

Last night and today I sarted work on my resolved piece for design for my colour unit. I know I have told you about my children's illustrationidea, but I don't know if I told you that the resolved piece will be a book, illustrated by me, but completely 100% written by Ellie, my 5 year old. I made her a concertina book and she has drawn, and I wrote what I was told down! He stoy is about Princess Vicky and her garden, a monster and a magic key! I started storyboarding it so I have a plan of what i am going to do on each page. I bought a board book at the charity shop yesterday and this has 12 pages, icluding the front and back cover.

Here is the cover starting to come together...
And here it is painted. This is pink and turquoise but the pink is very dark, looks red in the pics.
Finally here is a canvas I am working on too, I decided to use a magazine pic that i love from a bridal mag to try and get a less vacant look on her face than in the last one I did, lets hope I succeed.
What do we think of these girls? Am I going in the right direction? I don't know why but I am not motivated by fabric at the mo.... I know I know sacrilidge! I am sure I just need a break after all the GCSE hoopla! Thankully that is over now, and the moderator, she say yes!!!!
I would love to see what your opinions are on this work?

Another canvas

I started on a new canvas last night. Completing the collaging and gloss layer last night.
At lunch I used the rubber roller to roller on a blue and turquoise layer.
and this is as where I got to. I have been hankering after doing a portrait. I used a picture in a bridal magazine as an inspiration. I like how it turned out but I think there is something missing so I am going to come back to it another day I think.

Colour combo lottery

My group textile challenges has been having a series of lottery swaps, which have worked out to be challenging and fun. We started with a shape lottery and then this month we did a colour combination lottery. I pulled cerise and green. I decided to upload both pics, flash on and flash off to try and show you what i did and give a truer picture of it. Iused inks to colour up some curtain interlining, this has a fab to coat of a nice quality cotton. I then used the ink to colour up some nice petals tat I comandeered from some hair bobbles. I stitched in cotton perle and then went to work with the metallic and pearl gel pens. I am really enjoying the drawn work at the mo taking influence from Dj Pettit, Kelly Rae, Sharon at Norah's blog etc. Loved doing this and it is now on it's way to Zoe.

Laura's bag finally finished

Well it has taken me long enough to get this done but the bag I owe to Laura H is finally done. I used the mono print I made for the Textile challenges monthly challenge and added sequins and then used a vintage fabric I found in school. It has turquoise and lime flower print on it. I am quite pleased with how it turned out, it is quite firm and nice.Another I am tempted to keep but won't as I have let Laura wait long enough. I took a second set of monoprints when I was at it so I have more to make one for me, or for my C+G unit. Hope your all having a great bank holiday.

WIP's

More progress on 2 pieces. I finally edges the mono prints this week, with a lovely vintage flowers fabric that I found in the rumage bin in school. I think it goes well. I have enought to use for the lining and the strap too. I added sequins, to fill some of the gap in the print. I used some cerise ink cirlces and some green and irridecent flowers too.
Next if you remember was the canvas I have been working on using Kelly Rae Roberts tutorial from CPS. I couldn't decide what to draw if you remember and so I played tonight drawing a bird ornament we have in the down stairs loo. Here are my sketchbook drawings and then me whiting out using a mix of cream emulsion and white acrylic, nearly as good as Gesso.
And this is what I came up with. I need a little peace in my life at the mo, and this is probably a subconcious cry for it. I didn't think that I was drawing a kinda lorrel leaf, but hey here it is.
I drew the outline of the bird with a charcoal pencil as per Kelly rae's instructions and then used a felt pen and finally a pearlise gel pen to highlight the leaves. As a first attempt and a bit of a departure in style for me I think it turned out well. I managed to buy 5 A4 ish sized canvases for a £1 each this week and so I plan to play with them and this technique further.
Love the highlighting showing in this photo.

Progress

Here is my progress on the canvas. I used a rubber roller (brayer to use in the US!) to put on 2 colours of acrylic in one go. This is a lovely technique as you get such lovely serendipidous marks. I then wiped away to reveal the collage papers beneth. Unfortunately this is where I am at a standstill. I think I don't know what to paint! I thought of doing flowers and I am on that Vibe at the mo, so it may well be. Kelly Rae Roberts who's tutorial I am following in CPS paints ladies, but this canvas it only about 4 inch square and I haven't the room for a person. I will think on, I think I am unsure about the colours to use to be honest!
Side view!
Here is the progress on my Mono printing for the challenge on Textiles challenges, my group, I set the challenge of mono printing, but then taking this further and making something, anything! I am making a bag, although it doesn't look like it at the mo!

Under my children's illustration theme I did the stitching all in black. I will be able to show you more progress on this soon as I am working on it right now!
To close a piccy of my darling girl, on her 5th birthday. Bought many a thing, including a rather expensive big girl bike, but choosing on her birthday to only play with a £3 tesco bubble gun! Don't you love em!
Have had a pants day in work today and have feeling a bit blue in general after some bad feeling arose online of late. This has been a frustrating few weeks, so the holidays next week can't come soon enough, I am hoping to garden, go to the beach and maybe camp for the first time with an excited 5 year old! ( + an even more exited 35 year old hubby!) Hope your all having a better time of it than me!

Well, more industry

I thought I would show you the other things I have been onto this week. Firstly I have been fed up with carrying my sketch book to college in a folio and the handle cutting my fingers so I made this bag. I realised after that it is a lovely piece of devore that was in the store room in school.
Then I thought, how about one to carry the folders that the kids use for their course work, I have to carry them home to mark and so I can fit 6-8 in here now, if I can carry that weight!
Then I made this bag, I made it for a swap but I can't bear to part with it, and so I am going to keep it. I love it!
Here the back.
and the detail of the front with dandelions!
I finally finished the commission. It was for a Pearl wedding anniversary album for Kate who works with me, for her parents. I wove the background and printed and then added organza and FME'd over the top. I normally burn back and this time I decided that it was better leaving it as it is.

I added foil pearls and mother of pearl buttons and of course pearl beads.

I decided that it needed a focal point and so I added a padded heart and beaded over and around this. I love this it turned out so well. I used a piece of foam board to build on and it has made it very crisp. I wanted to say thanks to Sue Bleweiss as she has given me some great advice in working this piece. I decided to line it off in the end Sue, I think Kate will prefer the cleaner lines! Thanks again Sue.
Finally, the closing gambit,One happy lady! We got her bike today and of course she had to have a go on it. She is being closely guarded by my Mum! See that happy face! We were in bits as she is barely strong enough to push the pedals round going up the street, she didn't half give us a laugh!!!!