What's behind the door??????

Well Mags has received here page now so I am revealing what's behind the door. I thought of her and her flame colours and as she is the only Welsh speaking textile artist I know I could not leave the chance to add some Welsh to it. I decided to use the phrase "Calon lan yn llawn dioni"
which is from a hymn but is a Welsh anthem sung at all our rugby games etc. It means a "clean heart is full of goodness" So I had to use red but wanted a clean feel like the quote so chose a lace in cream.


Mags tells me she likes it and was even good enough not to pick up my welsh spelling error!

Proud of myself

I hope you will all indulge me in a bit of back slapping. In my day job teaching teenagers it can be a bit of a struggle at times and I don't always feel I am getting anywhere.
However I often upload my work to a teacher website that allows people to share their work. A few weeks ago they asked me to fill in a questionnaire about my work and this week a write up of me and my work has gone up on the main home page. This is a major deal for me to be recognised for my day job and not my textiles I am feeling so proud! If you are nosy and want a look have a look here:

Teacher resource exchange

Thanks to all my blogging friends who influence my daily work with the kids, and keep me inspired and energetic. Many thanks.

Mags' page

Mags is my partner this month, and her choice of theme is doors or gates. Now as those of you who read regularly here will know I did a whole series of doors not so long ago. So I wanted to get a little away from what I did then. So I decided to use fabric instead of paper, which was different to the last lot. I decided to use up a piece of fabric I tea dyed a while ago with fruit teas and had a very pale pink-ness to it. Now I have taken a lot of inspiration from Ruth Rae, who's work is just fab and I have been reading her blog for a while now and really love what she does. So without wanting to copy her I decided to use some of her style like layers of fabric and paper, buttons and other fab little treasures trapped under things. This is how the page looked last night. Now I knew it lacked something but wasn't sure what, so today I rummaged in my paper stash for the elusive "something" else. I found a metal tray from one of Craig's fish and chips ready meals that i had been harbouring and decided to emboss that. I tried annealing it with the gas flame but it was having none of it! I also found a piece of paper from a stash trade I did years ago and decided to use that. Some buttons and paper punched pieces in paper and metal later and this is what I now have, and pretty much think it is complete.
I love the paper punched pieces. Craig thought the door didn't stand out enough so I did some hand stitch there in a pale colour as i didn't want it to over dominate.

As for what's behind the door????? Well I decided to leave that as a surprise for Mags and will share it with you after she has got it. Hope she likes it now, I chose the red as a contrast as I know she loves flame colours. I also hope it is not just a rip off of Ruth and it has a bit of me in it.

Doodle sample done!

I managed to get an hour on the machine tonight after Ellie finally gave in and went to bed. The little monster has been a pain in the butt ever since the fireworks, and she does this every year, but it has proved vocal and long winded this year.
Anyway never mind, remember my doodle for TC's Novemeber challenge. Well this is what I made with it. It is a sample for my C+G file and is a little literal but I quite like it. I used foil from Fibre in form, a great site run by Carol and Lynda, who's prompt service and constant support are a credit to them.
I covered the sheet in bondaweb and then cut the shapes in foil and then bonded them in place. I then watered down acrylic paint and washed this over. I also finished this sample from earlier having been and bought better thread for FME. I am quite pleased with this, however as I am not sure where I am going with this work I don't have that sense of satisfaction that I thought I would have. I have to make an accessory for the last unit of C+G and had thought of doing jewellery but still don't feel anymore excited about it. Haven't had the lightbulb moment yet, it will come!
Thought I would show it with the flash on to show the lovely foil!
Hope your all well and I wanted to thank you all for such lovely comments and kind words of late, I always try to get back to people personally but some people have the no-reply enabled and then I can't, so to those of you who have not had replies consider this my thanks for your words!

Alis' page for me!

I recieved my first 7 inch page for the FAF swap this week, and how lovely it is! I chose the theme of "Symptuous surfaces" for my pages and I think you'll agree that Alis has hit the nail on the head! I also stipulated that the technique the person uses should be new to them and fun! Alis used carrier bags in layers with manmade fabrics like organza. I love this page!I decided to show you the side view as it is so crunchy and yummy. There are also a lovely group of beads made from carrier bags and organza, they are so lovely. The colours are soooo me, and the project I am working on.
Thanks so much for this lovely start to my book Alis.

Shape challenge

For this months challenge on Textiles challenges I set a design based challenge, with no set outcome planned, but left up to the person taking part. I set 3 tasks that people could choose from. One of the challenges was to make something based on design shapes that recur in your work. Here are two doodles I did using shapes relating to my recent project on industry, however my favourite diamonds have come through again.
This is my attempt at another of the challenges which is to doodle all over the page and to colour in shapes that catch your eye. I think there are some interesting parts here that I could work with.
I don't know if this is going to be a success, but I am quite enjoying playing and being free with it. Even though the top two pictures look contrived in comparison to the last I didn't have my source material in front of me and I just allowed the shapes to dominate and control where i placed things, though admittedly I do have a thing about balance and symmetry! I hope others in the group are enjoying it too.

6 Inch page swap

I decided not to miss out on FAF's page swap this time round, as I had joined too late . My first trade is with Alis and she asked for an Egyptian theme. I wanted to do something that looked as though it had just flaked off the tomb wall. So this is what I did.....I used the last of my tea dyed fabric and cut it into random sized strips. I wove the strips together and then bondawebbed it to the base. I then marked out the Egyptian woman with pencil and put a layer of organza on the top and FME'd it all. I then blasted with the heat gun and stitched by hand adding some beads. Now down the right hand side you will see that i added some colour wanting it to be like the tomb paintings, but the colour was too strong so I toned it down with white acrylic over the stitches.
Now Ellie May has not been cooperating and going to bed so well since it is so close to bonfire night and all the local thug/oh I mean children are setting off fire works ever 5 minutes! So I couldn't get on the machine this week so I hand stitched the edges and stitched on a plated cord around the top edge. I finished it off with a tag I made in the summer.
This is a little close up for you. Hope you like it Alis, I really had fun doing it. It's in the post in the morning.