What i have been playing with this week!

Well lots to show this week so if you don't have a cuppa go get one now!!! I am starting with what i have been playing with tonight. It is a little 4 inch square canvas that i am going to try out a tutorial from Cloth paper scissors onto. It is a tutorial on surfaces by Kelly Rae Roberts. i love her pics and so as I am looking at children's illustration for this unit of C+G I thought it mght fit in well, plus I have had this canvas for ages and this is a lovely size for playing on. I don't know what I am going to do on it yet but not a figure it is too small, maybe a butterfly or a bird or something.


The next is my piece for my challenge on Textiles challenges, my group. We are looking at mono printing this month and I decided to play on the garden theme for my C+g and for a swap I have this in mind for. I have been dying to get going on this but there are only enough hours in the day at the mo.








The next pieces are an exercise from college where we were drawing to music. It was really fun. i found it hard at first and found i was bound by the rules, the metre of the music. If it was 4 beats to a bar I had to make 4 marks! After 2 goes I started to loosen up and this is the third, (EDIT) (Title removed for competition!)


The next thing we did was to draw on a big huge piece of paper all together, swaping positions every 2 minutes. We drew along to It's in your heart by Rod Stewart. Then when we were done we had to select a piece and say why we liked it. I chose this piece which I had drawn. It was probably the strongest image on the page to be honest!

We then had to trace off an outline and use the tracing to make a kind of a one sided stencil. We then loaded this up with pastel, oil and soft, and smudged it off onto black paper. Mine turned out well
I also saw this little tute on the Crafty crow blog. It was meant for kids but I thought looked like my mono prints and so I have a go, and so did Ellie. I will have to show you Ellie's next time. incidentally she turns 5 on wed!
It uses ike a watercolour wet in wet method, but I used acrylics!


I made these this week too, a little helper/ mouse had helped himslef to a hole in my seat covers over the winter so new ones were called or, love this print, I have been harbouring it for a while!

I finally finished my sister in law's canvas for her new house. She wanted creams and brown, so I added gold too. I went with a klimpt theme and added stencilling in gold and a variety of inchies, in satin and silk.


And because I know you love a close up!!!!!!

Well hope your not too exhausted reading about it! I am knackered personally so am off to bed. I hope to show you more on the pearl anniversary commision tomorrow or monday, it has to be with the client by friday so I want it done this weekend if I can! I expect there will be some birthday cake picks this week, as i have always made my own, however Ellie wants a high school musical one this year for her party so that has to be bought, but I no doubt will make one for her real birthday on wed!

Aren't my friends clever?????

I thought i would share with you some of the talent in our group. These are fnished pieces, I am not going to show all the works in progress as we will be here al day!
This piece belongs to Deb and is her finished piece from the Angie Hughes workshop (Ashamed to say mine stil sits unstitched!) She chose Hundsenwasser(spelling ??? arg!) and isn't it just lovely. She sells her painted fabric online Here, so get your buts over and buy some if your a quilter in particular!!!
This piece is by Michelle, and is free machining into copper, extensively! Michelle is havng a hard time at the mo, so send her your good vibes.

These last two belong to Enid Davies, my lecturer and are both metal inclusions. This first one has lots of reclaimed metals and even plays a tune whe you wiggle it!
This one has copper mesh and a print on Plywood? I think. I love it don't you.
Well I thought I would share, they are lovely aren't they.
I am of in marking and commission land at the mo, I have a piece that has to be finished by the 23rd and I have a LOT left to do!

What I did today!

Today I went to my usual monthy workshop with Fibrepaper arts the group that the girls at my college have set up. Our lecturer from College Enid Davies, was taking the workshop on metals. I decided on doing a sampler type thing for my C+G and it fitted well with my grid
theme too. I decided to use some washers that I painted with blue irridecent nail polish ( although it doesn't show well in te pic!) I luckily had packed the painted wallpaper too!

I decided to make it look like it was going from newer metal up to corroded metal at the top. I punched with the setter tool, I used gesso and acrylic, I annealed, I used some kitchen foil paper, used slat, vinegar and amonia solution and my fave of the whole day annealed copper mesh over printed with acrylic that was LUSH! A great day, thanks Enid, I learnt masses!

Now for exciting ness! The girls, Chris and Sandra, invited me to do a workshop!!! A mixed media one in December! How fab is that, and true to my usual form when they sid how would you like a mixed media workshop in December I said...... Ye, who's doing it....and they said......YOU! What a fool! I am chuffed tough and I have my thinking cap on now!

WIPS - and oh so many

My list goes on and on, I currently have on my WIPS pile:
Katie (SIL) canvas
Shape lottery ATC- Jigsaw shape
A Bag for me
A bag for a trade
and the rest of my list for May goes on!
I have been commissioned!!! By a girl at my work to make a pearl wedding anniversary albumfor her Mum and Dad. So I made a start. She saw my bookwrap from long ago and wants someting similar, so I wove strips of duchess satin and cotton and some lace. I then printed some images including using some new letter stamps I got for £6.99! It is tacked and ready to FME now.

I have also made a start on the nature inspired bag that I owe for a swap on unlimited textiles. It's theme is nature inspired. It is one of my customery double ups and is therefore a mono print.
This is a WIP for me, a book bag for me for school. I have worked into this further and I will show you at a later date.
The last thingis how to tell me from my sister Sian - I don't climb! She quite blatantly does!!!! (Note all the others are kids! She just turned 25!)
Anyway off to mark all those lovely dresses so I can have time to sew myself and minimise the WIP's list!

Design - colour

This terms unit for C+G is colour and for design we have been looking at colour and the effect of colour on one and other. I chose lime, Pink, turquiose and purple as my colours as this unit is going to be for Ellie, i am going to illustrate a book for her! So in this first pic we were looking at which colours look best next to each other, or on a background of....
Can you see how different they look on white and then on black, mad innit!!
We then used the Fibonacci (spelling may be dire here!!!) series, you know the rules of number e.g. 1,1,2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21.... etc.We measured strips and slots in these sizes and then wove them together. Again look at the difference between white and black background.
We then used paint to look at how many colour we could mix from a limited pallette. I chose pink purple and turquoise. Then pink purple turquoise red yellow and blue. Mad how many lovely colours you can make from these hey!
Finally one of the first home works of this term was to make flags, banners or bunting (our overall theme is entertainment and Enid thought that there are always some sort of flags etc at entertainment things!). In this you had to show our understanding of harmonious, triadic, tetradic, complementary, analagous, monochromatic colour schemes. I really enjoyed this, and i made some lovely girly bunting from magazine papers.
Fun with colour, I really am having fun with this.

This is where I have been!!!!

This is where I have been for what feels like weeks! These are some of my girls doing a quick fashion show at school on friday - their leaving day. It was fab!



And here they are , wearing their corages and looking glam! They have been a total joy to teach, they are what should be reported on in the papers rather than the asbo's a nd single mum's. They are what keeps me in teaching! I'll miss you girls!

Things for the kids

Well it's that time of year again and i need to do better than last year, where as I made them tags, this year i am making Corsages. Year 11 leave on friday and I wil be very sad to see this lot go. I love my classes, and although I have a few more grey hairs than before ( god they think they have all the time in the world!) they are a joy to teach and a delight. I love to hear them going hell for leather free machining or that wooooo noise when I brng a new technique into the classroom. So corsages it is this year, i am using some lovley vintage fabrics i won in a give away from Paula., and the tutorial I found on Molly chicken's blog, it is very quick and easy to do, thanks Molly. Hope to be back on blogging form by the end of this week. Hope your all well?????

Still bogged down by course work.

Well it was getting out of hand here and i couldn't find anything, so lovely DH bought me a few extra boxes and i set out to tidy up the mess and now everything is labelled and easy to find, now all I need is the time to use any of it! I have decided to put off qualifying for my C+G this year, I only have about 2 pieces and about 5 samples left to do but with all the GCSE marking I won't get there! But it has worked out wel and as my lecturer is finishing next year and so it will be nice to finish at the same time as her.
To prove i have done something, here is the canvas I painted last year. I added the turquoise and purple inchies to it. I love it now.
Close up's, we know you love close up's.

Hopefully by next friday it will all be over with the dresses and the course work and I will be able to take a photo of the work my class has done and the girls are wearing their finished frocks.
I will have to show you Leah's bikini's, they are amazing! Hope your all well, see you on the other side of this week!

Angie Hughe Klimpt workshop

Today Fiberpaperarts, a local group I am a memeber of, made up of girls from my C+G mainly, and is a yahoo group, had a workshop with Angie Hughes. She inspired us by getting us to work with Klimpt as our inspiration. We started of with a combination of bondaweb and misty fuse and foils. We foiled through stencils and added sweety foil with bondaweb on the back for chunkier details. I cheated a bit on the inspiration, and although it is reminicent of Klimpt, I had in mind my colour unit and the fact that I have started work on personal symbol's for my colour and culture unit. So I added diamonds instead of squares and managed to get a bit of foil that Chris had left that had had the word colour foiled out already so I had a lush negative, see the bottom corner. Here is my first step.

I thought that the black line I left in the centre looked like a stem, and as I had used a daisy flower in my book, I decided it was fate!
My first attempt wass pants, and on advice from Angie, I went back to it and made the petals more pointy, and it looks much better.
I was going to cut this to make a bag as my resolved piece, but it is so nice I can't bear to, so I am going to start a new piece with these lovely pieces of inspiration for a guide! What a lovely day, realy really fun.

Link for people looking for hand painted fabric

No time to paint some fabric for a special project??? You quilters out there will love this. My friend Deb is selling some of her hand painted cotton on Ebay here. I blogged about going on a workshop with her here. Here are the photo's of Deb and her stuning quiting. and the blue is a piece of fabric I painted with her on the day. Her prices are just fab, at about £2 per fat Quater, she also has project packs in colourways. Deb does stunning art quilts, go check her out!

Resolved piece for design

I finished my resolved piece for the design element of C+G. I have been working on the story of the welsh miner's wives and the role they had to play in the lives, families and commuities they lived in. I decided finally to mount these standing an the step. The step was important to the welsh Mam, in demonstrating that cleanliness was next to godliness, a place to wait for husband or children before dosing out a bit of discipline, or for a good old gossip. So here they are having a gossip.
and briefly incase anyone sorta wonders why I am not posting as much in the next couple of weeks it is GCSE marking time again, and so I am a bit Ducks at the mo - you know head down tail up!

Vintage arch for Patsy

I have been aving a wonderful time over the last few days working on an arch for the Textile challenges year long arch page swap. This month I am sending to Patsy. She requested tea dyeds lace and neutrals, along with vintage images. I usually never quite know what to do with vintage pics, despite ikeing them. So I found this one and it as in lovely sepia tones and I thought to myself what is this lady up to. I decided she was waiting for her lover. Then I had to think where would she be waiting, well it couldn't be a bus stop could it!!!!!! I decided on trees.
If you click on the pic you will see all the background is woven of Coffee dyed cotton, the last of some I got from Sue Bleiweiss a while ago when she had a give away. I fused the woven strips which included a stip of lace to the background. I had already fused the picture in place. I cut through the weaving to reveal, reverse applique style the pic. I then free machined the trees, which are a shot silk, and the edge of the lady in place.I hand stitched then in a tonally similar thread, again click to see all the hand stitching that covers the background, including the little bird up in the trees.
I bound the edge with a frayed strip of the cotton and then added the strips and buttons. I wantedthe page to have weight from the buttons and to have something sticking out of the page so that when Patsy binds her arches into a book she will have them sticking through. On the back I decided I had had such fun with the little bird I would carry this on. I hand appliqued the bird and hand stitched a tree and 3 little flying birds. With a brown fineliner I wrote the thought that started this with, "and she sat beneath the tree and waited for him..."
Such fun, just hope Pasty likes it now. If she doesn't I'll keep it!!!

Look at my lovely post.

I got 3 lovely parcels all the way from Oz today, they must have kept each other warm along the way. The first is a lovely purple arch from Hannah. I love it. It is just my colours. I love it Hannah.
The next ATC is from Britt, and to my great pleasure she has added some bobbin lace. Now my mum makes lace and will be really interested to see it. Thank you Britt.
The next two have hot footed from the Grey household. The first is from Doreen and the later is from Ebony. I love the colours and lush surface that this photo does not do justice too.
Now isn't Ebony's spectacular. I really love it, it feel nice in your hand, quality you know. The dots on the background give it such a sophisticated feel. Love it. Now let me blow you away by telling you Ebony is EIGHT, yes that's right 8. Now as you all know I teach in the comp (11-16 year olds) and I see a lot of art work done by young people but this is the most beautiful, grown up, quality piece of work I have seen for a long time. It will have pride of place on my desk at school, thank you Ebony so much.

Make along with Textiles challenges

Well after the sneek peek yesterday, this is what I came up with to make for the make along week on Textile challenges. It is a plastic bag bracelet, complete with re-purposed easter egg foil as decoration. I have some beading left to finish on it and then it is all done. If you would like to make along with us, try here.