a bit of an update

I have been very quiet on the blogging front, and perhaps even the creating front.
I have hit the mid winter doldrums, I think.  It is so cold, especially here out in the bush with only a wood fire.  Mornings are are bit of a struggle, until the house warms up.  I have been working, on my Tangled Textiles piece, and two swaps, which I am extremely late finishing.  But of course I can't show those, so here are some other bits and pieces.

Here is the foundation for a quick collage.  I have used lots of blue scraps, cotton, stamped organza, and rovings.

Here I have free motioned a seahorse and shell from one of my sketchbooks.

Then I did some free motion on the background, pebbles and waves in variegated blues.

and a few close ups of my messy free motion.

Here I have started beading and some hand stitching.  I like this one, but the beading and hand stitching will take a while.  I have had to put it aside for a few other more urgent pieces at present.
I have been working in my sketchbook-

The first one is a sketch for a collage piece that was in my head for a while.  The last two are sketches from old masters' sculptures.

And I have been working on this new york beauty - a la eleanor burns, which has been sitting in my ufo collection for a bout a year.

I also made a little sketchbook after seeing one a friend had made

I used some painted paper for the cover and some scrap paper from a failed experiment for the endpages.

And that's enough for one week, don't you think?

a bit of a hodge podge

Well, I have been a bit remiss in blogging, so here is a bit of a round up of what I have been doing.

This is a slideshow of a book I am working on as a part of your living canvas with Christy Tomlinson.

And this is the cover of another project for the same course.  Inside there will be six panels for the six fs we worked on.  It's all about balancing our wheels.

These are close ups of the panels of the cover.

These are a few scrapbook pages and the cover of the album, I am putting together for a display at the community house to get a few people interested.  I am not really a scrapbooker, more of a journaller, but we have lots of supplies, so we want people to come and do it.

These are a few pages from my journals I have worked on lately.  1st and last were inspired by Donna downey's inspiration wednesday.

And to finish up for today,

Some free motion butterflies I am working on on felt, which will be cut out for a shadow box when finished.

And a little butterfly I made with some embossed foil, nail polish and jewels, after seeing one in a jewellery mag at the community house this morning.  It is about an inch across, not sur what I will do with it, but it satified my need for bling, today, at least, lol.

So, you see, even when I am neglecting my blog, I am always doing something.

Leaves again

I have been working lately in the evenings on more collages a' la Beryl Taylor, although my content and colour scheme are a little different to her pastel scheme. My last one was red, but this one is green and gold.  Here are some of the motifs I am working on.  As usual, I have probably made enough for several, but they will be used.

 The top piece is a real gum leaf, under some sinnamay (made of abaca fibre, the stuff used to make fascinators).  The bottom three are just fillers made with polar fleece topped with heatgunned organza and magnetite beads.

These four are made using an oval yoyo maker.  I will decide on embellishment for these when I put everything together.

These are free machined on satin with gold thread on felt.

These are made from the same satin, folded so that the folds meet on the vein line, then appliqued onto felt and beaded.  However, I don't like the continuous beads and will re do the edges with a bead every few stitches instead.

This is a large piece, with a printed leaf on painted newspaper, layered over more sinnamay and satin.  It is thre focal piece, but I haven't decided what stitching to do on it yet.

These four are simply leaves with raw edges gut from various yummy fabrics, the lines are feather stitch and they are layered on copper foil on top of small hemmed squares of textured fabrics.

These four are some stretch fabrics layered on top of hemmed satins, with a little bit of  textured stuff I got from a florist's as ribbon and some quartz beads.

So that's what I have done so far on the motifs and I am busy stitching on the background

It is a piece of gold brocade/satiny curtain fabric with leaves on it in a pale green.  I intend to have rows of feather stitch in black, green and gold overlapping, so that will take a while.
Anyhow, it is very enjoyable to work on in the evenings, which are extremely cold here at the moment.

Create every day!

owls and air brushing

I have been so lax in blogging that my facebook is pretty much chockers (full) of pictures to talk about, lol.
First a little local stuff.

This is our usually lazy little creek this morning. It has been raining for a week and the roar of the water is quite loud, especially at night.  It is still a long way from flooding, but of course our house will never flood as it is on the side of the valley, quite high up.  Flooding only interferes with our access - if the bridge ever goes under, which it hasn't, even when the creek bursts it's banks.  But I thought you might like a brief glimps into my world.

Here are a few wishing owls, which I made after watching QATV 801.  Here arte a few more pictures.

They are very cute and quirky and don't take long to make.

This is a piece of fabric paper I made using dissolve water soluble stabilizer.  I saw this in QATV 503.  It is interesting, but I think I really prefer fabric paper made with PVA.

I have also been playing with air brushing, using a new mini compressor, we got a while ago.

Here is some nappy liner I painted using the air brush.  I want to use my soldering iron to create some waves for a collage.

While I was at it, I did this piece of fabric with some stencils and some fabric paint.  I think I will do this again with acrylic (which will act as a resist) and then overdye with another colour.  This might be interesting.

So that's it for today, cleared a little of my backlog. 
Here's  an inspiration for you.