a cameo appearance

OK, I have been absent for a week or two, but I have been busy playing with a new toy!, oops, I mean tool in my studio.

I am the proud owner of a brand new silhouette cameo digital cutter and have been experimenting with all types of media, to see what it can do!

Above is a page from my notebook.  As you can see at the left, it cuts light lutradur/rainbow spun beautifully, and below it is some acetate sheet (For stencils) which it also cut well.  It did not cut painted baby wipes, which is a disappointment, but I am not finished experimenting with that.  I have tried papers of different weights, plastics and vinyls, and of course fabrics.  It cuts cotton really well and I am looking forward to thinking up a few applique projects to do with it.

I cut these beautiful boxes from card.  I purchased the cutting file from silhouette.com.

and all these wonderful masks and textures and text and....

Here were a few of my first efforts.
And some starts at journal pages, none of which is completed yet.

By the way, the black butterfly is a design I created myself with the software, while the blue butterfly, I only attached on one side so it becomes an extra page.

My collage from the last post is finished and just needs mounting

Here are a few close ups

Also, the fabric pages I finished a few weeks ago have reached their owners, so now I can show you

I have been doing a little crochet

This is from a pattern in piecework magazine last year.

And this is from an old annie's attic pattern.

And I think I'll just finish with this winter leaf I found the other day

It had such beautiful lines, I couldn't resist.

Happy creating.

a quick collage,...perhaps

I felt in need of a little fabric therapy today, so I got out a few scraps and played around with a little collage.

I started with a little bit of linen, which I ripped, so the edges would fray.

I gathered a few scraps and bits and pieces, some chiffons, textured woven fabrics, silk scraps, lolly wrappers, skeleton leaves I had embedded in angelina, a brass buckle, and some mother of pearl buttons.

I placed down some of the textured fabric and a strip of chiffon, and then I got carried away and forgot to take photos.

This was my first arrangement.

 Then I moved it around a bit.

and added another wrapper.  I was happy with this one and so I started to sew.

I have actually sewed it all down, now and am sewing the buttons etc on.  You will have to pop back next week to see it finished.

For all my use of scraps, you just end up with more!
Last week at the community house art group, we did needle felting. 

I made this seahorse, and a little flower (which broke one of my needles!), both of which need a bit of stitching and beads, now.

I also made this teeny kitty cat, but I think I would like to cover him in some textured yarn so he is a tabby, and add some eyes, of course.
The week before, we were beading and I said I would show a few more little bits I had made.

These are a few motifs, or cabochons, basically, little things to put on collages!

And That's all for this post.  I must get back to my Tangled textile piece, which is due this week.

Happy Creating.

A little bit of everything

I have not really been very productive lately, although I know some of you won't believe that, however I have really been doing a lot of reading and staying away from the computer.  I recieved two books from Kim Thittichai recently- "layered Textiles" and "experimental textiles", which I have been enjoying immensely.  Layered textiles is about creating wonderful textures using many layers, heat tools, stitching and lots of other stuff.  To that end, I have been painting non woven fabric such as light lutradur, fusible, nappy liner, tyvek and rainbow spun.

These are a few samples.  The top one is nappy liner, which I spayed with my air gun.  The bottom two are fusible, painted with acrylic.  You can see on the middle picture I have ironed some glitter onto the fusible.
I wanted to create a water effect and tried a few different ways with the nappy liner.

I ironed the nappy liner down after cutting it with a heat tool.  It created an interesting effect, but as you can see in several places, I was a bit impatient waiting for the baking paper to cool and some came away with my blue nappy liner still attached.

In the sample on the left, I ironed the pieces onto interfacing, but the iron was too hot and the interfacing wrinkled up.  Ah well, we live and learn.  In the right hand sample I just layered strips of coloured nappy liner on cotton and cut into it with the heat tool.  This created while lines, and might be useful if I want to make foam on the waves in a sort of heat tool reverse applique.

I used some of the fusible in this piece.  I ironed it onto a yucky beige fabric, which I had painted ages ago and it created the orange squares behind my leaves.  In fact when I had ironed it on the fabric, I loved the marble like effect so much, I had to create something with it, so I cut lots of leaves from my huge collection of baby wipes which I use to mop up my paintin messes, then dry.
This piece is just fused down and sitting next to my free motion machine for stitching.

This is my sample for the stitching, which I made from left overs.  I used purple and turquoise thread, but I think a little orange and gold will not go astray as it is a little flat at present.
The stitching was inspired by "retro inspired stitch samplers" by Jackie Cardy in the jun/jul 2000 issue of Quilting arts, which has been sitting in my to do pile for a long time.
I didn't forget the other book I was reading, "experimental textiles", it is full of yummy samples and is really about sketchbooks for textile art.  I have been reading it together with another two books, "sketchbooks for embroiderers and textile artists" by kay greenlees, and "dreaming from the journal page" by Melanie Testa as well as doing Melanie's online course "dream Journal".
Wow, that was a mouthful and a lot of links to paste in!  But I am, as you might gather, spending a lot of time in my sketchbooks at present.  I also am watching "Internationally inspired" from donna downey, so I suppose I am doing stuff, it's just it's all very paper oriented, lol.

This is a quick sample from Melanie's course, where I am testing out different media, like watercolour, watercolour pencils, pastel pencils, water soluble wax and oil crayons, and crayola slicks, which are a bit like gelatos.

These two are pages from my journal, where I was just playing.

This page from my sketchbook is a few insects I was playing with.
At our art group at our community house we have been doing some beading, and these are two little bits I made.  I have made a few more, but haven't photographed them, and will show you next time.

I think that's enough for one post.