Another week!

Another week and this week I feel I have done a bit more and been more productive, Even with some saddening family news this week.  I am glad I have been keeping busy, because I think it does help when life happens - having things to do.  Stops you reveling in your own sadness.
But anyhow,  Let's look at what I have gotten done this week.

This is my first bit of embroidery on my Sue Spargo sampler with craftsy.  It has taken me a while to get started, but hopefully I will get some done on Tuesdays at Quilt group which begins again this week.

This is a Thread painted moth I finished during the week.  Not sure what I am going to do with it yet, perhaps it will become a fabric page.

I finished unpicking this piece of printing on chiffon, which had some free motion I didn't like

Another of the fabric and paper collages I am making for Fabric books.

Getting along with my crochet!

Some thread lace leaves.

A teeny tiny embellishment - again for fabric pages.

A page in my doodle book I am working on.  The red leaves are a deli paper page that has been cut - over the top of the green and purple page.

This is a page from week two of Lisa Congdon's Sketchbook Explorations on creativebug.

If you have known me for a while, you might recognise this pile of fabric pages ready to embellish.  I have used my collage background challenges from last year.

And here is one of the pages, with a free motion sketch which has been painted.  Quite happy with this page, but still needs a little more work.

Another fabric page in process.

And finally another fabric page, a two page spread ready to free motion stitch.  It might seem that I am a bit obsessed with fabric books at present and I probably am.  I have been interested for a few years and never yet completed one!  So this year is the year.
My pinterest page has lots of inspiration if you want to look, but the main artists who are inspiring me are Frances Pickering, Ro Bruhn, Jill Taylor, and Annette Bolton and of course Cas Holmes. As usual quite a few UK artist in that group!

Happy Creating!

A catch up

A week has gone by since I posted and the last thing I posted was the sketchbooks I put together and these two pages are ones I finished during the week.

The one on the left was a ghost print from some monoprinting which I have added to and made more interesting.  The one on the right was a sunflower print (background) and on top, I  used a silhouette stencil I cut from a fashion magazine.  Then I added a bit of shading and detail with black ink.  This was for Natalie Kalbach's lesson from creative Jumpstart which I am enjoying a lot.

This page used a gorgeous stencil.  An old Amy Butler one and a quote which I altered a little, adding "She"  instead of "He".  This one is the story of my life!

Under my magnifying daylight lamp here, is a piece of printed chiffon, which I did some free motion of, but didn't like.  The reason for the magnifying glass is that I am unpicking it!

This is my Feather collection.  It is very varied,although many are white cockatoo or black and white magpie feathers, but I also have some blue and black rosella feathers and in the centre is a speckled feather which I think may belong to an owl or night jar.  I pick these up when I am walking each evening, and it is always a great walk when I find one.

These are a couple of quick warm-up collages, a task that I have been neglecting this month!

This is my first page for DLP (Documented Life Project) which is  a site my friend Lisa put me on to.

And lastly this is a page from my doodling journal.  It has lots of prints and painted pages in it and all I do is doodle and use pens and markers in it.

Doesn't seem much for a week, does it?  Well, there are lots of other things, that are in process and a couple of things that are for swaps and such, which I can't show until the appropriate time.  So we will see those the next time or the time after that, or....

Happy Creating!

Journals everywhere

Yesterday, I spent some time, gong through my huge stash of gelli prints and put together two new journals.

As you can see I am really short on journals!  Hmmm.  Well, I still went ahead and made two more.

I call these "Serendipity" journals, because they have a mix of blank and coloured/printed pages, so it is just fate what you get to work on.  I find I tend to create things I never thought of or planned with these journals.  Here are a few spreads.

As you can see, I have a variety of pages, including deli paper, cartridge paper, watercolour paper, card and even some black card as well as a wide variety of prints and failed prints, all bound together using my old comb binder.  I am quite pleased with these.

Here are a couple of recent art journal pages

This one started with a scrap of watercolour paper with some test painting on it and a tree cut from a page taken out of an altered book.  The branches were cut of in the cutting, but I put them back in with drawing.  The autumn leaf drifts began as bits of gelli prints which I scribbled all over with oil pastel then melted with the heat gun and moved around with a baby wipe.  It turned out very atmospheric!

This page has sat around for nearly a week.  I had "drawn" the tree and grass, with some elmer's glue on a coloured background and intended, when the glue was dry, to wash over black ink and wipe it off from the glue to create a coloured tree on a black background.  But alas, the ink dried too quickly and I couldn't get it off.

today, whilst I was playing with the oil pastels, I thought I could rub over the tree and get the pastel on the glue, but again, that did not work, as the pastel also got onto the background as well in places.  As I was rubbing the background to try uselessly to remove the pastel, it simply created more of a misty background - AND  the cloth rubbed the pastel off the glue!  So I eventually, after many plays, got the opposite effect of what I originally intended, but I really like it and especially love the shiny, black dimensional tree.

Happy Creating!

Being Productive

The last few days have been quite productive.I have been working on my crazy quilt, which got a little behind in the winter when I was ill.

I have been working on this block (left) this week

And as you can see, it is nearly finished!

I also coloured some pieces of lace for crazy quilting.  White gets a bit boring after a while.

I finished my 12" block for the ravelry  2015crochet-along.  I have also done a 6" one.
On the journaling front, as well as my daily journal, I did these pages.

I drew all over the pages with inktense blocks and the little book, was drawn on every page.

I sprayed the pages with water, saturating them and ran a brush over them.  At present, they are spending a few pages drying.  I saw this recently on design matters TV with Laura Kemshall.  I have not done it the same as Laura did, but the video reminded me of this method I saw on you tube a few years ago using ink.

This is a little thread sketch I did this afternoon.  It is obvious I am a little out of practice as my wren is a little fat!  A bit more practice will get me back into the routine.

This is a small thread painted/mixed media collage I put together with a few scraps of fabric, some papers and a card die cut.  I like this one and as I was stitching, the name 'Into the darkness" came to me.

I had been thinking about a textile project for this year and had been thinking of doing the thread sketches (like the bird), but In April, I will be doing a class with Ro Bruhn at AQC.  She makes beautiful fabric books.  I also saw Leslie Tucker Jennison on Quilting Arts TV 1503 making similar collages and  Liz Kettle also talked about thread sketching practice in qatv 1505.  So this is a cross between all of the above, with a little bit of Cas Holmes thrown in so  I think this will be my project for this year. A mixed media collage with fabric, paper and stitch, including thread sketches.

Often with these yearly projects I have planned to do it every day...and I always failed, simply because life happens, so this year my intent is to do at least 1 each week,with the intention of doing at least three.
One might think that, since I have failed at these yearly projects in the past, that I might give up, but although I have never been perfect (ie each and every day), I have learnt a great deal from these projects.  I have a vast library of journal quilts, atcs and stitched squares

Whilst I was looking for all the links above, I found The Slow Stitching movement  which has podcasts and a blog  This looks like great reading and listening.  Go have a look!


Happy Creating!