Green and copper

If you follow my blog, you will remember the copper and paper collage with  a sprig of leaves a few days ago, and how I liked the little woven detail at the base of the plant.
I have used this to make some little embellishments for one of my needlefelted pieces that was waiting for inspiration.

You can see here I have used a piece of a computer as a jig, to hold the four thick pieces of wire whilst I am weaving them with some fine wire.  You could probably use some plastic canvas in the same way.

Here is one of the finished little embellishments placed on the needlefelted piece.

And here is the finished piece with the little embellishments stitched on.  I am afraid it is slightly too long for the scanner, so the bottom is cut off I really need to think about this when making small pieces.  Also it is a bit crooked, but that is just me placing it on the scanner.
I am quite pleased with how this one is turning out.
I have really done a fair bit of work during December and I thought you might like a look at my design wall at present.

These two pictures overlap, so as usual I couldn't fit it all in.  I like walking out into my studio each day and looking at what I have achieved.  It is extremely satisfying.

Happy creating!

heavy metal

A bit late blogging today, I got sidetracked by a little patchwork project and it is nearly time for bed.
We had a nice, quiet Christmas day and are now getting back to working.
today I am showing a WIP which is not textile, but does have fibres in it and a tiny bit of weaving, but it is not finshed as I want to do a lot of stitching on it.

It is a tree or shrub, made from copper wire (retrieved from the power supply of an old computer) with leaves cut from copper foil and copper mesh (which were stolen from my husband)
The background is Japanese washi paper fused to felt with fusible webbing.  The paper is very textured and I am looking forward to stitching on it.  I will also be securing the leaves properly with some stitch and beads.

Oh, and theweaving?  If you look to the very bottom, you can see that I wove the stems together with some fine wire and I really liked the effect.  I think I will be making some embellishments using this technique - in fact I have the perfect background for such embellishments.

Happy creating!

Art books

 Just a quick mention, that I am going to start posting an ATC a day as a way to play with lots of techniques.  This was an idea put forward by my friend, Lisa  and I have decided to join her in her venture. we shall see!  She also has a great list of techniques which she wants to try.

My art books, as I have said, are recycled/altered books which I use to create little bits of art and experiment in on different themes.
Here are a few pages I have worked on recently.

This is a page from my bird theme book.  The backgrpound is newspaper painted with gesso and then a watercolour wash, which I find easy to paint and draw on and is a cheap and easy way to cover up the page contents underneath.  The bird was inspired by a card.  It is a little hard to see because it is drawn with a metallic pen, but basically each piece of the bird is doodled with a different free motion quilting design.  I have a small quilt based on this page in process, so you see the books are a great design resource..

This is a page in process in my water/oceans book.  Again the background is painted newspaper/gesso.
The seahorses are molding paste applied through a stencil, then painted gold.
This page will be layered again to add some more weeds and depth before it is finished.  I already have ideas about using painted fusible in a small quilt like this.

These ferns in my leaf theme book are stencilled with oil pastel.  Next, I will put a watercolour wash on which will be resisted by the pastel.  This can be mimicked on fabric using shiva sticks and fabric paint, so i do see a batch of fabric comming up.

I have shown this page before.  It is a ripped printout pasted to the page, but here, you can see I have begun to sketch out the missing parts.  I think this page needs a wash for the background, so the leaves will brobably be completed with oil pastel.

Another page from the leaf book, this is a simple layout for a small motif (about 4") I made using couched copper wire on a piece of woven wool fabric.  This page has a piece od non woven paper/fabric (the type florists use on their posies) pasted directly to the page.  It is semi transparent, but I actually like the little views you can see.  The pink/orange paper is paste paper .

I have actually been doing a lot of sewing an textile work, but haven't quite got to the point of something to show yet and a couple of my WIPs are things I can't show until a certain date, but two days untill I start posting ATCs!!!!