Play Day

Hi everyone,

Since my last post  I have been having a little play around  with different techniques.
These are a couple more  metal pieces I did  using an old ball point pen for embossing with and a magazine to work on. Thankyou to my freind who very kindly sent me a mouse mat after seeing my last post. An embossing tool has now been added to my long list of artist materials that I must buy.

I then painted them with black acrylic and wiped over it while it was still wet to give them that tarnished look.

The next piece would be nice to use as the cover for a handmade book or journal as it looks and feels like leather.

I started by scrunching up a piece of tissue paper and ironing it on to some iron-on vilene. I stuck some bits of lace and sewn on a flower shape with embroidary thread and sealed it with gesso. I painted on a layer of burnt umber acrylic paint and rubbed on some gold and black acrylic with my finger. I then  added some green to give it a verdigree effect.
I'm sorry the way these last two pictures have turned out.They don't do the piece justice and I don't know why but they have downloaded the wrong way around .

I am having a lovely time looking at what my fellow bloggers have been doing and as a result I have gots lots  of new projects to add to my to do list ..

Thanks for visiting, bye for now. xx 

'Goosey' minus the Goose.

Sorry to anyone who stopped by to see last weeks tag (Theme 'Goosey'). I was a little under the weather so I didn't manage to get one done.
I was thinking of doing an image transfer onto fabric and I did take a couple of nice photo's of a duck (ducks are aloud) in preperation so I thought I would at least show you the image I was going to use.

However, every cloud has a silver lining and that is that  I can post my tag for this week on the actual Tuesday,which is a first for me.

At the moment I am practicing some techniques from a lovely book called Paper, Metal & Stitch by Maggie Grey & Jane Wild. One of which is embossing metal shim ( or in my case a used  tomato puree tube). So I decided to use this technique on this weeks tag. (theme - ' Easter Egg').                                                         I cut open and washed the tomatoe puree tube and in the absence of an embossing tool and ideally , a mouse mat  to work on I used an old ball point pen to emboss the pattern and a magazine to rest on .

I then painted on purple acrylic paint working the paint into the recesses of the embossed pattern and then removed the paint off the surface by wiping over with a piece of kitchen towel.

There is more  I wanted to share with you but I have to dash off  now to watch The Vampire Diaries so I will try and catch up tomorrow.

Bye for now xx

Mad March Tag

This weeks theme over on TAG TUESDAY is' Mad March Hares and Rabbits'.

I thought I would keep this weeks tag quite simple so I made a foam stamp of a hare and used acrylic paint to simply stamp onto the tag.

I used a play on words and wrote ' Hare today' and 'Gone tomorrow' in a fine liner pen and added the flowers. I'm not completely satisfied with it though, as the actual stamping worked out better on my trial piece but this was my last white tag so it had to do.

I've been checking out the tags over on the TAG TUESDAY blog and they are all wonderful,  so many talented people are involved. I look forward to the day when I can be included in the 'Tag Team' and post my tags along with all the others. But I think it will be a while yet as  I'm quite a long way down the waiting list. In the meant time I would like to thank anyone visiting my blog and I would  really love you to leave a comment.

Bye for now and happy blogging!  

Birds-Tag Tuesday

This weeks theme is Birds.  There  is a popular bird watching site near to where I live, so I am lucky enough to see lots of different kinds of birds and wake up to birdsong every morning. With all that inspiration around me you would think it would be easy to come up with a design for this weeks tag. However I began to over think it and struggled with what technique to use.

A while ago I came across an artist Donna Downey . Each week She posts a video on her blog called 'Inspiration Wednesday' in which she completes a page in her art journal. She starts with an idea and just goes with it and see's what happens. If she's not happy with something she goes over it with gesso or another colour or a stamp.

So taking a leaf out of her book I thought I'd just go for it and here is the result.

The background is yellow ochre acrylic paint overlayed with sky blue oil pastel. Over that I applied a thin layer of gesso. I then used a dry brush and a little deep red acrylic paint and loosely swept it over one side of the tag.
I drew the blackbird, cut it out, and coloured it with oil pastel and applied it to the tag. The lettering was aged with tea an oil pastel.
While we were on the subject of birds I was planning to post another picture of a piece I have done in the past featuring birds but my computer is runniing slow for some reason so I will leave it at that for today

Bye for now and happy blogging.

A Look Back

Well here I am, back as promised, with some pics of some of my previous projects showing different textile techniques. Hope you like them.

  

A Handmade Felt Bowl

  

                                                                      A Hanmade Felt Bag

                                                  A Felt Sunset

                                                   Home is Where the Heart is.

                                           A Freehand Machine Embroidery Bowl
.

Please feel free to leave a comment I would be grateful for your feedback. Well, I'm off to work on my tag for Tuesdays theme 'Birds'. 

Bye for now xx

Books - TAG TUESDAY

Here is my tag for this weeks theme for TAG TUESDAY - Books.
Two books inspired this tag. Firstly, my tag takes the form of a book called a Ledger, a book binding technique found in  'Making Handmade Books' by Alisa Golden.
The 'tag cover' was inspired by my favourite book at the moment, 'Mixed Media explorations' by Beryl Taylor Each of her pieces are  made up of lots of little projects and I just can't stop picking it up and looking at all the different techniques.

For the background I coloured some book text with brusho and on top of that is a layer of torn wallpaper. The heart is made from fabric paper, a technique I learned from Beryl's book.

Underneath the heart are two strips of paper painted with pearlesant paints and the squares are again made from  fabric paper with sequins and seed beads
.

The pages are  painted with water colour paints and left blank for notes or sketches.
I think  that this is my favourite tag so far and I would love to hear your comments.
Tomorrow I will be back to post those pic's I have promised in my last posts.
Bye for now xx