Sneak Previews

Hi Everyone,
I thought I would stop by today with a couple of sneak previews of a couple of things I've got going on in the pipeline at the moment.

But first I want to say a big thank you  to Shoshi  over at Shoshiplatypus.blogspot.co.uk for nominating me for  The Versatile Blogger Award .Unfortunately I felt that I could not take part because to qualify for the nomination you have to nominate 15 blogs and as I am relatively new to blogging, and only have a small number of people who regularly comment on my blog , I  couldn't think of 15 bloggers that I would feel comfortable  nominating as most of the people I would choose have already been nominated. One thing I can do though is post a link to Shoshi's blog (above) and ask that anyone who has not already visited her lovely blog to please do so as she is a very talented artist.

Now, for those sneak previews  I mentioned. Firstly, I thought I would share with you a pic of  a work in progress for a friend that I mentioned in a previous post.

This is a re-working of a textile picture I did recently for an exhibition. You can see the beginnings of the piece which was painted with Lumiere paints and stamped with text in Vintage Photo Distress Ink. The words are stamped with my letters stamps and sewn to the base. You can see the little circles of fabric cut out ready to form the flowers. I will post again to show you the finished piece.

The second thing I thought I would show you is where I am up to on the little sketchbook I started at a workshop that I did a couple of weeks ago. I still have to do some freehand machine embroidery and add some embellishments to the cover then bind it all together.

The cover is made from heavy-weight interfacing and painted the design onto paper with Transfer Dye and ironed the design onto the cover. You then adhere the painted paper to the inside of the cover using Bondaweb (which I still have to do). The holes are done with a soldering iron.

The pages are made from heavy-weight lining paper (yes, the decorating kind). They are torn and painted with blue and green Brusho and layered at angles on top of each other and left to dry to make those patterns you can see in the above picture.

I am hoping to get it finished after I have completed the textile picture as I am making it with the intention of taking it away with me when I go on my much awaited holiday in Cornwall in a few weeks time.

I also plan on testing different mediums out on the  the lining paper to see if it would be a cheaper (£10.00 a roll) alternative paper to use for a mixed media journal. The only problem is it is off white. The gesso I have is only a cheap make and does not cover very well so I am going to invest in some Golden  which I expect will cover much better. I am slowly acquiring decent quality products along the way.  I wish you could just rush out and get everything at once. But there are so many products out there to tempt you. Dylusions Ink Sprays are the next big thing on my list . After, of course, more Pan Pastels. See told you. My list is endless.

Well,  thanks for stopping by. See you soon with another update.

Bye for now. x