Wednesday 25 June 2008

A busy week and it's only Wednesday

This week we have packed in a lot. Monday was paint day for making painted papers for my journal. Sue had set us 5 different ways of painting papers and two of them were quite successful, shame about the others! Still you have to go through all the types of application to find the one that suits you.

I loved the spray painting on thick paper then covering it with cling film, that gave a lovely effect; the other one was blobbing paint onto cling film, a quick swish then covering it with paper then pealing it off - another success. It seems I make more of an achievement when there is mess!
We also had to do 3 other types but as you see from the pictures the ink sprays were not bad but the others are heavily painted and scraped and not my cup of tea.


Tuesday we saw Gary the carpenter who came to put in skirting boards in my hall and kitchen/ diner. The ground floor had concrete (or in Gary's words - granite) borders which had been gouged out to lay pipes and tiles. The skirting boards finished off the walls and gave a clean edge all round. We can even lay electrical wiring behind them to the studio, so I don't have to use endless extension leads.

Wednesday I finished off my papers, Gary finished off the skirting boards and we all sighed with relief. We are ready for my daughter, Stephanie, and her family to arrive next week and enjoy a few days in the sun (hopefully).

Sunday 22 June 2008

Playtime

Thursday did not bring any sales, however this meant I could play all day without feeling guilty! Terrible thing at my age (63), you'd think I'd be past feeling guilty if I wasn't working.
BUT I wanted to come to grips with the mirror challenge, and I know my previous piece of art (no sniggering, please) was not within the challenge parameters. I had had this vision of Klimt and wanted to do a representation of his art, bearing in mind he always did lovely faces and hands but surrounded them with almost cubist blocks of colour and the mirror could represent the faces. I remembered seeing an article in Workshopontheweb by Penny Purchase and looked it out; plus the article from Fiber&Stitch by Jackie Cardy on making a hidden treasure. Those were my starting points and with great trepidation I set too, having never done free motion stitching before. I coloured some cotton (mop up technique again, I just love it!) and covered it with blue organza and some batting to the back. I stamped several curl shapes onto the back of blue velvet and cut them out, laying them onto the cotton, but underneath the organza; then several lozenge shapes which were added the same way. I put blue metallic thread into the machine and set it up for FMS and with heart in hand started to machine. It was so easy I wondered why I'd been so nervous of trying this technique. I cut out little pieces of bondaweb and placed them over the velvet, having cut away the organza and fused foil to the centres of the lozenges. Then I drew the ironwork round the mirror gap and FMS'd all round the edges in gold. For the backing I fused pieces of torn kitchen role onto a piece of backing board then covered it with clingfilm and fused it into place. I stuck everything together with double-sided tape (not quite that easy but it gives you the idea). The hinges are pieces of card painted to match in with the overall scheme. Then the photo for the web...Wow, was it hard to get right, all I could see was me in the mirrors or Peggy trying to get on my lap so I hope the photo looks OK.

I just signed onto my email and there were two messages from Sue, last Friday she had set us a task of putting colours to each word we have come up with describing ourselves. I had agonised over the word 'Challenge' and wanted to convey a lovely sunny day that lifts the heart and makes me ready to accept any challenge, but all I could come up with was 'Turquoise'. Then Friday night when I was dozing in bed the light suddenly went on and a word popped into my head...SAPPHIRE! I thought it conveyed everything I wanted in the word, it comes in blues, pinks and golds and has the brilliance to suggest sunshine. Boy, was I a happy teddy.

However, today Sue has set us another task, asking us to create 10 pages for our journals that represent the colours for each word. All I could think of was UGGHH! Am I in trouble... Sapphire...how am I going to get that one right? So over the next two weeks I have to produce pages for Green, Yellow, Gold, Sapphire, Lilac, Sunset, Beige, Orange, Red, and Maroon - the beige to maroon being my negative colours.
I'm off now to read up on this week's lessons on different ways of painting pages, I'll need all the help I can get from it.

Wednesday 18 June 2008

One of those days...

Ever had one of those days when you are doing something you don't want to do? Yesterday was one of those days. I had completed all my waistcoats for this week and had free time so I set about clearing up my workshop. I found this piece of collage I had put together last year and thought it would make a great padfolio. However, when I started to put it together it was such an awful grey/beige colour I found it difficult to jazz it up and make it acceptable. I put a lovely pink piece of silk for the inside and another darker piece for the pockets and set to. I had all the pieces together and started to put the back to the front and zig-zag down the join and when I turned it over to come back down the seam, I saw that the pieces were wrong sides together. I undid the pieces and put them the right sides together and then found I had put the wrong pockets on each piece! What to do??? I cut out the pockets and pieced another silk over the right sides, then put them together in the right order.

Of course, having done this I didn't like it even more now so I left it and went into the garden.



My neighbour came round with her jack russell Archie and Peggy (my JR on the left) had a great time bounding round the garden with him until he cried craven and wanted to go home. As this took some time Kim and I were able to have a cup of tea and relax in the sun.


Today was better though, I had the day to set my box up with all the things necessary for my stall on Thursday and to potter around completing little tasks. Then I received a parcel containing Maggie Smith's latest book 'Image to Stitch' and that got me going again. I had another look at some fibre art I had done from one of her previous books and thought about our latest challenge from Fibre and Stitch - something incorporating a mirror. I had dyed some cotton and a nappy liner with the mop up technique and put one over the other to tone down the painted cotton. Then pressed some painted tyvek over a rubber stamp with a hot iron. I added the lacy bits of tyvek to the fleece sandwich by stitching lines of metallic thread because although I tried free motion stitching the thread kept snapping and doing my head in. Then I pleated the sandwich and cut out the middle. I attached a mirror to some board and made a backing from a faux leather paper bag exercise I'd done the previous week. This was satin stitched all round the edges twice with metallic thread. Unfortunately I forgot to put a hanger on the back so I punched two holes in the top corners and made a machine wrapped cord to hand it up. I added two silk cocoons for embellishment. It was difficult to photo this as the mirror kept giving pictures of me photoing it, but I think I got it OK. I'm quite chuffed with the result.

Now I'm going to have my dinner and read Maggie's book...wonderful stuff!

Monday 16 June 2008

Lesson 5 - completed

I finally finished off my Lesson 5 over the weekend. I didn't like my faux leather look paper bag so when I saw an article by Maggie Smith I lept at the chance to change the paper. I fused some cotton to the back, pressed some dyed bondaweb to the front and used some bits and pieces from my bits bag to make a collage over the bondaweb. I made some criss-cross slips on gold felt and cut them out, scattered them over the piece leaving one to act as a button and finished off with some copper coloured net.

Then I followed Sue Bleiweiss's article on making a padfolio. It turned out smaller than I thought it would but very neat. The middle has a pocket for slipping a secretary's pad into and the inside front has a diagonal pocket to put pens and pieces collected. The machine covered cord was made with 3 different fibres and finished off with a gold silk cocoon.

These would make rather lovely presents for friends and I have it in mind for Christmas too.

Well, back to making a silk waistcoat for my absent-minded professor. I can't wait for the next lessons to arrive and get my creative juices flowing again.

Friday 13 June 2008

New day, new course

This week has been all go. The carpenter arrived on Monday afternoon and put up the new guttering for the workshop and now I have straight guttering and pipes with no holes for water to cascade down the walls creating damp patches. Bliss!!
I had 3 waistcoats to do this week which were completed by Tuesday and then a body appeared at the door on Wednesday evening asking for his gold waistcoat. Dr Burland had visited my stall twice in the last two weeks but not given me an order, he kept saying he'd be back...but he thought he had given me the order and wanted it for the following day's trip to London. Well, I'm not a miracle worker yet (working on it) and we agreed to a delivery date of Thursday next week. I took two more orders for dress waistcoats at the Thursday market for two friendly barmen and had a lovely chat with a guy called Peter. He was up from Plymouth to see a doctor at the local hospital, he said it was the best hospital in south west England and he had decided to take a walk through the town whilst waiting for his lift. He seemed a well travelled man and had lots of interesting stories to tell, making 15 minutes pass very quickly. I think that was the highlight of the day because it became very boring after that - lots of tourists but no sales.
Today I am 'resting' and have been playing with tyvec, fleece and hand dyed cotton. I made a cover for a mirro tile but it isn't finished yet...watch this space!
Also I finished my first journal according to the instructions in the first lesson of Creative Media Journaling Techniques with Sue Bleiweiss. We have had to pick a theme and as I like motion and Klimt I started with some Klimt quilting material in lovely shades of orange, tan and burgunday and black.



Then we had to marble some papers to add to the inside. Well, my first try was a disaster, I tried orange/black/yellow paint and it looked like a child's attempt so I tried again, filling the dish with shaving foam, adding drops of burgundy/yellow/copper and these were much better. I'll send these up to Sue and see what she thinks. We have to submit photos of every item so she can make sure we are all doing the work and not having problems.




Well that seems to be lesson 1 completed. Sue is a great teacher and I am now looking at my fibre art books in a new light. I got out three of them last night and they seemed to come to life, and I knew I could have a go at the instructions they contained in the hope I'd get something similar to all those lovely pictures.

However Sue seems to have had a mental abboration, as she has been issuing challenges right left and centre. I had to write them all down in the order of the finish date so I could at least have a stab at getting something up on the web in time. She also asked us to put down 10 words that we thought described us, mine were: Positive = Enquiring, Exporing, Learning, Challenging, Planner and In at the Deep End. Negative = Frustrated, impatient, hesitant, need structure. I'm sure my sons and daughter would come up with a few more, and they would be very interesting, but let's not go there!

I still haven't finished off my brown paper exercise but I did find an article in one of Maggie Smith's books that should help me meet that exercise - tomorrow is another day...and another challenge.

Sunday 8 June 2008

Last lesson - sadly






All went well on Thursday with a sale from the table and an order for a dress waistcoat. Also one of my customers from the previous week rang up wanting another waistcoat, so that's next week's stall money in the bag!






Friday saw the departure of Bert and the arrival of Gary the carpenter who came to fix the roof over my back door. He had to leave it open so he could put the door in and he made a good job of fixing the new plexiglass. He will be back on Monday to add new guttering and drainpipe (hopefully).






Yesterday was rest day, sort of, because as I lay in the sun I seemed to get all sorts of ideas about my last lesson with Sue Bleiweiss. We were asked to make another vase with curly sides and my mother had expressed a wish for one but with a theme. What theme! I lay there agonising and suddenly it came to me (as it does) that she liked flowers and gardens and blue. Part of the course was playing with angelina fibres and fantasy film so I came up with the idea of fantasy flowers on the side of the vase and a picture of some of the flowers in my garden. I chose some violas in blue with golden hearts, brought it into an adobe package and played around with it, tiling and stretching the picture which I then printed out for both sides. I fused them onto vilene and covered the whole piece with fantasy film in green. Then I cut out and satin stitched all the pieces of the vase, butting up the bottoms and stitching them.




Then I pressed and stitched the fantasy flowers with felt leaves and stitched them to the sides. THEN I had to stitch up the sides - what a painful exercise that was, and it left me with bloody holes in my fingers. I'll have to get a thimble, if only I could use one! Still, I was able to incorporate all the exercises in Lesson 5 (except 1) into one item and upload the photos for Sue to see.

I did do the last exercise which was turning brown paper into a faux leather look, but I couldn't think what to turn it into...so I signed up for another course with Sue called Creative Mixed Media Journaling Techniques. I'm off to sit in the sun now, feeling just a little satisfied with life.

Wednesday 4 June 2008

Holiday over

Well, we did get out eventually. We picked up some lovely pots very cheaply at the pottery and had lunch at Sainsbury's, not a place I would normally have gone to but our meal proved to be very tasty and well presented and we got to go round Sainsbury's to fill in a few hours.

The following day was better and I went down the market to set up my stall. Mother and Graham came down later, did some shopping and wandered back to the house and when I had packed up and returned home they were both happily reading their new books. Gareth appeared just in time (as you do) for the evening meal which was nice. He also helped me get my wii console started and tuned into the TV and we played games on the wii sports until bedtime. I'm very impressed with the wii console and it was nice to be ahead of my sons in the technology game. There is a lot to learn and fun to be had through this type of exercising.

Friday saw the departure of Mother and Graham and the arrival of Bert and the departure of Gareth - all in one day. Bert has since been busy building a semi-circle of bricks around the tree in the front garden which integrates the lilac tree into the overal scheme and I'll post a picture when all the bags and bricks have been moved out. He is now block bricking up the side of the house to tidy up the walkway. I also have a carpenter here putting in a new back door which will be such a relief!!! The old one was almost off it's hinges and squeeking every time I opened it. I couldn't use the handle and had to bolt it to keep it shut. I'll soon have a nice new white door with a proper dog flap and glass panel to see if anyone is outside before I open the door.

This week I have been making 3 waistcoats and 2 bow ties for customers. They seem to like my new style of dress waistcoat and I took 2 orders for it on Thursday. As today is Wednesday I'll be back there tomorrow to see what I can sell again.

As you can see it has been a hectic week, but I've enjoyed it immensely.