Gifts from Friends

My arty friends have been busy again. 

Helen made me a wall organiser with lovely background fabric and appliqued houses. My plan was to hang it near to my sewing machine but I've no available wall space so it is hanging in my studio and I'm gradually filling the pockets.

Gill did an excellent job of decorating a pre-used box. She used paint and decoupaged bird and nature images. This has also found a home in my studio.

Tablet Art

Drawings done on my Samsung tablet. 

I used 'autodesk sketchbook pro' for the top one and charcoal in 'corel painter mobile' for the one below. 

Blackwork

I thought these simple blackwork scenes would make nice decoration for cards.

Spring Flower Collage

A Sketchbook Collage

The houses with numbers were cut from an old magazine, an embroidery pattern - the numbers indicate what colour to sew with. I just coloured it in with aquamarkers. I drew the vases of flowers on top with a liner pen. The background was coloured with brusho.

New Fabrics

More of my 8" fabric swatches from Spoonflower. In the past I have used postcards and vintage papers for collage and I thought it would be nice to have them on fabric for applique. Use bondaweb or wonder under, cut them out and iron them where required. They could be written on or stitched on. Since getting the swatch I have altered it, I'd designed it for a 8" swatch but I decided it would be more economical as a fat quarter so the lined and squared papers are wider than shown above.

I love how this blue swatch has printed, the colours in it look really nice. The starting point for this one was a brown faux snakeskin bag.

This one was a collage in a sketchbook.

Click on the images for a closer look and if you wish to purchase fabric it is available at Spoonflower.

The remaining Fabric Swatches

8" fabric swatches - my designs

available to purchase from Spoonflower

Bear on a Bike Post Card

Post Card Art - digital collage.

The bear was from the Graphics Fairy

The post card is from my collection

The house picture is part of one of my works

The bike - oops forgot

Eight more Fabrics.

 I used the doodle trees on three different fabrics

This one is a repeating pattern, a variation of one I did for a t-shirt top

I've got the original picture hanging up in my kitchen that inspired this design. It is a collage with stitching.

See the original here

I really liked how this one came out. It was originally a doodle in my sketchbook.

I used images from the Graphics Fairy and ephemera from thelandofnod for this one.

This one is quite an old one but I reduced the repeat size. The original art was a vase of lily's and a freehand machine embroidered queen of hearts.

A photo of a rose [one of mine] with the leaves from the graphics fairy on a background of vintage stationary.[some of it was the back of a photo]

I had this one printed on the first batch of swatches but I thought the repeat was too big so I reduced it in size. I probably should have left it at that size, it would have been right for curtains and soft furnishings.

Mixed Media Houses

 Houses [pen liner and promarkers] on a textured page, painted with watercolours

Pages from Sketchbook 26

Watercolours, wax crayon, water soluble crayons

I used old anniversary cards for the collage on this one.

I can't remember what I made the marks with around the edges on this one, but I hope it comes to me because I quite like it. The image in the centre was from a magazine.

watercolour, water soluble crayons, biro, liquid liner

watercolour and pen

watercolour, pen & water soluble crayon - I drew around some wooden letters [made by a friend]

watercolour, pen - I used the letter E

the texture was made with a glue stick and magazine print

watercolour, pens

Blue

Take a word - the challenge word this week is blue. I made my digital collage from pictures of my handmade rolling stamp samples.

I also altered this photo which was taken a few years ago in Spain. The original picture is below too.

click on the images to enlarge

Last pages from Sketchbook 16

It's a funny old day today, it seems to be cold one minute and hot the next. This morning I was sat outside drinking coffee, this afternoon I was picking hail stones off the bed! They had blown in through the open window while we were having a windy deluge and thunder and lightning. It is sunny again now.

I added texture to the pages by transferring parts of a newspaper supplement page with a glue stick, by pulling it off before it is stuck properly. This leaves a trace of the page which I painted over with watercolours. I used a pen to draw on the houses and trees.

Wax crayons, watercolours, pen text and found images

textured page, watercolours, and pen drawing

textured page, watercolours, found images outlined with pen 

textured page, watercolours, pen drawing, found images