Handmade Christmas Presents

I went out with some of my 'creative' friends last night and we exchanged gifts - handmade gifts of course. These are the goodies I got.

A knitted mug warmer with mug and decoration including hand made heart and embroidered button.  Also a chick and tag and cookie.

A handmade book with pockets for keeping bits and bobs.

A felted, layered Christmas tree

and a cute bone china brooch with a reindeer stamped on it

Lucky girl eh?

I'll show you what I gave tomorrow.

Sink [IF] and Rolling Stamps 76,77

I have two offerings for the Illustration Friday challenge - sink.

Above - I think cup boats would sink

Below - Be careful, he may sink those teeth into you

Two more rolling stamps, both of them are textured wallpaper

Gel Printing Plate

Remember last month I said I'd won a prize on the Sketchbook Challenge, well it came a couple of days ago. It is a 'Gelli Arts' gel printing plate - basically you put paint onto the jellylike surface and then create patterns by pressing objects into the paint or drawing on it with a stick or something. You then put the paper on the top, gently rub and pull the paper off. I thought I would have a quick play with it but ended up doing 35 pages, just with items I'd found to hand such as bubble wrap. The green paper was made with a hand whisk which is one of my favourites I use in batik. I like the plate and will find it a very useful tool and it will be excellent for making background papers or papers for collage. Since doing the above I wondered whether it would also be useful for fabric - I've had a quick try and I'm impressed with my first efforts. I've not taken photos of those yet but will soon.

Odd Bod [TM]

Odd Bod in the Land of Odd

for the Three Muses challenge - click here to see more entries

One of my drawings on one of my photos [altered of course]

Tis the Season [TM] and C&G Books/Quilts

Take your pick - I did two for The Three Muses challenge - Tis the season

Below is some old City & Guilds work. The top two images are books, for the top one I painted on fabric and covered a big file, the lower one is a handmade book.

The two images at the bottom are little quilts made with hand painted fabrics. All four items were inspired by tigers.

Rolling Stamps [72-75], Sketchbook Pages

The green marks above were made with a rolling stamp [no 83], which I then outlined in pen and colured the rest of the page with brush pens.

I've posted a couple of pages from book 15 but this is the first page.

Rolling stamps 72 to 75

The first two are from different parts of the same wallpaper

The bottom two are parts of the same wallpaper too, but the top roller is made from two torn areas of wallpaper.

Leafy and Flowery Doodles

Faces and Chair

it doesn't look very safe to sit on, does it?

Separated [IF] and Shape Art

The Illustration Friday challenge is 'separated'

These are separated by an arm's length.

A double challenge as I used a coaster as a shape challenge.

More shape challenges below...

A wheel like shape and triangular shape. I used a rolling stamp for the background.

This one looks like the letter J but was in fact a plastic hook from something I was throwing out.

This shape reminded me of a door, it was a piece of cardboard with a hole in, but I can't remember what it was from.

More Sketchbook Doodles and Texture Plate

More doodles from sketchbook 14

The two above were drawn with pens and brush pens, for the one below I used paints as well. I also used a wallpaper texture plate to print to start with. [blue paint]

To make a texture plate simply glue a piece of textured wallpaper to board as shown below. Apply paint and then put your paper on top and press down with a roller to transfer the design. 

This is a print from the texture plate

The Other Side

Today I've chosen two pages from sketchbook 14 and the other sides of these pages to show the bleed thru. I think the backsides are probably more interesting than the 'proper' side. I used promarkers.

Numbers [TAW] and Rolling Stamps 68-71

The Take a Word challenge this week is 'Numbers'.

The numbers I drew in a sketchbook individually, the background was created with a rolling stamp and paint. Then the numbers and background were digitally joined together and altered.

Click the image to enlarge.

The top two rolling stamps were made from fun foam, etched with something sharp, and the lower two are textured wallpapers.

See my article in Cloth Paper Scissors about making rolling stamps, free download here