Pastel Fabric Book

I've finished another book, this one is all fabric and all hand stitched. I have used mainly pastel colours, hence the name.

Dyed, painted and stamped fabrics with dyed laces. I've made straps from the lace and they fasten with buttons. Button trim bottom and top as well. Experimental book binding, i.e. make it up as I go along.

The back of the book

I will show the inner pages another day, I didn't like the photos as there was something distracting in the background.

Victorian Inspired Silhouettes

I thought I would join the challenge at Inspiration Avenue - a Kodak Moment.

[My challenge to you is to create an artistic piece that captures your idea of a "Kodak Moment."]

What came to mind was early Victorian photography and the silhouettes they used to do. I've altered photos taken from the side and put them in frames from the Graphics Fairy. The butterflies background was also from there too.

The Caterpillar and Painted Pages

I've had one of my little doodles [created on my Samsung tablet] published in this magazine for kids. It is a shark in a goldfish bowl and it is a big doodle now!

More about the magazine here

I bought some vintage books a while ago and was cutting bits out and using them for collage but I thought I would paint some of the pages first. They look better in real life than in the photos. The markings were made with hand made stamps.

Trees

Made up trees above and the tree below is my version of a Dragon Blood tree, the flowers are my creations.

Created on a tablet.

Girls About

Mixed media digital art - two girls on their holidays, the one above is in Majorca and the one below is in Rye, Sussex. Worked on a tablet. The designs on their clothes may eventually be fabric.

TAST 77 and 78

Take a Stitch Tuesday - week 78, Cloud filling stitch.

My version consists of cloud stitch over cloud stitch in different coloured threads and I've used it as a couching stitch to hold the dyed laces and pink gingham in place. For neatness the stitch is best worked on an evenweave fabric, hence mine is not so neat. If you want to see details about the challenge go here and maybe try it out, it is an easy stitch to do. The background fabric is actually pink, and vintage, it is thin but I think it always was and it has not gone like that with age.

I also did this stitch for TAST 2010, see here

TAST 77 - I have an old sample for woven cross stitch here

If you don't like spiders look away now, I saw both of these beauties today. Click on the pictures if you want a closer look.

Two pictures

One mixed media collage from a sketchbook above.

Brusho, found images from a vintage book, aquamarkers.

And one digital collage created on a tablet. I used the brushes in the sketchbook pro app for the backgrounds, but the patterns on the clothes were my worked my me, altered photos, you can tell his top was originally knitting.

Dyed lace arrangement

Dyed lace, tyvek, embroidery and beads on a transfer printed background [blobs & splatters]. Bits of lace were cut out and stitched to the background.

The hydrangeas in my garden are flowering now, though not a lot, the plants are mostly leaves.

Birds on Leaves

Created on a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 with sketchbook pro

Marsden Rocks

My daughter was visiting today and so we had a little trip to Marsden Rocks near South Shields. The weather was gorgeous and the sea looked very blue, unusually as it most often looks grey.

This sea stack used to be a lot bigger, there used to be an arch joining another stack. It partly collapsed in 1996 and the rest was demolished as it was classed as unsafe.

This sea stack is called Lot's Wife.

We spotted this isopod on the beach, I think it may be a eurydice pulchra

[the internet is a wonderful thing]

Floral and Doodle

Two floral arrangements done on the tablet

and a doodle from a 'real' sketchbook. The white lettering was achieved by transferring letraset letters onto the page then removing them after painting, so they acted like a resist.

Garden and Sketchbook Pages

This lovely geranium is in a hanging basket in my garden

I like the birdhouse peaking through the shrubs.

I used some old letraset decorative tape first, then Caron Dache Neocolour crayons. Bits from a blue doyley were stuck on, then the plants were drawn with a chinagraph pencil and then markers.

More of the letraset, alphabet letters this time. The letraset does not always transfer properly because it is old. I used the crayons again, brusho and metallic oil pastel.

Digital Ladies

Digital creations done on a tablet. The dress was art created in a regular sketchbook and the face and background created from scratch on the tablet.

In sketchbook pro I used a pen and the mirror tool for the face above, both sides of the face are the same whereas I used a pen without the mirror tool for the face below and the features are uneven [probably more realistic though rather wonky in this case]

The background was from a sketchbook, the dress [looks like a curtain!] started as artwork and was altered on the tablet. The face created from scratch on the tablet.

WIP

Ideas for a small A4 landscape art quilt

Embroidery/Mixed Media/New Camera

Trying out a couple of close ups with my new camera on an embroidered picture on the wall.

And a page from my sketchbook - I collaged scraps from a gardening book, used brusho inks to paint over, drew the tree with neocolour crayons and a posca pen for the red details