Clay Play

My friends and I had a clay play day the other week and this is what I made. It was air dry type clay and I painted my creations afterwards. I tried different kinds of paints such as watercolours and acrylics. In my mind I wanted to create a lovely dolls head or something like that....guess I've got a long way to go!

I pressed some little wooden butterflies and flowers into the clay to make the marks and included holes so that I can sew them onto something eventually.

Three pages from my sketchbook

Brusho inks. The strips of striped paper - this was paper I used to protect the next page in my sketchbook for quite a few pages, hence all the colours. The flowers are real.

Brusho and a small doyley.

Envelopes made from recycled envelopes, the envelopes have envelopes as decoration.

These are the last pages of book 36.

Mediterranean Bells

The flowers are called Nectaroscordum Siculum (clever eh? remembering that! actually I can't even say it never mind remember it) or Mediterranean Bells although the colours are not really quite as bright as that on the real flowers. If you look closely at the scraps of collaged paper you will notice the pattern is made up of tiny little envelopes, this is the inside of a recycled envelope.

I also used Brusho inks, liner pen, labels and inktense pencils.

Seeds

Two pages from my sketchbook. Brusho inks, aquamarkers, ticket

TAST 128

Take a stitch Tuesday - Interlaced Up and Down Buttonhole stitch.

It's an easy stitch to do, however I forgot to do the interlacing on the top row apart from the first stitch so I've stitched on beads where the interlacing should have been.

The bottom row I did almost correctly and included beads just for decoration.

Buzzing

Inktense pencils

Hare Patchwork

Last week my friends and I had a play day with fabric scraps. Helen keeps all her off cuts which have already been backed with bondaweb, which makes it very easy to make patchwork. After ironing in place on a piece of fabric I sewed all around each block with running stitch.

I took the bottom two photos with my tablet, I wanted to compare with the camera photos above.

Beetles Swatch

My beetles fabric swatch printed on eco canvas.

Fabric available at Spoonflower 

WIP Doll and Painted Fabric

WIP - Doll. I used stitching to make shapes on her face such as her nose although it came out a little lopsided. I then painted her face with inktense pencils and aquamarkers. The red thing surrounding her is not a hoody, it was a pocket on my sewing machine cover which I used to keep her upright.

I found an old piece of painted fabric which I started to embellish.

One of the stitches I used was TAST 110, rope stitch.

 See more stitches on Take a stitch Tuesday

Ship Flowers

The anchors are the paper rings [what do you call them?] from anchor threads.

Plant Collage and SC20

A collage from a sketchbook.

and the final prompt for the spoonchallenge - selfie [not a good likeness]

The spoonchallenge was a 30 day drawing challenge, although we only got 20 prompts...weekends free.

Spoonchallenge 18, 19

prompt 18 - map legend

prompt 19 - landmark

The angel of the North

Spoonchallenge 16 and 17

Prompt 17 - taxi

prompt 16 - skyline [collage using recycled envelopes which have patterns inside]

Tast 126, 127 and Handmade Stamps

Take a stitch Tuesday 

Tast 126 - Alternating up and down buttonhole stitch

Tast 127 - Beaded alternating up and down buttonhole stitch

Stitched on handmade paper which is orange do you believe? I took the photo in a different room to the one I normally use but it is the same paper as I used for the last Tast stitches I've shown.

Handmade stamps from junk.

I used a used nail buffer like the one on the left and some corrugated card as shown to make a stamp. I just used double sided sticky tape to cover all the sides with the card, then painted them with acrylic paint which was quite messy as I painted all the sides while the paint was still wet.

The grooves face a different way on each side.

It looks a lot better once I painted over it with inks.

For the second stamp I used an old key which I glued to an old thread reel.

Butterfly

Paper strip, white sticker, inktense pencils, aquamarkers, and a real flower.

Green Bib and Cloth Doll

Another crazy patchwork bib, this one for friend Gill's new grandson. Made with vintage fabrics... one of them I used was leftover from a pram quilt I made my daughter when she was a baby, she's 35 now. What do you think about green for a boy, a change from the usual blue or just not right?

Yesterday we had a fun day at Gill's making cloth dolls, or starting a cloth doll. Gill has made some wonderful dolls so she was sharing her knowledge. This is what I've made so far, a basic head and hands.

SpoonChallenge 11 and 12

Prompt 11 - platypus

Prompt 12 - hedgehog

TAST 122, 123 , 125

Take a stitch Tuesday

122 - chained bar used as couching on a strip of tweed.

123 - woven chained bar also running stitch - at the time of doing them I didn't think I was doing them very well so I only did two....but they don't look too bad.

124 - beaded herringbone over ribbon - I found a bit tricky to start with, would probably be easier on an evenweave fabric.

I've used handmade paper as a background on all three pieces.

Tast 119, 124

Take a stitch Tuesday 

Tast 119 - woven trellis stitch with bead in centre stitched on handmade paper.

Tast 124 - closed herringbone stitch, running stitch, scraps of coat fabric stitched on handmade paper. I applied the fabric scraps to help me keep a neat line.

Go to Pintangle to see a neat version

SC 7,8

Spoon challenge 7 - Book

Spoon Challenge 8 - Arrow

Tast and SC4,5

Hand printed leaves on fabric, chiffon layers, embroidery and beads.

The stitches on the left include variations of beaded buttonhole stitch (tast 118), beaded feathered chain stitch (tast 113), beaded fly stitch, running stitch.....the one that looks like a caterpillar is beaded vandyke stitch (tast 116). 

On the right is beaded fly stitch and feather stitch to which I applied the beads afterwards.

If you want to learn to embroider or learn some new stitches join in the tast challenge. 

Take a stitch Tuesday.

Below are two quick drawings for the 30 day drawing spoonchallenge

prompt 4 - river

prompt 5 - lemon [incorporating hand lettering]