Beaded motifs

I have been sick with some kind of flu or virus for the past week and have not been feeling up to doing any creative activity. I thought I would have a look back through pictures of some of the things I made in the past and came across these items. They are made using a large bead (of any size or shape) and beading around this in a free form manner. I use a needle threaded with nymo and a diffeerent stitches such as peyote, brick or just what I make up. I use a variety of smaller beads, different sizes, types or colours. Although I don't start with any particular design in mind, I do like looking at undersea photography of coral and other creatures and these two remind me of that.

Happiness

My grandaughter Louise was married on Easter Saturday. She is a truly lovely young woman and Sam is a very lucky man. I know she is equally lucky to have Sam in her life. They have our love and best wishes for a fortunate life together.

My watercolour papers

These three pictures show my own ideas of making papers. These were done by using a piece of watercolour paper. I put a water colour wash across the surface using three colours, yellow, green and purple. While it was wet I sprinkled some rock salt across the surface. While it was still wet I splashed dollops of very wet paint in the colours already used. I then let it dry and removed the salt, then stamped it and sprinkled embossing powder across the stamp and heated it with the heat gun. Finally, I put a very light and wet wash in carmine red across the surface. I really like the finished item

Wonder Under, Bondaweb, Vsieflix - Painted Paper

What do you do with the paper off the back of your Bondaweb after you have painted it and used in some really creative manner. I had piles of paper I saved all of which had paint left on it. I decided to try to make use of this and here are the results. The first picture shows the paper after I added a nappy liner coloured with Shiva Sticks and then heated so it adhered to the paper. I then stamped it and sprinkled embossing powder and heated it again. The second picture shows a pile of paper beads made from the Bondaweb paper with some embossing (done as described above) on the outside .

I am now going to give some further thought to how else this paper can be used

Paper Transformed 2

This is a photo of the artwork I made in accordance with the directions for Wax Paper Batik described in Julia Andrus's book on page 81. I really like the effect and am going to experiment more to see what I can add to this.

Paper Transformed

I recently purchased Julia Andrus's book "Paper Transformed" and have been experimenting with some of the techniques in the book. These two pictures show the technique listed on page 54. The first photo shows the technique exactly as described. Photo two shows the results after I added an acrylic paint monoprint and then rubbed Treasure Gold over the surface.

Migrants and craft in Australia

A couple of weeks back I found out that the Migrant Resource Centre in Canberra was looking for people who can help migrants to Australia to learn to speak english. I have been thinking for a while that I would like to do some volunteer work so I decided that I would go along. I have been for the last three Friday mornings and really enjoyed myself. At the moment it is not a large group but it is quite diverse. There are women from Russia, The Philippines, Brazil, Sweden, China, Poland and Macedonia.

The idea behind the group is for the women to undertake craft type activities and in the process help improve their english language skills. I really enjoy it because I am learning about the world of migrant women in Australia and all the difficulties they face adjusting to a new life. Australia is so far away from almost everywhere in the world and I can already see how hard it is for them away from their families.

From my personal point of view I am also enjoying hearing about life in other countries. I will talk more about this as I learn more. So far I have been teaching beading using a needle and thread to some of the women. Others are learning knitting and crocheting. The leader of the group, Diana, brings along all kinds of materials, wool, beads, embroidery materials and the women have a choice about what they would like to do. She also makes a beautiful morning tea, Today we had advocado dip on sour dough bread, fresh nashi pears and grapes. A veritable feast.

I feel that this is a really worthwhile activity and look forward to seeing what else I can do to help our new citizens and what I can learn from them .

I have been doing some dyeing with the cramb jar method (described in an earlier blog of mine). This time I used up some left over dyes and crappy cotton fabric I had - I am not too sure what I think of them. A couple of the smaller pieces I quite like but the orange an acqua pieces look a bit boring. I am thinking I might over dye them later to see what happens. I'll make sure to post before and after pictures shortly.

While I was out photographing the clothes line I though I would take a couple of pictures of the rest of the back yard. It is a beautiful time of the year being early autumn and as you can see the leaves are starting to fall. Maybe some inspiration can be found from these pictures.

Printing on Fabric

It has been a couple of weeks since I put anything on this blog because of family commitments although I have been able to continue doing some things in the work room. These photos are not in the correct order but they do show my experiments with printing from glass. The third photo is actually the beginning of the process. It shows some squares of silk (of various types of silk) that I dyed with procion dyes. I used three colours, a green, violet and magenta and painted the dye on. I then joined them together on the sewing machine.

The first picture shows the piece after I mixed some acrylic paint (with textile medium) onto a glass plate and then placed the fabric on top of the plate allowing the paint to form a random pattern on the silk. I then left this to dry. The second picture shows the piece after I repeated this process with second and third colours randomly placed on the glass plate and each left to dry between colours

I really like the effect on fabric but it also works really well on the papers I make and tomorrow I will show pictures of my more recent paperart works.