More cards

Here is the lovely textile card my friend Sue made for me, we both share our birthday.


SuZ of SuZ Stuff~~~~~~~a journey from point A to point B~~~~~ sent me this beautifully presented charm attached to this textured postcard.


After a very stormy day this was the sunset earlier and later it became even more beautiful.

SerenTex Meeting

Here is a little taster of the work on SerenTex this week.



Here is a great philosophy on life here on This and that...my random thoughts: Thought Provoking!!!.
This was recommended by Neki Desu of A Movable Feast>

This has been a near perfect birthday so far and the only thing that could make it even better would be if my grandson or granddaughter who is already late, decided to be born today and share my birthday with me.

More surprises

I'm sorry if you visited my blog yesterday and were unable to see some of the images, there seems to have been a problem with Blogger. I have re-entered all the images and they seem to be visible now.


Here is the page that Terri made for me. Isn't it absolutely fantastic? We are both taking part in a swap with the FAF group. Terri's blog
is well worth a visit. It's called StegArt



Terri call my page 'The Girls'. I asked for a page using red, orange and yellow with a black background. The topic was 'Curves', because I love curves. This is a wonderful interpretation of the topic. We were both rather worried as the parcel took rather long to comr over from the USA, but it was well worth the wait. Thank you Terri.


I have had lots of gifts, but as you can imagine this was one of the favourites.

A busy day

This week's inaminuteago - the blog » Take a Stitch Tuesday Week 8 challenge is fairly small about 5"x4". I used a piece of black felt with added fibres and a flower shape using the embellisher.


I thought my third attempt at melting felt was going to be a real disaster, but with a little bit of persuading I managed to save it, but I think Tortured Felt is much more approriate in this case. At one stage I was very satisfied with it. It has 3 layers of felt in mauve and orange with black on the top. Using zig-zag and purple quilting cotton I stitched a border all round and then stiched again to divide into six parts. Then a triple stich design inside each part. Using a small pair of scissors I cut a cross in the two top layers, the orange and black in most of the spaces of the design and used the heat gun on these splits which opened up the cut edges nicely, but also burnt through to the mauve layer, which i had not wanted. Next time I do this I will layer the felt on some cotton material which will not burn as easily. This time I added an extra layer of orange at the back which worked well.
It was finished by brushing some Treasure Gold in copper on all the hardened
edges. This is going top be a birthday card for a friend and I hope she does not see it here first.


Yesterday I went on a course to do some transfer printing and this one used the messy paper painted using the dredges from the bottom of the pots. One sheet covered the whole piece. The iron was very hot and you can see some places where it was a little too hot, but I will use some black muslin or net over it and that will hide the blemishes and tone it down a little. I placed a craft ribbon piece under the painted sheet, which left a white design here and there and also gave me a beautifully coloured ribbon.


This is another rescued piece of fabric. I transfer painted a design on this polyester which I did not like, then used some of the papers I painted yesterday to build up lots of colour, which still showed the original design and I'm now quite happy with the piece.

Mark making

I would like to thank everyone for the encouraging comments recently as I am never going to be able to reply to everyone personally this time. But I assure you they are very much appreciated.




This is some of the work I did today , unfortunately the colours will change completely when I transfer them to fabric as it's Transfer Paint that was used.



This is my normal style of quick sketching using an ink pen. I am trying to loosen up a bit. I do need to practice as I have not done much sketching in years.

Orchids

The Treborth Botanical Gardens. This is where our Transfer Painting course was held today, amongst the beautiful orchids seen here. You can see Doris working surrounded by some of the orchids.

A birthday gift

I had the most exciting post of all this morning. Almost every day the postman has brought me lovely surprises as it's my birthday month. This morning I had a beautiful doll. I'm not sure if I should call her a doll, she's far more than a doll. She is going to be 'My Muse' and she is fantastic. The photo does not do her justice. Her head is tilted as she looks at me and Sara who made her says she's a 'Listener' Just what I need Sara, someone sensible to listen to all the wonderful thoughts I have about the things I'm going to make. I hope she's also a 'Persuader' and will persuade me to get on with it too.


This lovely birthday card was inside the parcel with 'My Muse'. Thank you Sara.


Here is another magical character created by Sara. Let me introduce him to you. This is T-bag Ted. To see what he is up to, please visit Sara's blog at Mainly Zaz

Felt melt or tortured felt?

This was my first attempt at felt melting or as some call it, tortured felt. Not usually a great one for planning ahead, this one was thought out before hand. I had an idea I wanted to try out. So I layered four pieces of cheap acrylic, craft felt and stitched the outside with cotton quilting thread, then still using the Zig-zag divide the postcard sized piece into six parts. I then used a triple machine stitch and lowered the foot pressure so I could move the work around easily and stitched a spiral in each space.
When this was done, I used the heat gun on parts of the work. I had expected all these layers to disintegrate to some extent, hoping to reveal some of the different colours here and there, but unfortunately even though they all came from the same pack they were not all equal and some layers did not melt much. So I must now test each piece of felt before I start.
I used navy for the first layer, then white, a smaller piece of lime green and then turquoise. The green did not melt well, the white did not melt at all, but did turn a nice caramel colour. Luckily, the turquoise was the top layer and that melted beautifully and had little shiny beads where it melted. these took Treasure Gold really well. A good experiment.


This time I was better prepared and tested all the felts first. None of these melted as well as the turquoise felt. I cut three pieces of two shades of orange and arranged these over a sheet of navy felt. Then covered them with the purple felt. stitched exactly as previous sample and heated with the gun. I was surprised at the outcome, the purple took on a beautiful orangey shade, which suited the other colours well. all in all a very satisfying experiment. I will be making more of these.

Mark making with grandsons

My grandsons visited today and they both love drawing. They didn't know I have to make 40 sketches by Saturday, but Huw came in with his big toy dog that we bought him for Christmas under one arm and a large sketchbook in the other. His first words to me were, "Nain, can you draw a picture of Mot please?" So here I was mark making and as you see they were both very pleased with my effort and wanted their photo taken with the dog and his sketch.



Here is Huw's photo of Mot the dog. He has written 'Dyma Mot' which is Welsh for 'Here is Mot'


Here is Ifan's drawing of my plant.

Mark Making continued

This is how the page with the gessoed net is developing and below is a detail. I must admit I am so pleased with this one. I used a roller with dark blue paint over it and the edges of the net picked up the dark colour.


These samples used a variety of papers I had already painted and were then stamped with acrylics in two shades, a dark blue and a turquoise metalic paint.



These are hand made paper I made a long time ago and have been saving for something special(as you do)



Here is the stamp I used, made using double sided tape and string. I have had such a lot of mileage from this one and believe it or not it was designed using the blue net I used for the stamping here. I will post about that net I picked up on the sea shore in Portugal when I have more time.

The Estuary

Tuesday morning sky.


Tuesday high tide.


Tuesday sunset.


Wednesday and someone has pulled the plug.


Where has all the water gone?


A spot of sun. We often find that that tiny part of Anglesey is sunny when all the rest is dull. It's the area surrounding Beaumaris and I'm sure there must be a tiny hole in the sky above it.

Mark Making

Some members of the Loose Threads group are doing a challenge of 40 sketches and they are supposed to be finished this week. I'm way behind with mine, but today I did have fun mark making in my sketchbook. These colours are not colours I would normally use, but I'm very pleased with the way they turned out. I have mixed some acrylic paint with Gesso for some of this work, using two kinds of fishing nets I found while beach combing in Portugal quite a few years ago. I have had a lot of use from these over the years and out they came again. I have been thinking of pattern over pattern for a long time and never seem to have time to play with the idea, but with this challenge I decided to have a go.



This sample uses a piece of fine fishing net that was used to print on some other pages and was soaked with paint already. I added gesso to the paint and rolled it with a roller and stuck the net down onto the paper. I haven't finished with any of these yet though and they will have some additional marks added.


Here is another sample along the same lines.


Here is the 'wet area', this is said with tongue in cheek as I don't have water up in my loft and carry every drop in a plastic bottle. All very wet stuff has to be done downstairs in the bathroom.

Another lovely Birthday Card

This morning I received another wonderful birthday card from Terri, who is also a member of the FAF group. I will not try to describe it but let the photo speak for itself. It's even better for real. Here is Terri's blog StegArt, she has some very special things you should see there.
what a lovely Birthday wish for me 'CREATE'. Thank you Terri.