Green Woman

I am still avoiding going into my studio so more photos today. I love the way that moss has grown on this garden ornament, what wonderful hair. And if you click on the other pic and zoom in, there is a bust of a man hiding in the virginia creeper, I wonder how much work it takes to keep this wall looking like this.

Both pics were taken at Belton House near Grantham in Lincolnshire.

St Denys Church Door

I was fed up today so went for a walk with my camera. The doors of St Denys church in Sleaford have amazing ironwork.

Eraser stamps

Rubber erasers from Woolworths turned into stamps. (74p for 6 in the back to school dept). I used solvent to transfer the photocopied design onto the rubber, cut it out then stamped onto a second to get the mirror image. I need more practice at cutting the rubber, but these will be stamped onto fabric so the rough bits won't show.

Duck part two

I was aimlessly playing around with the duck photo in PaintShopPro8, using the effects menu and the negative setting in the adjust menu. No idea what steps I went though to get to this pattern, possibly 30 stages. I think it definately has possibilities though, would easily turn into a textile piece.

Poo

Some little blighter has pooped on my catalogue.

Finding your own visual language

It seems like a lifetime ago since I completed my city and guilds and I thought it was time to go back to doing some designwork of my own. To give myself a kick-start, I bought a copy of 'Finding your own visual language' written by Leslie Morgan, Claire Benn and Jane Dunnewold. This is a great book because it takes you through exercises which will develop your own style, rather than follow step by step instructions to do a project. I have done the first exercise, it was a lovely way to spend a couple of hours just playing with a piece of paper.

Diane, aka Yarngoddess is going to be working her way through the book too and we hope to share ideas and experiences. if anyone else has a copy of the book and would like to share ideas and progress please let one of us know.

Pics from my first exercise are here http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmaemmeline/sets/72157607345036487/

Ducking but not diving

I like ducks, they have such happy smiley faces. This one would not let me take a picture of his face though. As I walked around him trying to take a pic from another angle, he turned too. Either shy or proud of his plumage.

On the Waterfront

Our embroidery group have a bi-anual challenge, the pieces then form part of our exhibition. This time we were given a wooden frame, a piece of canvas and instructions to make a piece measuring 14"x6", we were asked to use the bottom 4 1/2 inches for the water and the top 4 inches for sky so that the panels could be mounted together. No restrictions on technique.

I decided to use my embellisher to make the background. I used a base of polyester felt and mushed wool fibres, all sorts of nep and stuff into it. I did intend to stitch into this, and there is some stitching , but in the end I decided that I liked it the way it was. I painted the piece of canvas to match my landscape, mushed the felt onto it and then sort of 'gallery wrapped' the wooden frame with it.

There are 24 panels on display. Pics on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmaemmeline/sets/72157607115386175/

The atc's I have been making lately

The atc's I made are now part of this group. I hasten to own up that I didn't make all of these, I just encouraged other members of the group to make a few each. I did paint the craft vilene which we used as a base. There are 188 atc's here, don't they look smashing?

Textile Exhibition at the Hub Sleaford

If you are in our locality, please come and see the textile exhibition. There is a lot of work to view, some of it is absolutely stunning, and includes 24 panels from our group challenge "On the Waterfront".

From the 5th to 7th there will also be threads and things for sale.