St Ives again and Erosion Bundles

You don't need to panic, I'm not going to post yet more pictures to turn you green with Cornish envy ;-)  At the last minute before Christmas I decided that I should make my good friend a St Ives based wall hanging, partly because she is a very special friend and partly because she is about to move away from just around the corner to the other side of the Pennines.  Why is it we always have these good ideas at the very last minute when we have had weeks or months to think of it?  Must be the creative mind (that's my excuse anyway).

Despite the pressures of working at full tilt and fighting with my machine I managed to complete my self imposed challenge.

You have probably seen a smaller version of this before in a workshop I did with Gina Ferrari down at Art & Stitch some time ago but this piece is about A3 size.  I used many of the processes we used with Gina to make the various textures in this piece and I'm happy to say my friend was delighted with it.  She has it hanging above her bed.  You can read more about the process from the original workshop here.

While we were down in St Ives we met up with the very lovely and talented Carolyn Saxby for a lunch of toasted cheese crumpets (my DH's speciality when in St Ives) and cream cakes supplied very naughtily by Carolyn.  Carolyn and I always like to have a beach ramble when we get together but this time our ramble was cut very short by a great deal of liquid sunshine, otherwise known as pouring rain.  As a result we decided to meet up another day and have a look round some galleries and try for another beachcomb.  In the event it was too cold for a beachcomb and the light was fading by the time we left the Millenium Gallery (sadly their website seems to be down at the moment) but we did agree to start a joint project with the items we had collected previously.

A couple of years ago we both took part in the Erosion Bundle project run by Seth Apter and Carolyn made another Erosion Bundle last year which she opened when we were in St Ives in April.  This year as there is no longer an official Erosion Bundle Project (last year's was run from this blog) Carolyn and I are making our own bundles and opening them on 1 April.  I prepared part of the bundle while I was in St Ives using seaweed and various papers and since I've been home I'veadded to it and made 3 more.

I've used an assortment of papers including failed computer printouts,

fabrics of all types and paper marked with watersoluble wax crayons,

photographs, rusty nails, cutoffs including hand made papers from old projects and various painted papers and fabrics.

All 4 bundles are now sitting in various positions in the garden with great hopes for their disintegration over the coming months but hopefully not for too many creepy crawlies!  Since I've made the bundles I've thought of lots more things I could have put in them so there could well be another one going out there soon.  At least they won't need weeding!  Or maybe they will!