What if? and webs

Remember this?

I didn't do a lot on holiday but I did do this

(excuse the colour change, I've tweaked it a bit). Hopefully the photo will enlarge enough for you to see what I have done with this crazy patch so far. My DH thinks it is finished but I feel it needs a little more stitchwork on it. So far I have ironed it onto vilene and I am going to couch yarns around the edge, echoing the colours I have used, to finish it off as I didn't leave enough to turn an edge (Duh!).

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I've been a bit quiet as you may have noticed since we came home. The usual routine and catching up on the net has been the cause and I've also been feeling a bit low. Nothing I can put my finger on and I'm sure it'll pass.

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My mood was lifted this morning though when I went to my art club. I don't normally like spiders, although I won't kill one if I can help it, but I do like to see cobwebs strung along a hedge glistening with dew.

This is just part of a hedge which as you can see was smothered in webs which were sparkling as the sun was breaking through the mist. Beautiful!

Outside my comfort zone - again

You know how you coast around from blog to blog and suddenly see an idea that inspires you? The trick is remembering where you saw the idea so you can, (a) go back to it later and (b) give credit for where you took your inspiration from. On Friday at my art group I had a play with a narrow canvas and ended up with the textured surface you can see below. I had previously prepared the canvas with various textured layers, cobweb, tissue, torn doily, torn handmade paper, sand and acrylic flakes.

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I'm still trying to decide whether it needs tweaking a little. I started out thinking it was going to be based on a seascape but my dear friend challenged me to use colours outside my comfort zone hence the red and gold theme!

Getting back to the "where did I see that?" theme, I had a lot of paint left over from the canvas and didn't want to waste it. In the last few days I had seen a blog where someone (oh dear, I've forgotten who!) had made some monoprints using plant material from the garden, so I thought I would use the leftover paint in the same way. I used a little thickening medium to give the paint more of a printing ink quality.

I forgot to take a photo of the plate before I took any prints so this is the plate after the prints were taken. I had included strawberry leaves, grass stalks and grape hyacinth seed heads and sprinkled grass seeds over the surface.

I placed a piece of dampened cotton on top of the plate (plastic sheet) and gently smoothed the fabric down onto the paint. Some of the paint did seep through to the reverse of the fabric so once I felt it had soaked up enough colour I slowly pealed the fabric back to reveal the image above.

This is the second print from the plate, not quite as strong as the first.

The next step was to lift off the plant material as I wanted to see what marks were left behind.

I really like this print which came off the partially cleared plate.

Because I had still got gold paint on the palette I set another print block up and took another print. I used the grape hyacinth seed heads again and as they had retained some of the red paint a hint of red crept in which I really like.

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I am seriously thinking that I will paint the fabric, particulary the red versions, with a loose green wash to offset the red. What do you think?

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By the way, if you recognise this process from your own recent blog please accept my apologies and also leave me a comment. Many thanks.

Cobwebs again

Yesterday I set up another experiment with the cobweb fibre this time with lutradur. I taped down samples of 4 different weights of lutradur (as I couldn't get drawing pins into my board - wimp!) and then stretched a small amount of cobweb across the board and pulled it underneath so that it was held taut.

Once the cobweb was spread out I sprayed it all with water and allowed that to soak in for a few minutes. I then dripped silk paints over the surface and tilted the board to allow the colour to blend all over. I did give one or two areas a spray of water where the colour was lying too dense.

You may be able to see that I laid one or two other fibres on the surface to soak up some of the colour and to see if this had any effect on the underlying surface - on this occasion it didn't. I resolutely left the board alone until today when I pulled the cobweb away to see what had happened both to the lutradur and the paper underneath.

There are some interesting effects on the paper which I will use in a future project. The colours have dried light and delicate.

As you can see, the light weight lutradur took up less of the colour. The cobweb has had a mild effect on the lutradur, probably as it is already a fibrous material. I will have to try this with other materials like tissue and calico.

My fabric paper is coming along. I have applied two coats of watered down pva glue to protect the surface and have also rubbed in some copper Treasure Gold.

The blue material is the lining for the book cover I am hoping to make this into. Unfortunately, I don't think I am going to be able to hand sew through all the layers so I am going to see if I can get any iron on binding or ribbon to finish the edge. If not I may have to re-think the tabs that will hold the book in place. All this sewing and making things is new to me.....I haven't a clue what I'm doing half the time but that's half the fun!

You may remember I mentioned a natural materials swap I am doing. I couldn't decide which of the cards I had made to put into the swap so I made another card yesterday from needle felted wool. I didn't use any backing material to support it so it's a little bit loose but I quite like it. I shall have to learn some more stitches for finishing edges, the blanket stitch looks a bit ragged, again.

These are the cards that my DH said he preferred so they are going in the post tomorrow.