Mousehole Continued and Other Stuff

Well, it didn't take me three weeks to get rid of the cold that I brought back from Cornwall but I have been fairly busy, mostly with finishing off some old projects and thinking about new ones.

First of all a few photos connected with Mousehole.

 I was lucky enough to receive one of Carolyn's beautiful hearts all in its Christmas colours and with its own version of the Mousehole Harbour lights.

Carolyn inspired me to experiment with a low angle shot in the Rock Pool Cafe at Mousehole.

 And more experimenting with close ups of surfaces of ornaments in the apartment.

I did have several sessions of printing with the Gelli plate (all of 5"x3")

I was really happy with this one.  The circles were made with an Acrylic Marker pen.  No, I hadn't heard of them either but having tried them out I love them!  You can even draw on the Gelli plate with them and then lift it off.  Hmmmm.  I've just thought.  You must be thinking, what is the point of that?  You may as well just draw on the print.  Ermm, yes, I think you're probably right.  Doh!  Anyway, it was fun playing.  The best bit was using feathers I had found on the seashore as resists on the plate and then printing onto a background from the feather.  The marks are beautiful. 

The prints were all made using deli-paper which came with the plate (I ordered my baby plate from Hilary Beattie).  It is a very lightweight paper and takes the paint beautifully from the plate.  I used some home made stamps, corks, bubble wrap, feathers, some wierd plasticy stuff that made wonderful organic marks, freezer paper resists and generally anything I could find to make interesting marks on the plate.  I cut out some little fish shapes from the freezer paper and had fun with both the positive and negative (resist) prints from them.  You can just see a fish's tail in the detail shot above.

So, since we've been home I've made a mug tote, to carry my mug to and from our Sit & Stitch day.

The pattern was really easy and it made up in a flash. (Sorry, the link isn't working well.  Maybe it's a temporary hiccup)

A long time ago I took part in Kate North's 'Another Little Quilt Swap' and received a quilt made by my pal Tina.  The quilt was A4 size and I love it but it has languished in a drawer (sorry Tina) so I thought it was time I did something with it.

I've turned it into a cover for my sketchbook.  I had to improvise to get it to fit the book and combined it with a sample from a Hilary Beattie workshop that had also languished.  At least now I can enjoy the artwork every time I use my sketchbook and I can move it on to every new sketchbook too.

The images aren't the best as I used flash, sorry about that.

Finally, yesterday I spent nearly 3 hours sorting out one of my boxes of scraps.  Boy!  Who knew it could take so long?  A friend is going to inherit the useable small pieces and the larger pieces have gone back into the box for making some scrap quilts. 

I've still got another box to go and then I need to start on the whole room!  Or maybe not! :-)