Allsorts

If I have to define my preferences I would say I am usually drawn to vivid colours but at the moment I seem to be equally attracted to pastel shades, especially when it comes to fabrics and lace. The photo above is of a whole pile of beautiful shabby chic vintage and recycled fabrics and bits and pieces I bought on Etsy from Whimsie Dots. Don't they just look beautiful together? They make me think of this beautiful blog. Mandy's packaging is so sweet - all the buttons and small bits came in little fabric pouches and the small box while the fabric pieces came in the beautiful cutwork, ribbon-tied bags. I think I will have to leave the whole lot out as a still life in my sewing room for a while!

These are scenes in my backyard (virtually nothing was visible beyond the fence) and out on the front verge (looking in both directions) at 7:40 yesterday morning. There was 97% humidity - very cold and very misty and I am sure if I had stuck my head outside the house earlier, the mist would have even been heavier. Not quite what you imagine winter to be like on the edge of an inland Australian desert (or at least, not what I expected before I moved here 14 years ago next month).


These next two pictures are for family entertainment - Zach before his haircut just a few weeks ago and then posing for me after Wednesday's haircut. He looks like a different person really and there were noticeable sighs of relief from both Joseph and myself (typical parental behaviour I suppose) when he announced his intentions to "go short" again! We had given up on nagging as that just seemed to entrench his 16 year old desire for hair/independence/free choice!

In amongst other things yesterday I worked on the start of a fibre postcard on the embellisher. The wool fibres are from The Thread Studio and are just beautiful - I love the vibrancy and the lovely feathery effects. The scan below is of the postcard "in progress". I will have to add some beads - I am on a bit of a beading kick at the moment but I am not sure what else I will do with it.

This one (if it works out) will be for Jaslyn, seeing she is largely responsible for the embellisher purchase in the first place, but if anyone wants to do an embellisher based ATC or postcard trade with me let me know as I can see I am going to be doing a lot of these. I have just added my email address to my profile so you can contact me direct if you don't want to do it via a comment.

Today I was planning on making some more fabric paper a la Beryl Taylor and painting my new supply of Lutradur (which it seems I have been spelling wrong all this time) but it is pretty cold outside here today so that may be delayed until tomorrow. I like to do this sort of work outside because I am so messy but I don't want to make my cold any worse, seeing I go back to work on Monday. The Lutradur is also from Dale at The Thread Studio and this time I have bought the medium and the heavy weight versions so I can see what I think of the medium weight one.

And now to finish off, I have been honoured by Jen nominating me as an Inspirational Blogger. I find her to be an incredible inspiration on many levels so it means a lot that she finds my blog inspiring. Last time I piked on nominating five inspirational blogs as I find it so hard to pick and choose, especially when there are so many fantastic blogs out there, including many that I read, some spasmodically and others regularly. So, here are my nominations and I should note that I haven't checked whether they have already been nominated. I have selected a mix of paper, mixed media and fibre artists, some of whom I have not met and who don't know I read their blogs as I am sometimes pretty slack about leaving comments. Check them out if you haven't been there before - they are all very inspiring:

Susan Lenz (love her embellisher work as well as everything else)

Dale Rollerson (Queen of Embellisher, Thread, Fibre & Stitch)

Jacqueline de Jong (my incredibly productive friend in the Netherlands)

Deb Lewis (all sorts of lovely photos and artwork)

Karen Stiehl Osborn (again beautiful photos and wonderful collages)