A Wonderful Tree

I know this will seem a bit out of the blue, but when I was in Perth two weeks ago I took a quick photo of this wonderful tree outside the offices of some people I was meeting with. The texture of the paperbark was just too incredible to ignore. As a result of some of the reading I am doing I am becoming a lot more interested in recognising that surface design inspirations can come from the images in my life and everyday environment. This was not an everyday image for me but it was certainly one I took the time to notice!

Tonight I was going to make the base of some more inchies so that I could bead and embroider them when I am at Annie's tomorrow night, but after dinner (and a wonderful Andre Rieu in Dublin DVD) we decided on the spur of the moment to go through some of Joseph's slides from New Guinea in the period 1966 to 1973. Fascinating pictures and lots of colourful inspiration. To set up the slide projector we of course had to move the metres of no-knit scarf yarns and fibres that are decorating the lounge room at present (and Mum, if you read this tomorrow, I am just teasing!).

Blog posts look so lonely without pretty pictures so tonight's artwork is of some pieces I have previously made. The first is a page I made for a friend's deco - I used a floral print tulle over the page to get the soft effect and then added beading and a hand stitched edge. The second one i s a simple journal cover I made for a young friend. I need to remind myself that I often find a simple "look" very attractive and that I need to do them more!

Mid Week Musings

Well it is Wednesday morning and I have been sitting here watching the dawn - mornings really do make you think of fresh starts and new beginnings!

My Mum arrived safe and sound yesterday afternoon and she has arrived with a mission to introduce me to the wonders of Andre Rieu and his music! We watched part of one of his DVDs last night (Mum has come equipped with six of his DVDs) and it really was rather lovely. Apart from the lovely music, he really is a performer and his passion and enjoyment really shine through. I gather (from the facts that Mum has at her disposal!) that he is very widely known but because I have an aversion to TV, radio and newspapers, I am the sort of person who mostly finds out about music when I am introduced to it. I love music but tend to have strong favourites.

Tonight is our little stamping threesome get together (which will be a foursome tonight now that Mum is here) and I was lying in bed earlier wondering what I would take to work on, given that I mostly talk at these meetings! That made me remember that I haven't put a photo on here of the lovely coffee mug fabric cuff that my friend Annie Laing made for me a few weeks ago. It is really cool.and is based on the Cloth Paper Scissors template I think. The other photo is one of the pages I did in a "Midnight" Journal a while back. The long skinny shape was a really nice change to work with. (sorry about the layout issues this morning!)