A "LOVE" Inchie etc...

This is my little "LOVE" inchie for the latest theme at Inching Artists. It is a square inch of fabric fused to felt. I have added a puffy gold star (cut from a Christmas garland) and then sewn on seed beads to the remaining surface and finished it off by painting any visible fabric with gold Lumiere paint.

This is what the finished silk fusion postcards look like. I used a favourite Anais Nin quote - "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are". I'm really happy with the way they turned out.

I have recently joined a "out of your comfort zone" exchange on the SurfaceDesign Yahoo Group and my partner is Joanna who lives in New York. She sent me this beautiful package of goodies this week as part of my challenge (I love pretty mail!). I will report progress on the challenge once we get underway - we are making little fairy slippers (yikes that is seriously out of my comfort zone). If you want to see some, have a look at this post on Val's blog.

Friday Night's Deco Page

I had a lovely relaxed Friday night at home yesterday - I really love the feeling of Friday nights - the sense of a working week over and done with and all the potential of a weekend ahead! I made the most of it and worked on my pages for Patti Gramza's Octagon Deco. I have finished the first page and am close to finishing the back of it. (PS If you don't already read Patti's blog - have a look at it. She does beautiful stuff and has recently blogged about a wonderful way of displaying all the ATCs she has received).

As a background I have used a beautiful fine patterned and embroidered fabric that I bought last weekend - I bought it in two colourways as it is just so pretty. I have used the pink and green version on this page, but the deeper pink and brown version is lovely too. I stamped some background text and images on the watercolour paper first and then adhered the fabric with fusible webbing. It makes the surface nice and flat and you just get a hint of the stamping behind the fabric. I stitched around the edges and printed out a favourite vintage image on inkjet fabric and then adhered that with fusible webbing as well. The fabric comes with a soft white doodled pattern on it so I accentuated and added to the doodles with white gel pen. I decorated one of my new Collections chipboard key holes as one of the embellishments on the page. It is a really simple page but I wanted to do "pretty". (I seem to be going through a pretty stage at that moment - it all started with the baby postcards - all finally finished).

I have to finish my sets of metallic fabric inchies (63 one inch squares for a group exchange) in the next week or so I thought it might also be interesting to show my backgrounds as they progress. A few posts back I showed the first stage which was the fusible webbing (vliesofix) painted with Lumiere metallic paints. The scan below shows what the various pieces are looking like now.


The purple and gold one has been ironed onto black cotton and that will now be adhered to black felt and then cut up into the inch squares. I plan to add beads and sequins to these ones. The pink gold one (which looks like a rich copper in the scan) has been ironed to felt and then decoratively stitched on the machine with metallic copper thread. I haven't decided what else to do to this yet but it is at the cutting up stage. The pewter one has been stamped with text and then ironed to grey felt and stitched with silver metallic thread. It too is ready to cut up for the next stage.

The bronze one has been stamped with text and ironed to brown felt. Finally the spotty one is just a piece of chiffon type fabric that has metallic gold dots on it and I have fused it to yellow felt and then sprayed it with Moon Shadow Mists to create a darker background. I haven't decided what to do next with these two yet.

So now I am off to do the vacuuming and the laundry so I can do some more fun stuff this afternoon!

Such a Great Mail Day!

We had a great night at Annie's last night - she has invested in several new and very inspiring books which we all avidly perused and added to our future buy lists! (Dale's Surface Tension, Fabric Leftovers, Fabric Journals etc etc). I did also work on the next set of inchies as evidenced above but mostly I talked and looked at books and ate Tim Tams.

I had a sleepless night (worrying about certain aspects of a new role I am about to take on at work I think) and felt pretty yuck all day really. Things improved immeasurably however when I got home tonight and saw my mail - I had received Fiona's Heart Shaped Book which I will be working on this weekend, the latest Stamper's Sampler (and congratulations to my gorgeous friend Sue Smith in Albany who has a whole wonderful page in there on her first go with this great publication - I have scanned the page above but the left side is a bit "pruned" unfortunately) and my copy of Gina's Artful Purpose Zine (the cover of which is also scanned below - I just love that cover!).

Now I am off to work on my Wednesday Stamper submission for this week - this time I am doing it early in the week!

P.S. Funny story of the goings on in this house of ours - this morning after the rest of us had left the house for work and school, my darling Mum mistook the garlic flakes in the pantry for flaked almonds and added them to her morning cereal! Can you imagine how gross WeetBix would taste with garlic flavoured milk, even if you have also added sultanas!! Mum has forbidden me from sharing this little "event" but I know you will want to sympathise with her - it is just me that finds this hilarious! What's more she didn't tell me until I asked her what on earth she had eaten for lunch that made her was so "garlicky"!!

Wednesday Stamper (Flowers) & Artwords (Dwelling) & A General Progress Report!

I have been busy and have just realised that I haven't posted here for days! On Friday (day off work) I spent the morning catching up on washing and playing with my blue fabric inchies. These, of course, are not the things that needed doing first but as usual, the thing I felt like doing was not the thing that needed doing! Inchies are surprising addictive although I think I would find the paper ones too fiddly - especially the sticking down bit (I can get glue everywhere really really easily!). I have included a scan of one set that I have decided are finished. I am doing nine different "designs". These ones are based on the felt/blue fabric/angelina sandwich that I posted about last week and have little gold sequins and pink seed beads sewn on them.

Around lunch time, Mum and I decided to head down to the one and only craft shop to get some more yarns for the No-Knit scarf that Mum is making while she is up here. I bought a new Kai Wheel Cutter so I could have a wavy blade for cutting my fabric without having to change blades all the time. I also bought some pretty silver charms. While we were in the shop we heard that the only Bead Shop in town was closing down and that they had 30% off everything. Needless to say the two of us are bower birds who just love pretty beads so of course the next 90 minutes was spent (along with some serious $) at the bead shop. I now have enough seed beads for a lifetime of fabric inchies I think. Mum bought some lovely beads including some shell based ones and she has since designed and made a lovely necklace. She just has to sort out what sort of clasp she will use and it will be finished. After the bead shop we went to the fabric shop to get Soluweb (for the No-Knit scarf) and to the library to get some beading books so it was nearly 3pm before we had lunch. Headache territory!

On Friday evening, I picked Joseph up from the airport (he had been in Perth last week for work) and then Mum and I went to the opening of an exhibition at the Mining Hall of Fame. The exhibition was of artworks by Paul Trinidad (lino cuts, prints and dirt paintings) and photos of the Australian outback by Jane Poynter. None of the artwork was really appealing to me personally but it is always interesting to look at the way artists interpret their environment. The photos were interesting, especially the series where she had blown up tiny portions of photos that were on display and added poetry type text. We had fun trying to find the photo from which each of the detailed shots were taken. The Mining Hall of Fame also has a stunning mineral display which is always lovely to look at, so we did that while finishing off our wine!

Yesterday, in amongst normal domestic Saturday stuff I worked on some cards I am doing for a magazine and also did some more inchies (I would have been happy making them all day actually!). I pulled out lots of copper tissue mesh and wire and spent some time tarnishing it using Lime Suphur (as a substitute for the normal stuff which I haven't been able to get locally). Dreadful smell of rotten eggs of course which made for some predictable comments from my 16 year old son. I need to make my mix less concentrated I think as it was an instant reaction on the copper. I put some in a spray bottle and just sprayed it on one piece and that was a more subdued and controlled effect.

Last night I made a yummy Tuna & Spinach Risotto for dinner and watched an Andre Rieu DVD with Mum. Today I am finishing my cards before I make any more inchies!

This week's Wednesday Stamper theme is flowers and I am just not going to get a chance to make something specially for it so I have included a scan of a piece I did a while back in a Purple Deco. I really do love incorporating stamped flowers in my work but in this piece the stamping is text and postmarks. The lace has been hand painted with lace dyes which I love using.

The Artwords theme this week is "Dwelling" and again I am not going to have the time to make something so for this one I have included a scan of a double page spread I did in a House Shaped Deco for an exchange some time ago. I used the most beautiful shade (Green Gold) of Golden Paint for this page which includes a gel transfer of some Victorian ladies sewing in their parlour.

Next week I am promising myself that I will use the themes to make new pieces!