An Update on Yesterday's Post

After I posted scans of my fabric postcards last night I decided that the first one was a bit bland colour-wise on the flower so I added some more paint. I think it looks better but it is funny how I needed to see it on the computer screen to realise what it needed!

A Northern Hemisphere Christmas Postcard

Today's post brought this wonderful mixed media Christmas postcard from Kate North - it is just gorgeous! Thanks Kate.

I have been posting here recently about my first attempt at the January Postcard for the Calendar Girls challenge and this is my finished effort. The beauty of starting early is that it gives me a chance to reflect on it and do another one in January if I get some better ideas! Since the last picture I have added beading to the flower centre, glossed over the whole flower with Antique Dimensional Magic and added backing and finishing to the edges.

And as I am celebrating the completion of the jigsaw, here are scans of some of the pieces:

"Beauty" for Lexie

My "Vintage Dressmaking" pieces

"Vintage Children" for Marg

Fabulous Mail & Grungeboard Too!

Yesterday I received this wonderful fabric postcard from Jhodi Bennett - it is for our "silk" postcard exchange. It is a lovely sensuous and rich postcard - very textural and just gorgeous.

I also received my first order of the new Tim Holtz Grungeboard and had a quick play with it last night before we had a power blackout (which lasted a couple of hours unfortunately). Everything I have read and seen about it is right - it is incredible stuff. I am doing my other square deco page at the moment and incorporating a grungeboard flourish on it so I'll upload that either later today or tomorrow.

We have our work Christmas party tonight. It is Hawaiian themed by the pool to go with the hot summer weather that we have here but of course the temperature has suddenly dropped twenty degrees and it is very grey. I don't think there will be too much Hawaiian happening (jeans and jumpers, more likely!). Champagne will be necessary just for warmth.


This is a card I made quite a while ago - stamped, coloured and then coated in Helmar's Antique Crackle medium. Brown oil paint is rubbed into the cracks to emphasize them. I notice there are lots of people raving about the Tim Holtz Crackle Paints but I am trying to avoid buying them at this stage as I am having trouble getting to my desk - too much stuff in the way! If they are as good as they seem I am bound to end up with some though as I love the crackle look.

Ciao for now...

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.

Stuff!

First off I am sharing a photo of a beautiful scarf my friend Adam G in Melbourne knitted for me. Not only is it the most beautiful shade of green (a favourite colour of mine!), it is lovely and long and very warm. It also has a lovely long fringe which I think makes a scarf feel really decadent and luxurious. The scarf arrived in the mail last week and today I wore it to work - it passed all scarf tests - it was warm but not itchy (I am allergic to lots of fibres including most wool and a lot of synthetics), it looked great with my black clothes (what I mostly wear) and to top it all off, the lower portion survived - unharmed - the drive to work hanging out of the bottom of the car door (lucky I am only a very short distance from work and I didn't drive through any puddles!).

Note to myself for future reference - check whereabouts of all extraneous extremities before closing the car door. P.S. If you write scarf more than three times in quick succession it looks really really weird by the third one!

And now to a creation of my own - while I grew up in a household (or was it just the era???) where we made clothes and learnt to sew, I am very new to fabric surface embellishment of the experimental type. It has become a real addiction in recent months and I am gradually trying new things and adding to my repertoire. The scan above is of a fabric postcard that I made on the weekend for an exchange with Purple Missus - it is a sandwich of blue felt, random scrap threads and snippets of organza with a layer of blue organza stitched randomly over the top. On the lower half I have then added a pink organza triangle again randomly stitched. I have used a wood burning tool to burn holes in the pink layer and then added sequins and seed beads to embellish it. I have backed it with painted heavy weight lutrador. I love the resulting colours and although I was planning to try a lot more techniques I decided this was enough on this one - plus I didn't want to wreck it by that "one last thing"!

I received the latest Somerset Studio magazine today and found my two tags in the Expressions section - they are coated in beeswax, another addictive technique - I love the smell - maybe because my name (Deborah) is Hebrew for "bee"???? I really love the way they (SS) photograph artwork! On a good news note, I also got a couple of emails late last week to let me know that I have a couple of items in "Sew Somerset", a new biannual publication which comes out in October, so that is a real thrill. Mind you, I got very excited a couple of years back when I was told that a piece I had made using a transfer of a photo of my maternal grandparents was going to be in Somerset Wedding but I don't think it actually got in there as I never heard anymore (and I certainly didn't get a complimentary copy).

So now I am off to attend to domestic stuff (food primarily) and then I am going to "progress" a set of six fabric postcards that I thought were due at the end of July. It turns out I lost a month somewhere along the way. Thankfully I am not alone...

A great mail day!

This week has been just so hectic. I am leaving on Sunday on a work field trip - no computer access either :(( - and won't be back in the office until next Friday so of course that meant the last few days at work have been "full on". A very good friend also came up this week from Perth with her work so I went out with her for drinks and dinner last night. End result - virtually no computer time this week so far and not much art either, but I did have a great time of course.

Today I had a package of goodies arrive that I had ordered last Sunday from KSK - great service considering where I live. I am really looking forward to having a play with all my new bits and pieces. But even better than that, my trade with Barbara arrived in the mail!

Now here I was thinking we were just trading a fabric postcard and Barbara has sent me so much more - all the delights in these pictures (the postcard, an ATC and fabric and lace as well!). They are all stunning Barbara - thank you so much. I am particularly fascinated with the postcard and the way the white layer looks like cake icing. I know it isn't but the effect is fantastic. I'll be asking lots of questions that's for sure.


On Wednesday night I did do a tiny bit of playing when I went around to Annie's for our little Wednesday night stamping session - I am trying to come up with a submission for ArtWords this week - the theme is "figures". I didn't get too far with it though so tomorrow I am going to see if I can finish it off and I'll post a photo.

There are two other things I have to mail by the end of this month - one is for a shape based book exchange that I have joined. My shape is the arch and I have been trying to create a shrine look on the front cover using texture paste. Now that the paste has finally dried (this is one that I should have tried in summer) I have done the first few layers of paint but I need to think about the focal image tomorrow.

I am also working on a Paint/Metal/Fabric project for a one-on-one challenge. I need to have this one to the point where I can take it away with me next week to work on (or at least that is the plan!) at night. It is not as if I am going somewhere where there is nightlife!! (Tiny little remote outback towns have a pub and that is about it).


The beautiful cream journal pages that I have scanned above and below were made for me by the lovely Gaye Triggs. Gaye has a wonderful style and I love these pages. The little pocket on the first page has a sweet little accordion tag booklet in it and it is kept closed by a button threaded on hat elastic. The details are part of what makes Gaye's work so eye-catching.