Presents for boys

 

I would not have thought that I could be inspired by a football strip - in this case Norwich City, however the design elements are all there waiting to be used in (dare I say it) a more creative way than on a t-shirt. This is part of a  present for a great nephew whose christening I will attend in late July in needless to say - Norwich.

I made the letters first on a heavy watercolour paper, I used a big brush fibre tip pen to colour them in with canary yellow. Then using a selection of fine tipped pens I zentangled them all over. This doodle kind of art is so soothing that meditations have been based on them. Next I cut the letters out and blackened all the edges. Using a large piece of watercolour paper 22"x15" I stencilled on the lion motif and when it was dry I applied a procion dye wash to the paper. Then it was a case of measuring up and laying out the design before finally gluing every piece down.

At this stage I was going to give the whole piece an acrylic wax seal but I just spotted in time that one of the pens wasn't waterproof. This will not be a problem as the finished piece will be under glass in a simple frame. Note to self - check labels on all pens in future, I could have easily ruined a piece of work I had spent several hours on!

Ipad Art Addiction

It's been quite a while since I last posted as I've been enjoying time with my son, gardening, cycling, cooking -  in fact everything apart from stitching. The arrival home of my son ( besides being a great pleasure for me) meant I get to play with his Ipad.

I invested in a 69p app for making art, very quickly I got to grips with it ( trust me it's easy) and produced some quick 'paintings'. I can't say it is easier than actual drawing and painting but it is a much faster process than doing it in 'real time'.

 An obligatory sunset made want to use a more complex app. For the grand sum of £5.95 I down loaded 'Brushes' which is the app that David Hockney uses. What fun!! At first it was quite daunting - seemingly lots of different 'tools' but actually it soon became almost intuitive to do and very addictive.

I love the way this looks so 'textiley'  the lines look so threadlike. My son will obviously take his Ipad with him when he goes back to Shanghai in 9 weeks time (sob).  I will not be purchasing an Ipad in the near future so I shall just enjoy it whilst I can. I would never get any stitching done if I had this to play with all day.

The first sweet peas

Look at the elegant curves, the folds, the in-between colours, the almost silk like appearance of these first sweet peas, they are like precious babies at this time of the year. They will soon turn into riotous toddlers demanding of attention ( all that tying in) and covered in pollen beetle but for now the sheer sensuous beauty of  the first blooms has captured my heart. This is the stage where I should announce my intention to draw and paint them, the idea is in my head but I fear motivation is on the back boiler at the moment. All I can focus on is collecting and seeing my son from Heathrow (for the first time in a year) on Sunday.

In the meantime I seem to be putting a lot of work into this 'time-piece'. I'm using freezer paper to make stencils to place the letters but there is still an awful lot of tiny stitching to do. I need to push on with it before I start getting bored with it. 

  

Little bits of stitch

I've made about twenty more beads for my collection over the last week or so - nice little pieces of stitch that have not taken much thought but are very satisfying when seen altogether.

I have so enjoyed the sun and high temperatures this week but a cooler week to look forward to might inspire some more demanding work. I'm not feeling very pro-active at the moment with regards to crafting but that's part of the cycle of creativity for me. I'm lucky to be able to treat it as a hobby (all  be it a very obsessive one) and not have to worry about deadlines and commitments. I know that when the muse strikes again I will be churning work out at my usual rate of knots. 

Heatwave Inertia

Appropriate piece of work to be working on as the days slip by, I hope things slow down a little when my son and daughter-in-law get home at the end of June for a month's holiday. It's hard to believe they have been in Shanghai for almost a year. The difficult things to deal with in life seem endless and the good things rush by. 

Today is a celebration of our eldest grandson's eighth birthday so when the last bit of cooking is finished John and I are off to Ringstead for a birthday picnic.

It's too hot in my work room for any serious crafting to take place so I have fallen back on producing some new colourways for my embroidered beads.

I will take a small sewing kit with me today and produce another bead whilst sitting in the sun and watching my grandsons use up boundless amounts of energy and I shall be very happy. 

Cupcake day at the Guild

What a great afternoon - spent with some good friends at the monthly meeting of The Embroiderers Guild. Lots of laughter, a bit of stitching, an embroidered cupcake competition, a little bit of shopping to add to the stash and a strawberry tea to finish it off. A perfect Saturday afternoon. Look at the fantastic stitching done by Linda for the bead challenge, amazing to see such a skilled version of my beads. That is the kind of excellence you find at the Guild!

Frivolities

It's good to have a break from the intense stitching for my 'timepieces.'  I've made a cupcake for the next Guild meeting and had a day with my two fellow members of Trident. Today we went all retro and had an experimental foray into sheer organza and the soldering iron (a la Margaret Beal style).

It was fun but frustrating that nothing worked the way I wanted it to - until a half an hour before finishing time when I started to pick up all the discarded pieces and took out a needle and thread and made this raggy flower. By no means a masterpiece but it saved the day for me.