Monday 17 February 2014

Taking a second look - part 1

Having recently moved house, I have been having a good sort through of all my materials and artwork but even after a good 'clear out'  there was still an alarming number of boxes.





There will never be enough wall space for all the artwork I have produced over the years but it does seem a shame to have it all boxed away in the dark.
Not all of the artistic experiments were successful and sometimes I would find that a particular medium was not 'my thing'.  I suppose I held onto some of these failed pieces because we do , after all,  learn from our mistakes.

So that has got me thinking that it would be an interesting exercise to go back and revisit some of those pieces from my past.  Maybe some new ideas will spring forth from the old?

It will also be nice to have some digital images of the pieces to make up a 'digital catalogue' of my work.

 So here's the first find.

I had forgotten that I used to spend hours drawing these 'doodles' with felt pen then colouring them in.

I think I was avoiding doing homework or revising for O levels ... so we are going back a few years here!
 I would start by drawing one or two large flowers then I would add the leaves.
 I would draw other clusters of flowers around the page then fill in the gaps with swirls and tiny flowers.
 I have always liked lots of colour!
I am wondering how these would look printed onto fabric?


I have used printable fabric sheets in the past then embroidered and beaded over the top.  I think that idea might work with these.

I think these would make nice wrapping paper too.


Looking at these now ( over 30 years after I did them ) I can see that I still use this idea in my fabric art. This is part of a collage sheet I made up of images of fabric art pieces I have made.


This is another fabric art card where I drew onto fabric with fabric pens then added beadwork and hand embroidery.


Off to look through some more boxes now to see what else I can find.......

Thursday 6 February 2014

Etsy Expats: Team Challenge: Bold, Bright and Beautiful Beginn...

Etsy Expats: Team Challenge: Bold, Bright and Beautiful Beginn...: We started the new year with a new challenge featuring bold, bright and beautiful beginnings in this fun treasury . We had many entries of...

Tuesday 4 February 2014

New poppy field cards

Working on some poppy field cards for our Etsy shop.
The landscape is machine stitched ... strips of different fabrics and yarns overlapped then stitched.
The poppies are worked by hand ... a combination of french knots and hand sewn red beads.