New Zealand Inspirations.

After the last, very stressful and emotional 5 months, I've just spent a glorious 4 weeks staying with my daughter who lives in New Zealand's north island, Whangarei to be exact. It has given me the time to recuperate and rest, and to slowly get back into my textiles. Above is a finished piece of work that I started in NZ, and finished at home today. It has been inspired by the colours and shapes of the landscape, seascape and plants that I saw, with the added element of a kauri shell, which I cut from lino and printed.

Above and below a few of my very many photos. I think this small selection should give a flavour of where my inspirations have come from.

Some close ups of the finished work. It is made up of a combination of gelli prints on paper and cloth, a printed lino cut, hand stitch and free machine sketching which I have been doing since arriving home.

I used different fern leaves with the gelli plate.

Some of the gelli prints on paper above, and below one of the photos I took from the glass bottomed boat, showing the seaweeds and colours beneath the sea.

We enjoyed some fantastically hot sunny days on the beaches, swimming in warm, clear blue seas. I managed to make some quick paintings in my small sketch book. 

There are trees at the edges of lots of the beaches, so I also made some very speedy sketches of those, and on one day I also had a go at trying to capture the bird above before it flew away. It was a bit like one of our magpies, but with more white on it's back.

An inland walk to Abbey caves took us past these many boulders, that almost looked like sculptures. Nature's artwork!

The Kauri shell lino print on the top left, with some sketches of the unfurling of a fern on the right.

Some of my small collection of shells, gathered with the help of my five year old grandson.

Sketchbook coloured print, and a drawing of a kauri shell.

Finally, a photo of my daughter and myself in their local Quarry Gardens. Huge thanks to my daughter and her family for giving me such a wonderful 4 weeks. I'll hopefully be back again next year, and it may be for a bit longer, so watch out!!!

Thank you for joining me, and I hope to be back again soon.

Practise makes perfect, (I hope!)

A lino cut print of a tree I can see from my upstairs window.

Three birds were added after the first print, to give the image 'life'.

Then I made another lino cut, where I decided to try and make a reverse image. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to get the lines fine enough!

I played around with it a bit more, printed again, then added lots more twiggy branches with a paintbrush dipped into the printing ink. Is this 'cheating' I wonder?

An attempt at one of my crows, although someone else who saw it thought it was a chicken! ha ha ha, I suppose it does look a bit like one.

Then I had a go at a two colour print. These are all just experimental you understand. (My excuse for the failures!) But hey, who knows, if I keep practising, you know what they say about that.

There are so many cranes on the skyline these days, I decided I had to have a go at trying another lino cut using them as inspiration. Again, I found trying to get fine lines very difficult, bit I'm also using very small pieces of lino, so maybe I need to try and work larger. My eventual plan is to be able to print some good images onto cloth, and then to stitch into them.

Finally, I am dedicating this post to my dear husband who lost a long and hard fought battle this last week. He is now at peace. Rest well my lovely man.

A Difficult Time.

Sunrise from our front room window early in November 2015. My husband had been admitted into hospital just a few days earlier for emergency surgery.

A lovely walk in a local park one morning just before the New Year. My husband is still in hospital! He has been, and still is very sick.

I've done more walking than usual, and certainly no stitching or much artwork for the last two months, Hence the absence of any blog posts since my last one in October.

However, I haven't been standing alone.  Our two sons and daughter have been very close by during this difficult time. Our daughter flew over from New Zealand, and stayed until New Year's eve, when after 8 weeks, it was time for her to be reunited with her very patient husband back home.

Today, I finally decided it was time to at least have a play around with some textile art, I had no idea where to start, but felt I needed to throw white paint at something. I think I partly wanted to try and block out the last two months, and to also make a fresh start in some way. Covering a postcard sized piece of work I made last year with white Gesso, seemed the way to go, and so that's what I did. While it was still wet, I pressed a piece of black cotton fabric into it, and then when it was dry, I did some reverse applique, just to add a few spots of yellow, I went a bit mad with the free machine stitching, but it felt good to be behind my machine again, and then I added a few more spots of white paint. Ah well, at least I've made a start at getting back into some creative stuff, and better by far than sitting at home moping. We've no idea how much longer my husband is going to be in hospital, I think we're in for the long haul, but I'm so pleased that in between times, I can lose myself for a couple of hours each day making textile related art!

Some rather strange doodles above and below, which I made whilst sitting in hospital waiting for my hubby to be diagnosed. They really are strange, especially the one above, and I wonder if they reflect in some way my frame of mind at the time.

I saw a couple of painters walking about with a ladder, and that prompted the ladder like structure above. I hope it won't be too long until my next post, but in the meantime, thank you for reading, and may I take the opportunity to wish you a very happy, peaceful and healthy 2016.

The Tree on Epsom Downs.

The Tree on Epsom Downs. 

Made for my son on his birthday this week, and inspired by a photograph I took on Epsom Downs, just around the corner from where he and his family live. I played around with the photo on photoshop, printed it onto canvas, added the low silver moon, and heavily free machine quilted.

Hopefully I'll have more to show next time, but thanks for reading.

Rust and Colour

I made a very small book from a sheet of A4 paper that I had previously rusted and embossed with a large sycamore leaf.

Some pages had less rusty marks, so I tore and stuck down some rusted tissue paper.

Lastly, I hand stitched a continuous line around the outline of the leaf, which covered most of the A4 sheet. This gave me small stitched sections on the pages of the mini book. 

You can see where the embossed leaf left marks from the leaf veining, adding some extra interest and texture.

I also added little snippets of rusted cartridge paper on a couple of pages.

The cover, below, with the title! You can see the size compared with my thumb.....tiny!

I've also been enjoying making some mono prints with my Gelli plate, and then finishing them off with some sketchy detail using my Inktense pencils. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for your company if you've managed to read this far, and hope you're enjoying Halloween.

Talking of Rust!

So, talking of rust, (see my last post), while visiting Wakehurst Place in Sussex yesterday, we found this wonderful sculpture of a beetle sitting in a small pond. He is gloriously rusty isn't he? Made by sculptor Ross White.

Tea, Coffee, Red Wine and Rust!

  Along with 14 other very enthusiastic ladies, I have just spent a very happy Saturday and Sunday enjoying a workshop led by Alice Fox. We were mark making on paper and fabrics with tea, coffee, red wine and a selection of old rusty nails, screws, hinges, nuts, bolts and plenty more weird and wonderful objects scrounged from sheds and garages! Great fun!

Above are some of my efforts, gently (and hopefully), transferring a magical selection of  marks in a variety of oranges, yellow, greys and pinks!

We also wrapped rusty objects in calico, cotton or silk, dunked them in the above potions, and left them overnight, or longer to 'do' their thing! You can see some of the marks this process created above.

You've guessed it, the above  was soaked in red wine! It smelled rather more tempting than the tea I have to say!

Today, I arranged lots of the samples into my sketchbook, with notes, (my memory seems to fade rather fast these days), and then played around with some of the others which you can see below.

Finally, I started a printing class a few weeks ago, and the first couple of sessions were concerned with the techniques of mono printing. I thought my result below was reasonable for a first attempt, so will be having a bit more practise with that.

Finally, an example of my first attempt at 'etching'. My fish was etched into a thin sheet of acrylic, inked up, wiped off and put through the printing press. I will be able to show further photos of some Chine Colle techniques that I used with the same printing plate after half term. They needed to be left to dry under a weight at the college,

Oh how I love a new technique, and the possibilities if offers to combine with stitch!

Thanks for reading.

Blossom, Berries, Trees and Leaves!

I spotted this blossom while out on a walk this morning! I think it's a blackberry, but surely it's the wrong time of year?

Then, these beautiful white berries a few bushes away, we always called them 'snowberries'.

Above, my finished piece that started as a monoprint, and then finished off with paint and stitch. Below is the photo I took recently that inspired it.

I decided to have a play with my felting machine, the result is below.

And finally, I couldn't resist making something to capture the beauty of all the gorgeous Autumn leaves that are floating down at the moment,

 I think our summer is finally over, but Autumn does have a beauty of it's own, so thanks for joining me yet again.

Nature's Totem.

Another finished textile that I stitched today. I made a monoprint first onto some calico, hand coloured it, and then thread painted the whole surface. You can read more details on the inspiration and process here.

It seems daft to repeat myself after writing the process up on my FB page, so I hope you will forgive me for redirecting, Thanks for looking in!