Time on my hands

We are both off work this week and had planned to go down to Bath for a few days (before Ally Pally), somewhere we have always wanted to visit but never quite got around to, but with the weather being as it is have decided to give it a miss this time around so consequently I actually have a few spare days on my hands.

I really should knuckle down to some serious housework, something that has been sadly neglected these past few months, luckily I have a very understanding husband. Mind you, he did have a bit of a rant a few weeks ago. He does his fair share of meal preparation these days but was bemoaning the fact that he couldn’t get his Yorkshire puddings to rise like good old Aunt Bessies. And then we discovered why – the sell by date on the bag of flour was October 2008 . Ooops!!!

Pleased to report, a new bag of flour and his batter puddings are wonderful. :)

Thought I would share a few of the pieces I have been working on lately. Some new bits are coming, just need to get them right first.

I have a thing about wording at the moment, latin phrases in particular but not the well known ones. (I went through a stage a few years back of putting ‘nil carborundum illegitimi’ on almost everything). I really ought to hang these pieces when I photograph them. This was laid on the floor and taken from above which always makes the edges look very wonky. I ‘distressed’ the words in Photoshop before printing them off.

And what do they translate as? ‘Life is too short to dance with ugly men’. How profound is that? *LOL*

This next one I showed some time back. I want to make a large scale piece, not quite like this, but I have an idea with something along these lines and I want to practise on a small piece first so that I don’t end up wasting my time.

This is Tyvek attached to Cotton duck with recycled blanket attached to the back. (yes, I still have about 70 of them left). A few French Knots here and there to make me feel better about incorporating some hand stitching and then a wash of walnut ink. Quite liked it as it was so left it there. In the next one I did some darning/weaving between the pieces of Tyvek – I used Tyvek fabric on this and the next one rather than paper, far easier to stitch in to but I think I prefer the texture on the paper Tyvek. After the walnut ink stage I added a layer of Transparent Red Iron Oxide. Again, quite liked it as it was. And in the final one, exactly the same procedure but with Quin.Nickel Azo Gold and Paynes Grey added along with fragments of latin text. Still not what I want, text is totally wrong, but I’m getting there. Will have one more practise before I start on the big one. These ones measure about 50x50 cms, I hope for the finished piece to be at least four times that size. :)

Still with Tyvek, these are all close ups of postcard size pieces. Quick and easy to do and a good way of practising painting and finishing techniques and they do look very effective. Have got into the habit of making most of my samples into postcards as they look so much better when finished off. I have about 50 of these now so this really is a very small selection. :) These ones all have a rust solution added. And this one has a verdigris finish. On this one I grated some metallic wax crayons into the gesso hoping it would stay in place and act as a resist to the medium I was going to put on the surface but it still kept crumbling off so I used the heat tool to melt the wax before spraying with Brusho Sprays. Carolyn, Love Stitching Red, let me know that on the last post the link to Sharnes blog didn’t work for some reason so if you didn’t manage to blog-hop here is the link again.

Denise also came along to the same workshop and finished off her vessel too. Denise is the owner of Craft Arena, a fabulous textile art studio selling lots of the things we all use. She kindly gave me some acrylic felt to try. It is much thicker than Kunin so I only need to use one layer instead of two and the fact that it zaps slightly differently makes it all the more exciting. It doesn’t burn back quite so quickly as Kunin so instead of lots of holes you get a lovely stiff textured background which prevents the gesso or paint soaking right in to the surface. I’m still playing around with it and will show you the end results once I am finished – but I am liking this felt and if the rumour is true that they are going to make Kunin felt flame retardent then this will be a perfect substitute.

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