WASHDAY BLUES

As soon as I got up this morning, I knew it was "back to normal" time after the Bank Holiday - grey, cold and drizzly. I swear drizzle makes you wetter than ordinary rain somehow. I think it's the unrelenting steady pace of it. You know it isn't going to get any better so you might as well go out - but an umbrella just doesn't seem any protection - the damp seeps in underneath somehow.

Well, today our rented washing machine and dryer went back - my darling husband decided to "help" and undid the pipe under the sink. 'nuff said.... I had to clear out and mop up everthing stuff in the cupboards under the sink (why are they so bloody inaccessible?) and dry off the washing powder box etc etc. Then the delivery guys managed to spill even more water when pulling the hoses out. At least they capped the under-the-sink fitment, so I can now use the sink. I ended up washing that kitchen floor 3 separate times. You can just guess how much I enjoyed myself!

So, now the machines are out of the way, I can repaint the cubby holes the same colour as the rest of the kitchen (I could only paint up to the machinery before, so the walls are Pale Willow, a really lovely pale green - almost a Celadon - and these bits are Muffin - which "matured" over 6 months into Sludge).

Thursday (today being Tuesday) gives me plenty of time to paint 2 coats (might need 3) before the arrival of the new washing machine and dryer we bought last week. Mind you, you should see the rest of the flat - guess where the dirty clothes hamper etc are? Yes, the sitting room. Oh joy.

BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND - SHOPPING

Well, it's a Bank Holiday weekend again here in the UK - I know we (Peter & I) intend to be out & about, weather permitting.

HOWEVER, as we all know, weekends mean food shopping, so here's a fun YouTube item I found, which just might amuse...


As they used to say on Hill Street Blues, be careful out there!

AMAZING ALTERED BOOK LINK

I just saw this link and had to share it: Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies.

Totally amazing - go and look! How on earth can he cut a book in to all these detailed images, layering through the book as he does.

















Note to self: Must Try Harder. (Or should I just give up right now? .... Nah....)

GOTTA TAKE SOME CLASSES

Well, that's IT - I've made the decision and gone ahead and booked classes at my local Adult Education centres.



I have been reading online about Art Unravelled and other wonderful classes held in the States - but unless I win the lottery, it's a non-starter.

I saw the brochure in my local library, I though "why not?" and am now busily making myself some sketchbooks (I'll need a separate sketchbook for each class).

I decided to make some more coptic books like this lot (top and below). The biggest (top left, with laminated paper cover - tissues, Sanwa and Joss papers - similar to fabric paper but without stitchery) is A4, so when open I have an A3 surface).

So I am now signed up for:

• Life Drawing (I badly want to improve my drawing skills and have always been a lot more interested in the human body than boring old still lifes)
• Jewellery (silver smithing, not the sort of jewellery I normally do: stringing beads, soldering collage charms etc) so it will be interesting to take an actual proper course and see what's going on.
• Drawing & Mixed Media (wonder if it's OUR sort of mixed media?)

There's always something new to learn, some new "take" on a subject. Which also refreshes and renews the art we all do.

Feeling inspired, energised and full of enthusiasm I also bought Twyla Tharp's "The Creative Habit" - in the hopes I will get into the habit of doing a little bit of art every day. I't certainly interesting so far! And I'm interspersing this with some great kids' books: the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud (The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem's Eye and have just started Ptolemy's Gate) which are great, rollicking fun - I'm enjoying them very much. All this is getting sandwiched in between watching the Olympics (we're THIRD in the medals tables so far - can't believe it!).

MORE PAPER QUILTS

Wendy Cotterill (see previous post & Links) has sent me pics of her two latest paper quilts, so thought I'd put these up as well for you all to drool over!

I'm not sure what size these are, but the ones below are actually around 18 inches square, Wendy says, NOT 3ft x 4 ft (I do remember them as a lot bigger....)

Aren't they fabulous! Gotta have a go myself. I'm always put off with wall art, trying to think of a subject - whereas these look like they take on a life of their own and just GROW.


















Note to self: Must get on with my Frances Pickering book - all those French Knots exhausted me.

FABRIC PAPER

There's quite a buzz going around about paper quilts, fabric paper, etc, so I thought I would put up these two. They are by WENDY COTERILL of Gallery Textiles (see Links - there are more examples on her website). Beryl Taylor (see Links) also has fabulous work.

I taught some classes at Wendy's shop last year, so was able to see (and photograph) these two paper quilts in the flesh - they are AMAZING in real life - tons of embroidery, rich in texture.

Each one is about 3ft x 4ft in size - and she just hung them up with a bit of tape! If they were mine (and believe me, I hinted as to whether they were for sale) they would be in gold frames.

I find all this very interesting, and it's all percolating in my brain ... so watch this space...

I'm thinking that between this class, Frances Pickering's and my revived interest in embroidery, interesting things might just start happening.

Meantime, enjoy the eye candy!

FRANCES PICKERING CLASS

I took Frances Pickering's "Hard But Easy" bookbinding class - great fun, and what a change from teaching all the time. She has some wonderful sketchbooks which she allowed the class to look at, and also brought many sample books.

I will post page by page pix of my own journal/book later, as I am still working on it, but for now here are pix of me (standing & holding my book) with Frances (sitting) and some of her own work.


Her individual style is a combination of hand drawn & painted images, coupled with embroidery and bead work - something new for me, as I tend to keep away from sewing. However, I am very pleased to report I can now do French Knots! These little blighters always used to undo themselves whenever I tried them before, but I have now done a whole page with them.

Here is Frances and her husband, who very kindly helped everyone to make cords to tie their books closed. Another thing I didn't know! They really do make a difference and are so much nicer (and less predictable) than always using ribbon.

I am very happy I took the class, as the stitchery really does add another dimension to the pages, and this is something I probably wouldn't have tried on my own - although, having said that, I do have some stitching in some of my books - but nothing like the amount in hers, where so many images are embellished, fringed, beaded, buttoned.... Note to self: will do MORE.

PETER & THE SUNFLOWERS

I promised my husband a picture for his birthday (LAST year!) which I finally got around to and finished in time for his birthday this year.





Last year, Peter grew some amazing sunflowers, over 14ft high (he's 6ft) as you can see from the photos. These were from a packet of free seeds I got with a magazine. We needed some large art for the sitting room wall and as I have to carry everything home by bus & tube, I was rather limited on hauling large canvases.

So the logical thing to do was paint 3 smaller canvases and hang them up in a row - instant trytich! I have exaggerated re the amount of sunflowers in the painting (there are 7, not 3 as in Real Life) so Peter has a sunflower for every day of the week. Here are the step-by-step stages, so you can see how things evolved.

Stage 1 - I roughed out the entire thing, across the three canvases which are precariously balanced on my art table. You can see how cramped it is. I printed out several photos in different sizes so I had something to work from.

Stage 2 - More detail, and the basic colours slammed in.




Stage 3 - I painted the word "SUN" over and over in the centre of each flower.



Stage 4 - Everything was too bright, so I painted a thin layer of yellow ochre over the wording to knock it back a bit.


Stage 5 - I still didn't like it, felt it was gimmicky & over the top, so I painted over with Golden gel with sparkly bits in it.


The finished result, up on the wall.

Peter is absolutely ecstatic with it (thank God) and I can live with it as well. Good thing as it is directly opposite the sofa, and above the TV.

The fencing is constructed with foam core board which I painted to simulate wood, stuck on with PVA (white) glue. The "nails" are antique-finish brads.

I still feel I didn't get Peter's hand holdin the cigarette quite right. Still, as it's the first portrait I have attempted in around 20 years, I am pretty satisfied, all in all. Whew!

ALL ABOUT HAIR - JOURNAL PAGE

I had a lot of fun with this one.

It started off as a rant about hairdressers. I swear they have it in for me - doesn't matter what you pay, you rarely come out looking anything like the picture you hopefully (naively?) offer as a vague suggestion of the style you have in mind.

There certainly doesn't have any relevance to the amount hairdressers charge. Do you get what you pay (through the nose) for?

Still, I felt a lot better after doing this page - a magazine ad face, with acrylics and heavy black pen on hair, face, eyes & lips, and acrylic lettering over an acrylic background. I am not a "pink" person (I prefer earth tones) but if you're going to be pink, be a bright pink!

FIRST JOURNAL PAGES UPLOADED

Here goes my first try at uploading some pix - these are from my Kiss Journal (named after the stitching, but now the title seems to be influencing the contents as well.....)

This first pic shows a young woman looking back on life. I think she's reflecting on what might have been. She's a little sour, a little down, pretty resigned....

The numbers and arrows are thick gesso stencilled directly on the page.


The numbers represent time passing - and the arrows are for her determination, because the only way is Upward and Onward!

Remember back at school? You & all your best friends, giggling in a gang at break time? All those best friends - can you even remember their names?

I was at Junior school at age 4, and I still remember Johnny who made us all laugh, & Hazel who got me in trouble when she told me the wrong answer in Maths: "What's 4 x 0?" She whispered "4" and that's what I said. Duh, the answer was 0 - and to this day I'm still not sure that's right.













Love isn't just for the young - true love lasts all your life!

This is a vintage photo I found on the art-e-zine site (thanks Gillian, who owns the site - see Links for her url). It fits exactly what I wanted to say.

Peter & I have been together 15 years (2nd time round for both of us) and our 10th wedding anniversary is this November. Are we happy? You betcha!













This man is a Craftsman. He is a serious man who takes great pride in his work, making all the kisses to send out into the world.

You're never to old to hug & kiss, as the song says.

He makes sure every kiss sent out is in perfect condition, shiny & new.












This is a vintage page, for fun. The lady on the left is suitably shy and coy, and the gentleman on the right looks solid and dependable - but still with a twinkle in his eye! And the Proper Sort - a believer in hearts, flowers and boxes of Belgian chocolate.

ANOTHER UPLOAD

Well, so far so good - I managed to change the background colour of the blog so it's more to my taste, although not sure about the black - is it going to be hard on the eyes & hard to read? And how do all those people manage to put squirls & squiggles all over their side margin borders? Looks like I need to read up on html...

So far, I have managed to upload a few interesting links, the London tube travel widget (which is certainly useful to ME as I can check any potential problems with travel before getting stuck) and a video from YouTube which I find highly amusing. And the BBC News channel, right at the very bottom of the blog.

MAN MADE CARD

Before I start posting to the blog properly (I have to search a ton of CDs to find pix of my artwork - the trojan virus basically wiped me out) I thought I would post this How To video from YouTube. I found it pretty amusing!

LINKS & VIRUSES & LOSSES

I've put a few links up, as much for my own benefit as anyone's - has anyone else, like me, lost their entire Favourites folder? This has happened to me for the third time now (having to reboot due a computer virus) that I no longer keep any links in this folder any more.

So, if you lost all your best links, what do you do? Myself, I use Firefox as my email browser, and they have De.li.cious as a free add-on. This is a social bookmarking system so you can leave bookmarks for others to browse (this is how I found some amazing sites) and click the Private box if it's just a note for yourself. So I now have somewhere safe to stow my bookmarks and provided I remember my sign-in details, I can access this from any computer anywhere. I also have Yahoo and Google accounts, and they have their own Bookmarking sytems too. So now I no longer have all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.

So as you can see, the sidebar here is slowly filling up. I hope these links will be useful to you, and if you have found any good ones I should include, please let me know.

FIRST POST

I felt it was high time I had a blog of my own, so here we are. These things tend to grow with a mind of their own, but my intentions are to load up the usual How-To articles, pix etc, and make it something of a resource.

I have to admit that part of my motivation for starting a blog is my sheer frustration in trying to get my website to behave - they are definitely harder than they look! I have had three now, all written in MS Front Page, which is now being discontinued... so here goes that learning curve again.