Gifts from my Friends.

I went out for a meal with my arty friends and came back with lots of lovely gifts!

From Gill I got a fabric box, a pincushion and a vintage book. The pin cushion has a ring at the side so that it can be either hung up on a wall or used on a flat surface.

Lovely braid.

From Helen I got an apron with a row of appliqued Russian dolls. 

There is a stuffed doll that is detachable, this is a pin cushion.

From Marian two fabric boxes, new places to put my bits and bobs. Some of this fabric has Russian dolls on it too. 

And a lovely fabric with quotes...

From Vicky, a laser cut wooden reindeer which is a snazzy washi tape holder.

There is a lovely tape with postage stamps on it. The book with a silver reendeer on the front has squared paper within.

I've got some clever and talented friends eh?

I'll show what I gave next time.

Background Textures

More pages from sketchbook 26 - I will use these for backgrounds.

Seasonal Placemats

Some people assume because I like embroidery and making textile pictures and such, that I also like and am good at dressmaking, mending and other such activities. I shall put you right, I have a love hate relationship with regular sewing. I quite like it sometimes when things are going right but most of the time they don't..grrrr.. It is probably my fault in that I don't measure things correctly like with these placemats, although I thought I had and also not keeping a straight line while sewing. I wanted them to look different but I did want them all the same size but they are not. I like them now they are done apart from the sizing issue but there was a lot of frustration while making them.

The edge on the one below looks blue on the photo but it is actually green.

The fabrics were purchased, not my designs.

More Spoonflower Fabric Swatches.

More 8" swatches from Spoonflower. 

I have changed the size of the pattern on this one and the rabbit one. I have had these two printed elsewhere and the size was fine, but the ppi is different at Spoonflower so the repeat came out too large. This is what a repeat of the pattern would look like.

Big bunnies

Smaller bunnies

This one was a combination of applique, hand drawn and painted flowers and digital drawing.

I think I've posted the frog design before, but now you can see the swatch.

Art Work to Fabric

This is one of the Spoonflower fabric swatches I sent for recently.

Below is what it looks like as a repeat pattern.

The design started out as a piece of art work, as shown below, I used a rolling stamp to make the pattern.

The fabric is available in my Spoonflower shop, the link is in the right hand column.

Pages from Sketchbook 26

I textured the paper, and applied watercolours

I textured the paper, and applied watercolours and used a pen for the doodles

Watercolour, pen and I think I used glue stick for texture

I textured the paper, and applied watercolours, used a blue pen for doodling

I textured the paper, and applied watercolours

I textured the paper, and applied watercolours, pen doodle and the spotty ribbon is found paper

New Sketchbook

The start of a new sketchbook - number 26

These pages are mainly textures for backgrounds. I have them on the computer now for digital art but I may add more to the actual sketchbook pages in the future.

I've textured the pages with newspaper supplements and magazines and a glue stick, some are more successful than others depending on the type of paper [very glossy does not work]. Glue a snippet to the page for a few seconds then whip it off, when it works some of the text or image is transferred to the sketch page. I've used watercolours on the top and pen on a couple of them.

Art Buttons and Embroidered Pendant

I did these a while ago but never got round to putting them on the blog.

More art buttons, not for wearing [check out 'art buttons' in the labels list for details].

The green, blue and black and white ones were done with clear buttons.

I made the cards they are on by using images which I altered, from the Graphics Fairy. 

click on images to enlarge

Another embroidered mini pendant - layers, dyed lace, embroidery on one side and art work with some embroidery on the other side.

Non of the above are listed in my shop but if anyone is interested in purchasing let me know.

The last pages of Sketchbook 24

Oodles of doodles

watercolour background, pen drawing [leaves], the orange urn and the blue pattern at the top and bottom were from a piece of packaging from Rhodes

pen drawing, watercolour over applied texture, the bird drawing was glued on

watercolour on textured background, collage - bird drawing, the orange part was from a piece of packaging from Rhodes

pen drawing, watercolour background, collage the orange parts were also from a piece of packaging from Rhodes

watercolour sky, pen drawing, the green part of the tree was a found image [not a tree], the large green area was made up of cut out squares - they were parts of pictures of art work in a magazine

the orange and blue parts are the packaging from Rhodes again, I've applied watercolour and drew the doodles/zentangles on with a pen

pen drawing