Bead Candy and New Shelves

This is a much better solution! Having the beads in drawers was not very user friendly - plus who wouldn't want to look at THIS calorie-free candy?

calorie-free bead candy

The other shelf we put above the sewing table and I have the cones and larger spools of thread on it - still have the wooden spools for the rayons and embroidery threads.

Now have the rest of the room to tidy/sort - again!

Collaborative Art Journal - Brights

This is the last of the Collaborative Art Journals, which is Brights, belonging to Barbara Pritchard. I received this in July and have been procrastinating about the last pages for over a month :-(
The first page is a branch of wattle - they are the brightest flowers out in winter and there are so many down our street. The flowers are actually tiny pom poms and I made the leaves by using the pinking shears to cut out the shape then snipped the edges.

My next page is just playing around with lots of pieces of bright fabric and threads, starting with roosters Rise and Shine. It is covered with gauze, which I am not too happy with - too dense for this piece.

The next page was fun to make as I had bought some beads because they looked like licorice allsorts, the others I had in my stash. The jelly beans are painted wooden beads. Here is the sweet shop:

Now the piece of procrastination: the parrot! My friend Ray Clifton is a keen photographer and I told him about my idea of doing a bright bird - perhaps a rooster. He found this photo and I have played around with ideas for it. In the end some of the pieces are glued on. I used stitching to make feathers, the background is upholstery fabric. This page is not as bright as the photo, so I included it as well and made a frame for it.

We have all had a great journey working on these journals and will present the finished articles to Rose City Quilters on the October Club meeting.
I think that next year some of the group are wanting to try a similar thing but with a different approach. Perhaps making our own journals using different techniques and with a theme each month - that may be harder to keep on track - we'll see!!

Collaborative Art Journal - Burgundy

I have finished my work in Sue's Burgundy/Wine Art journal.
The first page has a little poem by William Morris about autumn, which I thought was relevant to the time I received it. In the center I painted some gesso and stuck some muslim on top, then with watered down pva glue, glued the liquid amber leaves which I had pressed. The pva gives it a varnished look which I hope will keep the leaves in tact.

This page has a selection of my chrysanthemums which have been organised with fdtoys into a mosaic and you can add the writing.It has been finished off with buttons tied on- can you see the ladybug one?

The little runner has been painted using pebeo Setacolor transparent paint. This allows you to paint the whole piece of fabric then lay a design on top (reverse resist). Leave out in the sun to dry, take off the design and viola!

My piece de resistance is a velvet vignette. The corks have been cut into 3 lengthwise and stitched on with the machine like a button and the wee bottles are findings which just had to be used with this theme!

Collaborative Art Journal - Phase 2

Here are the 2 pages I have done for Dianne. Her choice of colour is blue, with paua undertones. So a little play on one page doing some scrapbooking and a small quilt for the other page.

I chose to do a layout about Moeraki, because when I was about 10 years old, we would go to the lighthouse bach for holidays. Dad made a 'paua' catcher because it was difficult (and dangerous) getting them off the rocks otherwise. There were other little secluded beaches where we could gather mussels and cook them in a kelp bag on a driftwood fire, or just find beautiful little shells.

The fabric page has a selection of fabrics, doublesided, which represents the colours found in paua shells. Some cool beads and stitching that looks like the stilts prints in the sand.

Lots of fun to try new things.