This is as far as I got yesterday – the side seams and hem are unpicked and I have stitched on 3 strips of the shirt fabric to the back of the dress as a guide for getting the other patches ...
Another disaster – felting this time
Needle Felting the Bowl I spent several hours creating two bowl shapes by randomly weaving over a plastic bowl with Courtelle machine knitting yarn. I planned to embroider different designs on the inside and the outside of both of them and then dry-felt with hand-held felting needles to integrate the wool stitching. This was easy...
The Making of an Exhibition
Tonight at 7pm the members of MELD (myself, Margaret Ford, Louise Wells and Julie Devereux) will be giving a powerpoint presentation with informal discussion at WAFTA. We’ll talk about how the group formed, how we came to the decision to hold a group exhibition and how we went about making it happen. We learnt a...
Creating Pod-like Forms
I have been busy with paper mache again recently. I had ideas for our MELD exhibition last year and actually started some works but because I always apply a minimum of 10 layers, alternating used office copy paper and brown paper so that it is really strong, my paper mache forms need a long time to...
Inspiration has struck! :)
Inspiration comes from the strangest of places. With all the printing I’ve been doing lately there have been quite a few painted baby wipes created by the clean up process. They are quite colourful and semi transparent so there were some interesting effects when I layered them (another thing worth collecting!). They are a non-woven...
Fibres West Preparation
We had a newsletter about Fibres West 2015 recently and there was mention of donating works not bigger than 6″ in any direction for a fund raising sale (all works to sell for a set price). So I bought these 6″ canvases at Jacksons last week with the idea that I would create 4 little...
Art Supplies from the Hardware Store
I bought these cords from Bunnings today to experiment with. The brightly coloured Polypropylene string (1mm x 60m) was $4 for the 5 reels, the white Venetian Blind cord (2mm x 30m) was $4 and the Grunt cotton sash cord (5mm x 5m) was $4. The Dunn braided cotton rope (15m) was $3.50 in Big...
Collagraph Plate experiment – loom bands
How I made the collagraph plate To make the collagraph plate I sealed a piece of thick card with Atelier Regular Gloss Gel and used the gel to adhere some loom bands. A big tub of loom bands were bought for $1 in a reject shop (obviously not the “in thing” to do anymore). The...
Painted Papers and Dried Paint
Some more painted paper results. Various papers scrunched and painted with dilute acrylics (Yellow Oxide and Cadmium Scarlet). The detail shot is Chinese handmade paper which was laid over some plastic which had some interesting-looking dried paint on it. I deliberately chose a colour from the opposite side of the colour wheel so that the paint...
Collagraph Plate experiments – shellac disaster
I used the woven card collagraph plate sealed with shellac to print using Jo Sonja and Atelier artists acrylics mixed with Derivan Matisse Open Medium to extend the drying time of the paints. Problems with cleaning the collagraph plate It was ok until I came to clean the plate – at which point it became...
How I made the collagraph plate I have finished weaving paper (it took me ages – much longer than I anticipated!) to make another collagraph plate. I used Selly’s Exterior Aquadhere PVA to glue the finished weaving to a piece of thicker card previously sealed with WestArt Crystal Clear spray varnish (but I forgot about...
