Tuesday 15 November 2016

Next meeting

Just to remind everyone that the next meeting is the Christmas meet! Wow hasn't that come around quick!
But for our Christmas meet we have a present swapsie so don't forget to get a little something (to the value of £5) not much so that we can have a little mini raffle and swap of pressies!
Also if possible could you also bring a little something to use as prizes in our games and activities.

If anyone has any ideas or activities that we could make or do on the day then please let me or Mel know so that we can make sure that everyone knows if they have to bring something (like sewing machine and sewing equipment).

Can't believe it's almost Christmas, I had better do some Christmas shopping!




Beautiful finished canvas

Mel shared her gorgeous finished canvas on Saturday. She had made her base fabric from felt and added stitching and embellishments to great effect. I love the way she has presented the canvas, I love the stitching around the edge it adds such a dimension to her work. The colours are gorgeous too!
Take a look at the amazing details.







So beautiful, thank you Mel

If anyone has any work they would like me to add tot the blog please let me know! 


Making books

We also had a great time playing with paper and dyes to make a paper book. Thank you so much Pauline for a wonderful demonstration and the materials for us to play!

I loved the books that Pauline had made and she showed us how she achieved the colour effects on her paper book. I was surprised to see it was made from wallpaper lining too.

The Koh-I-noor watercolour dye sets were wonderful. They gave such wonderful vibrant colours. We all made our parcels (of paper and colour!). How did your books turn out??? Please let me know or send me photos as I'd love to see what colours and patterns were created.

I made a brown and a blue book. The dye was great at running into sections and creating lines and patterns as well as diffusing into the paper and making lovely grades of colour.

I have decided to combine the book cover experiments from Mel with my paper book and have made some hard covers (my gesso wasn't stiff enough) and am planning to make hard covers for my little books.

Here are some photos from the day. Please bring your books if you have finished or sewn them to the next meeting as I would love to see how they developed.

Would also be great to think about creating the pages

ordinary lining paper ! what a wonderful idea! 



Pauline's amazing books- I wonder what we could create for the inside.....?


These were how mine turned out after I had "unwrapped" them. I was really pleased with the colours they are so vibrant. 


The dye even took hold on the baking paper. I am sure that we can do something with this.

We also made some paper fabric using different papers, fixing them to the fabric with PVA. This forms quite a durable "paper" fabric that can be cut and stitched and applied to other surfaces. 


Angela added some tissue paper and the dye from the paper created a wonderful design on the opposite side! Lush! 



Using tissue and other "additions" to create a beautiful surface from Mel. How did this dry?? Is it soft enough to take stitching?

What an amazing day! 
We did so much and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am so pleased with my little books and am busy trying to think of what theme I can have to develop the pages.

Making book covers!

Thank you so much Mel for a great morning making very squidgy and texture-tastic book covers. I am looking forward to seeing how they have dried and if anyone has added anything further to their covers. I was amazed at how hard the cover was when dry (when made with the PVA). My gesso covers aren't that strong, they are still quite pliable and can be bent and manipulated a little more. I decided to paint some with black gesso and will add some metallic paints onto them with a dry brush or maybe mix mica powders with acrylic gel medium. This always works well with picking up textures. I am not sure what I will do with the other gesso pieces I made as I think they could work well as a background for something. I think I might need to make holes in the fabric first as I think hand sewing might be tough on the fingers!

But I was intrigued by the different things that everyone mixed their PVA flour mix with. Would love to have some "after" pictures to go with the following!



These were made with gesso and flour. The pieces were added later and pushed into the wet gesso mix.


This is the flour and PVA mix, not sure what has been added looks like some seeds and sawdust. The flour/ PVA created some lovely sections of smooth lumps and bumps!


Angela used some fabrics to create her page, I love the mix of colours and designs. Did you add PVA to this??


You can also draw into the wet flour/ PVA mix. This will look amazing when it's painted. Would love to see it! 




The above had different ingredients mixed in and on top of the wet flour/PVA mix. The poppy seeds and lentils were particularly good. I think the sawdust will prove interesting when it's painted too.




Drying takes some time! 

I thoroughly enjoyed this investigation into different textures and using a variety of materials to create different effects. I think it was great fun to have the time and space to just experiment and see what happens! 

Mel did use acrylic paints to colour her covers, the paint goes onto the PVA surface really well.



Never underestimate the power of PLAY !
Thank you Mel for this great activity!