Flowers and Books

I bought some EcoArtboard from here last week.....its actually for a project I'm doing for the Suzi Blu Piety and Passion class (but more of that another time). Anyway, its lovely stuff; I like using thick card for inchies, twinchies and ATCs and this is REALLY THICK! (Its like wood.)
You can buy them in packs of different sizes - this is an ATC size....

Above is my Paper Whimsy flower (downloadable sheet). I've added fabric, hand-made papers and machine-stitching.
In Greek, anemone means 'daughter of the wind'.

 More digital art....

I know you can't improve on the beauty of a flower, so I'm just presenting these (from my garden) in a different way. I've done loads of these but I won't bore you with them all in one go :-)

I've also been making lots of Lotus Flower Books this week as I think I may have an outlet for selling them.

(Update: forgot to mention......the trees and the Madonna are stamps on Shrink Plastic.)

It was great to see some different examples of these books on Sue's blog see here. Her fabric version is very special .......

And finally........

Sharne at Sharne's Bits 'n' Bobs is having a great give-away........ such a pretty journal with a wonderful embellished cover. Don't go and enter because I want to win it...... :-)

Another Felting Class...and More Flowers!

Yesterday I taught another felting class at The Beetroot Tree Gallery
....... this time we made felt beads and bracelets. We rolled the wool fibres with warm water and soap to make balls, let them dry, stitched beads onto them, then strung them onto shirring elastic with glass and silver beads in between.

I also paid homage to Jean (you can see her felt and silk flower tutorial here) and we made flowers to add to the beacelets. Instead of using coloured silk flowers though, I bought some very cheap white blossoms on a stem (from Wilko) and took them to pieces.....
......sprayed them with inks.......

..........and then felted them together and stitched beads in the centres.

The ladies were all delighted with their results........

Friends, Flowers......and More Felting

Felting has got me hooked this week! I'm having a go at making hand-felted pictures; this is one of my attempts (a copy of one of my digital pieces see further down the post).

One of my blogging friends, Jean, has posted a delightful video tutorial on felting silk flowers...hers are absolutely gorgeous. Click on her name and go and have a look. Here's mine.........I must go out and buy some prettier silk flowers, all my best ones are made of paper (I tried it with them and it doesn't work!!)I had 2 lovely surprises in the post recently......some gorgeous postcards (of her beautiful digital art) from my lovely friend Lynn along with some vintage buttons and lace........


......and a beautiful paper-collaged card (which you may have already seen on her blog). Lucky me!! Thank you so much Lynn.

Another wonderful surprise came from Lazy Kay (see her blog 'Bean Sidhe') She made a 'scrapbook in a tin' for a talk at her local art group and decided to make it for someone in particular...me! How kind and thoughtful is that? Its a memory scrapbook for my dad and she put loads of wonderful quotes in it. It was half-finished when I received it and she suggested I finish it off myself with photos of dad etc. There are loads of pages and they all concertina inside the tin - such a clever idea, I have done about half of them up to now.
Here are some of them........
Finally...I've been experimenting with printing my digital art onto fabric. The following two were printed onto fabric which I had previously coated with InkAID. The colours are much brighter...success! I'm still going to try out some other methods though.......

Let it snow......

Well I hope everyone is coping ok with the snow...wherever you are in the world (ok; so not my friends in Australia!) I thought we were having a snowy time in England until I saw Patty's photos here - all I can say is WOW!!!! Too deep to even make snow angels!
Talking of which....my current favourite album is Tori Amos's 'Midwinter graces' - have a listen to 'Snow Angel', then search for 'Pink and Glitter', 'A Silent Night With You' and 'What Child, Nowell'......just wonderful. What a voice she has......



There are so many art projects I want to get started on - but for the past couple of weeks I've only managed to make felt flowers .......
.....but after Christmas I will be doing DJ Pettitt's digital art/Photoshop workshop and I CAN'T WAIT!! Click on the picture if you want to take a look.
And I have also subscribed to Suzi Blu's Angel Workshop...so excited about that as well. Again, you can click on the picture to find out more.
Hopefully I can get back to regular posts in January. Mum is getting stronger and will soon be able to manage on her own (thanks for all your good wishes BTW).
So till then.........

Merry Christmas
Happy New Year

to all my wonderful blogging friends.
I wish you love, peace and joy..........

Felting Frenzy!

This week I've been having some fun with knitting and felting. I've seen felted animals on etsy and thought I'd have a go at making a bird.
I didn't really know what I was doing and it didn't look too promising at first......

.......but it grew......
......and finally ended up looking something like a bird!


Here are the knitted flowers before the hot wash.......

..............and after
I've made these before and added beads, but this time I decided to do some needle-felting onto them (after the wash).All the flowers were made from the same ball of variegated Noro wool.


The bird was made from wool top bought from Wingham Wool.


And finally......
I treated myself to a second hand Cricut machine this week - and cut all these out this morning. What fun!!!!
My intention is to scrapbook the huge pile of photos we have........(when I get a spare minute or two).

Felted Flowers

After their hot wash...here they are drying in the sunshine....... (scroll to the previous post for the 'before' photos)

......a few beads added.....

......and a brooch pin.

I want to try some embroidery stitches on the others ...... need to experiment a bit with that!

(PS Got the pattern from http://www.knitting4fun.com/ - it says the kit makes 5 flowers but I have done 7 and there's still some wool left.)