Fairy Queen

I decided to do a challenge today and chose 'Art Creations Friday' - I love the image they gave for this week........ 'Ophelia' by John William Waterhouse. This is my digital collage version.......You can see the original here.

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.......

Needle-Felting Workshop

Before I start I just want to say a huge 'thank you' to everyone who responded to my last post. I appreciate all your very interesting comments and I will let you know the results of my research into printing on fabric very soon.
Today I have been teaching a needle-felting class at The Beetroot Tree and I want to thank all of the 14 lovely ladies who came along. They showed such great enthusiasm and produced fabulous results! Above you can see the pre-felted pieces I made for them to work on (we cut them up into pieces) - we also used other starting points such as plain bought felt and wool top just on its own.



Not many of them had tried needle-felting before and they all produced beautiful pieces......either a brooch or a picture for a small frame or greetings card.

The Beetroot Tree has a fabulous shop and it didn't take me long to spend my wages.......

These are my latest attempts at making brooches ........ 'etsy maybes'.

Nature Does Not Hurry.......

Mixed-media piece using the digital collage image from my last post.

I'm still struggling to get a really good reproduction into fabric. I've tried a few different ways and spent a fair bit of money!! Has anyone got any suggestions? This one isn't too bad.....its from Crafty Computer Paper and its on cotton lawn (you put it straight through the printer).

The circles are pieces of my needle-felting I cut up. The lace is from an old cotton tablecloth my mum gave me.......I ripped it into loads of pieces and dyed them all differently.

I'm not sure whether its finished or not - I think it needs more stitching.


More playing with Photoshop.....

I can see blue sky........

(click on image)

At last.......today has a promise of Spring in the air.
I can see big patches of blue sky and this is the forecast for tomorrow........I'm excited!!!

Above you can see my latest digital collage; I used these two images from Flickr Creative Commons and Wikimedia Commons.....

I also used some grunge layers and a clipping mask. I've printed it onto cotton lawn and have chosen some bits of fabric and lace to go with it. Now I just neeed to get sticking, painting and sewing. About time too!!!!

Nature does not hurry......
.......yet everything is accomplished.
Lao Tzu

A Prayer.....

Today I am praying for Renee. I've been following her blog for a long time and last year we exchanged gifts of friendship. She has sufferered with Inflammatory Breast Cancer for quite some time and now she is very ill in hospital. Renee is an incredibly special lady and has hundreds of friends who are all praying for her (as you will see if you visit her blog).
If you visit Lynn's blog and click on the video clip you can read more about this terrible disease known as IBC. Everyone should know about it.

Thank you Patty for sharing the lovely angel image which I have used in my digital collage.

Grungy Edges

In what little spare time I've had just recently I've been creating digital images with grungy edges....a technique I discovered whilst playing with photo brushes and clipping masks. I usually buy these from Designer Digitals; a great place for digital art.
Below is the original free image I used from Flickr:The Creative Commons ( Andrea Balducci) - I then added two more images from the same place.
My second collage has about seven layers including the text.
Again, the original image I used was a free one from Flickr by bricolage 108 (see link above).
Finally, this was a workshop task given to us by DJ Pettitt .......to alter a photograph of a barn that she gave us. It was very challenging ...lots of layers, brushes, cloning, masking....I can't believe how much I've learnt in this class! At the start of the year I sat and looked at Photoshop Elements on my computer screen and thought no way will I ever be able to use this......

.......well I have - and I've even got into digital scrapbooking!!! (I take back everything I said about it - I love it!!)

(My DD - middle name Joy - dressed as Marie Antoinette)