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........

What to do with Digi-art?

When you create digital art a lot of people ask what will you do with it? A very good question!
Well I am trying to think of different ways of using mine and up to now I have printed some pieces onto fabric and made collages, I have had some images made into postcards and greetings cards and this week I have been attempting to put some onto woodblocks. I'm not sure this one is finished yet; I may add some lace or other embellishment.
If you have any other ideas I would love to hear from you!

Time Away........

I won't apologise for having been AWOL for the past few weeks.......I know you understand :-)

DH and I went away for a few days - more on that later - plus I've been spending some time reading, visiting friends and gardening. I'm sorry I haven't done any blog-visiting for a while ; I've spent very little time on my PC because of a problem with my neck. Anyway....following a visit to the physio earlier this week I'm feeling a little better.

A couple of weeks ago we visited my lovely friend Rosie and her DH, who looked after us extremely well. We spent a happy afternoon sitting in their garden in the sunshine, watching the blue tits in the trees around us, then Rosie and I played in her art room for a while whilst the men cooked us a fantastic dinner. Can life get any better? :-)

Over the next few days we moved on to the Malvern Hills, Great Malvern, Ironbridge and finally Wightwick Manor. This gorgeous house was furnished under the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement and has original William Morris wallpapers and fabrics....plus Pre-Raphaelite works of art. At the top of this post you can see the digital collage I created from the photograph below. This is only the side view of the house.........the full view is further down.
23/4...thought I should explain that the face is William Morris and the quote is his most famous one: "Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or beautiful".


Two more Wightwick digi-collages, with the originals below......

........and here's the whole house. More detailed photos to come in my next post.
Remember that house shaped box I showed you? Well some of you guessed correctly; it's for my father's ashes. We weren't sure where to put them and tried to think of all his favourite places. Whilst we were pondering over various possibilities Mum jokingly said 'His absolute favourite place was sitting in your conservatory Linda!' Over the next week the idea grew on me ...... and gradually people have begun to accept it.
So what's left of Dad is now in a sunny corner of our conservatory....I think he would approve :-)

And finally, I wanted to show you this rather gorgeous photo stand I bought recently; it's perfect for displaying my digi-art..........

Paper Whimsy Ladies

Four digital collages I created for the new Paper Whimsy group which I belong to (scroll down to see link on left hand side). All done with PW downloadable images for digital art....... see here .


Other bits and pieces are mainly from Designer Digitals.
I painted the wings myself.
(Please click on images for a better view.)

Life........

Digital collage - photo from Wikimedia Commons (free), clipping mask from Lynn Grieveson at Designer Digitals plus various layers and textures.



I love this photograph of my MIL when she was a girl in the early 1920s (with her mother and siblings); she is the one on the left. Its a delightful composition - although a litttle precarious I suspect! She would have been 89 next month but sadly she died yesterday from heart and kidney failure - she had been in hospital for over 6 weeks.
So once again, in the space of only 2 months, my DH and I are grieving the loss of a parent and organising another funeral. But at the same time we are aware of how lucky we are that our parents both lived long and happy lives.


At the weekend we made this box between us (DH cut up the MDF and I glued it together). Today I am going to gesso it ready for decoration. It has a very special purpose.....I wonder if you can guess what its for. Maybe you need a clue?
Mmmmmm....... its not very conventional........and you might possibly be a little shocked when I tell you. Or maybe not? :-)

As you can see, its over 12" tall.
What do you think...........?

More Digital Collage

Flower from Wikimedia Commons, clipping mask from Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals, quote from Marcee Dugger at Digital Scrapbook Place.......plus a few coloured layers and filters.


Cow parsley photo from my sweet friend Jo (Tanglefrost), scratched layer from Night-fate-stock at deviantART, grunge border from Katie Pertiet at Designer Digitals plus some of my own layers.

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.