Studio Kit

Showing posts with label collage and mixed media. Show all posts

Working on a concept sketch for a new project tonight. So far, there's a pig, three kids and a donkey; but there will be quite a menagerie at journey's end.

Concept is due by the end of the week, so until then, I'll be burning the candle at both ends. Ahhh, the artist's life!

Xo Kit

So, it seems that rather than post twice per month, I’m posting once a month.

What are you gonna do. Life, am I right?

(These little bunnies are the bits of fluff I was needlefelting in the last post.)

You may have noticed that my recent posts are about beading. No, I haven't gone over to the dark side!

It's because I've a piece in mind that will require extensive beading, and I haven't got clue one about how to go about it. I mean, I know how to sew a bead on, but I also know that it takes more than that.

(front)

I decided that the best way to learn how to bead was to actually do so; so I joined The Bead Journal Project. It's a group of beaders that commits to making one project per month and posting about it.

(right side)

And I also took a two day beading class at BeadFX with Anne Marie Desaulniers.

(left side)

So, here's my January contribution. Just a wee bit late (lol) as it turned out to be much more time consuming than I originally anticipated.

(back)

I've also been working on a commission which has been taking up much of my time!

(top)

As I'm just a beginner, I've got loads of room for improvement, but I'm very happy with it.

Talk to you later!

Last weekend, BSP and I decided to go and see Quilts=Art=Quilts before it closed. I'm currently working on several pieces at once, but they were all either too big to take in the car, or I needed to a sewing machine, iron, or pin roller at the ready, none of which are conducive to working in a car!

So I decided to get a couple of hand pieces ready for the car trip.

(apologies for the varying light levels and quality of the photographs. They were taken in the car and in the hotel, at various light levels with my camera phone!)

I already had a couple of 8x10 pieces of cotton muslin that had already been fused to batting and had a coat of gesso applied. I made them a few years back in preparation for painting, before I knew that I could just apply acrylic paint directly to fabric!

As I needed to get these done lickety split (I was up in the studio at 6:30 before leaving, whipping something together quickly to take!) I decided to work with aquarelles - so having a gesso'd background was perfect.

As you can see, I just lightly stroked on some colour with the side of the aquarelle.

And then I brushed them with a large-ish watercolour paintbrush loaded with water. I had one that wasn't clean, and made that dark grey mark, which initially made me gasp; but turned out to be a happy accident. I liked it and added it to both pieces.

The watercolour dried to the touch almost immediately, which was great, because I had to pop them in the folder, into my bag, and off we went!

I had this idea for an embroidered box behind the tree. Ordinarily, I would have stitched the box first and then added the tree, but I had to go, so I applied the tree first and then started stitching.

Here, it's lighter, and you can see what my "go bag" looked like in the car. The folder on the left contained the other painted piece, some reference photos of grasses and flowers, a box containing embroidery floss, and that little blue cosmetic bag contains, snips, my needle case, etc.

Here I've added some little flowers...

And then we're back to where I am now.

Initially, I was going to embroider the leaves, but I found these little bead leaves in my stash and it seemed like fun to use them, so I popped them on.

More to come!

Happy new year. :)

Kit

*drumroll*

Sometimes when I'm thinking about a bigger project (one that's both physically bigger, and "more important" bigger); I need to stop and have a think about it before I continue. I've been puzzling about a particular aspect with respect to the piece that's due in <gulp> 3 weeks, so in the meantime, I've been catching up on my paperwork.

Why make one, when you can make four? None of this "less is more" stuff for me!

Of course, I'm kidding about the less is more thing, I'm actually most definitely of that ilk - but after I made the first one of these, I thought a set of four would be just the thing for a wall.

Lake of Dreams #1

So each of these is fused and mounted on an 8 x 10 canvas - perfect for hanging just as is, or for framing. They're destined for the space above BSP's desk at the moment, although that's a revolving art space. :)

(At the moment, Erosion is hanging there, although Puzzle was hanging there for a loooonnng time.)

Lake of Dreams #2

So this little set was composed, as you know of paper towels that in a former life were mop up towels from my painting projects.

And after the backgrounds had been pieced and quilted, I added fused elements on top. Usually this is where I'd add painted lutradur, but in this case, I had lots more paper towelling that would do the trick!

Lake of Dreams #3

After they'd been fused on to my quilted background, I did some top stitching - just some simple outlines of the birch trees and the rocks, and then hand stitched lines in the "bark".

I'm really quite pleased with them. None of them are an exact copy of the inspiration piece, but they're all a bit like it, and really remind me of the lake I grew up on in Northern Ontario - which is probably why I loved the inspiration piece so much to begin with.

Lake of Dreams #4

I've been sick all week - so sick in fact that I've had to take three days of work off this week (!) so I haven't done any work at all on the shirt piece. But that's what the weekend is for, right? :)

I hope you have a great one, and I'll see you on Monday!

Joining in at What A Hoot for Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday and with Nina-Marie Sayre for Off The Wall Fridays. Go check 'em out!

Ta dah!!! lol Okay, maybe I shouldn't toot my own horn, but I LOVE this piece - and I love even more that it's made from fricken paper towel that should have been tossed out! (Or I guess, should never have been tossed out. )

I quilted it to a piece of red wool serge (the stuff the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's uniforms are made out of - for no good reason except that I had an appropriately sized piece on hand)

and then cut out bits from my Japanese papers and stitched them.

With addition of some wooden beads, I called it "done" except that (having planned ahead) I had purchased some ready-made canvases to fuse the whole thing to, as I didn't know how well binding a paper towel would go!

I used my gold leaf marker to "paint" the edges of the canvas, and then I really *was* done.

Yay!

P.S. joining in the fun at Mama Love Quilts through Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday go check out the fun!

I actually got this idea from Deborah O'Hare over at Quilt Routes (exhibiting at Booth O14 at Festival of Quilts, this week). Some time ago, she talked on her blog about saving her paper towels for future use in her art. (What she does HERE.) http://quiltroutes.blogspot.ca/2011/09/scrappy-journal-part-1.html I thought it was a cool idea, even though I didn't think I had any intention of working with paper - but decided nevertheless that I would dry out every paper towel I used when I was painting, and save the pretty ones.

I've got a pretty good stack of them now, but when I saw THIS one, I was all... hoooolllyyyyy mackeral. That thing is GORGEOUS. So I had to make something out of it!

There was a big hole in the middle of it from my rubbing during clean up, so I trimmed it out and seamed it up. ( I guess I should add here that it has to be really good quality paper towel to hold up to quilting and stitching.)

I also made a little trip to the The Paper Place and picked up a bundle of some lovelies - including this 6 x 6 sheet of gold with lettering above (If anyone knows what that says, let me know!)