Hello, this is a note to let you know my blogging has now moved to here
Please adjust your links:) Thanks so much, it will be lovely to keep in touch over at my new place.
I’m offering a special stitched giveaway today so do follow the link now……. thank you!
A very early morning to you…. again! I seem to be awake with the sunrise, it is always the same during the Summer months…. I don’t mind and I don’t feel too tired so…. I nipped outside and took a close-up shot of flowers growing in a container….. these lovely nemesia have their morning dew…..
Well, the news for today is I have a Midsummer Madness Sale happening in my november moon doll shop! It has started already, just now infact, so do take a look, dolls at ’silly’ prices for just a few days - until the 21st:) The imaginary friends were happy together and I hope happy apart too… I enjoyed making the collection and who knows, maybe, just maybe there may be another happy troupe put together in the future…
here’s a group shot I haven’t shared before…. I had this idea, you know how ideas go, to have a nice cosy scene of the dolls together, just prior to…. well they all look rather tipsy here in my armchair, don’t they, but oh well, here they are……
Enjoy your - my goodness it is Thursday…. Thursday….. and I think there could be a giveaway tomorrow, so…. yes:)
mixed media spoon set ‘write a poem every day’…. each spoon in this set of five is different and individual but as I worked so I realised how they wanted to stay as a set, a family, a storytelling collection of mixed-up words and ideas, fragments, frayed edges, buttons and quirky wood……. As I worked I made patterns with words and meanings led to other thoughts….. The button with the floral handle has such a nice curve and the floral part is stuffed and soft, contrasting with the wood….. the central spoon has my embroidery handwriting, of course, and so is something of a mother spoon to the others…. I hope you enjoy looking at these….. They were very time-consuming to make, of course I did not realise this as I started out, just how long it would take, but once you start putting the ingredients together it’s best to just stick with with it and see what is what….:)
my dreams - an individual mixed media spoon - featuring one of my tiny stitched portraits with hanging threads….. A mix of machine embroidery and hand stitch work on this piece….. Both the spoon set and this spoon will be in my shop later today. I’ll also be including the ’spoons’ monoprint in this week’s update - I am of course going to add a much larger selection of monoprints into the shop during July, but it seems only right to let the spoon drawing into the spoon update:)
Meanwhile, I have a few more pieces in mind to complete before my sewing machine gets a very much needed rest (and clean/service)…. actually I am looking forward to working on my drawings and some hand stitch work. If you have noted the layout of this blog looks a bit different - then it does! I have been tinkering, not exactly with success, but I hope to get it looking the way I want to, one day….. Thanks and have a good Wednesday x
Moonlit House - a newly created stitched work - I’ve made this one into a hanging piece rather like a very elaborate and larger ornament. But of course it could ideally be framed… in my shop tomorrow….
Well, yesterday seemed to be The Day of the Spoon - and I’m still working on them! Yes they are very time consuming and also one idea leads to another…. Here’s an in-progress shot, not completed at all here but all the same interesting…
If there is a theme to my working at the moment - and quite often a theme comes about… then it is ‘home’…. things domestic, the spoons of course and I’m also working on very different dolls….but they will not be in my shop just yet….
primitive doll with carved stick arms and legs, papier mache head and body…. still work to do….. these new dolls are very much influenced by old folk art dolls - I love the very primitive ones…. old Queen Anne dolls…. one thing I would like to do over the Summer is make a return visit to the V&A museum of childhood at Bethnal Green to do a little more research…. Now of course I am not interested in reproducing what has been made but creating my own interpretation of…..
I hope your start to the week has been a good one. Thanks always for your comments and if you are a new visitor to my blog say hi - sorry if I cannot reply in person, I am the worst blogger ever - no really I do try to reply to questions and hope to spend more time catching up with blogs as things quieten a little in the Summer….. For now a thank you and I have more work to do for my shop update tomorrow… x
1. white coral, 2. Funny Face, 3. AUTORRETRATOS DE LA MEMORIA, 4. Paperboats, 5. Untitled, 6. We are like toys sometimes, 7. life drawing, 8. Untitled, 9. caressing, 10. Dibujito (Sketch), 11. 00, 12. diary pages, 13. #3, 14. horse, 15. Final exhibition set up, 16. abstract collage, 17. cup of tea?, 18. Domestic Inclusions #2 (front), 19. today is a borrowed blue, 20. Untitled, 21. CRASH, 22. Pencil Drawing 1989, 23. Deighton’s improved transfers, 24. Saint Matthew w filter, 25. nuno felt textures, 26. Getting things ready to take to the gallery, 27. th1a, 28. notebook, 29. flickr.com/photos/93283960@N00/3609257681/, 30. beg the dawn, 31. mobile nuage, 32. Women’s Suffrage, 33. silk buck, 34. view (8-6), 35. Gesso, Inks and Rubber Stamping FRIENDSHIP ATC ACEO created for MAMMA challenge, 36. Untitled
Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.
Many thanks to all the artists and photographers for sharing their work via my Flickr contacts. I hope you enjoy this mosaic of favourites.
A very early Monday to you! I am up early, lots to do today…. I can’t tell for certain what the weather is going to be like today, rather alot of low cloud at the moment but I think we could expect sunshine….
This week - I have a busy time ahead. Embroidery shop update Wednesday. So, plenty of stitching, need to get some supplies, papier mache and wood… thanks for your recent comments re: my drawings and spoons:)….. there’s a giveaway happening here at the end of this week…… Have a good week and more soon x
large ‘poem’ spoon….. a singular sculptural piece, one of several spoons I have started to make recently…. the handle is found wood and the spoon ‘bowl’ is papier mache using paper from an old novel (wuthering heights to be exact)….
I’m working on a collaborative project with Beth of tangled sky studio and the spoons I am making will feature in this work - more on that as it develops….
Meanwhile I am making spoons for my project with Beth, making spoons for myself and for you - perhaps making forks also?! why not…. You may remember several months ago now I made papier mache spoons. I intended to develop these ideas further but of course the ideas were put on hold for a while and now I have come back to it….
gathered dried sticks… my two children helped me by taking a short walk down the road and collecting larger sticks from the grass around ‘the green’ where there are some beautiful established trees…. I’ve also had a couple of sticks propped by my work table for several months, drying out… So today, a lovely sunny day, I spent some time outside carving the bark, cutting and slicing the wood…. beginning to make handles for all the spoons I want to make… some of the handles will have embroidery patches and/or wire, and other details I am sure wil come to mind….
carving spoon handles…. so you can see most will be slighter than the large one at the beginning of this post…. but I am aiming to make all sorts:) I hope to have a selection of mixed media spoons and other things in my shop this coming Wednesday….
I hope your weekend has been a good one - no shopping list this week, my apologies, the spoons and sunshine took over! take care and thanks always for your comments x
Spoon
I continue with my ongoing interest - ok obsession - with monoprint drawings… (monoprint, monotype, drawing with inky clouds, whatever)…please accept my apologies for the rather greyish paper tone, this is not so, the drawings are on off-white creamish paper - but photography and light didn’t work out today….
angelic series
Chain…… A selection of my recent monoprint drawings will be in my etsy shop through the Summer! Yes, as you may have read, during July and August my shop will be having something of a ‘break’ from the stitch artwork (and I take a little time to work on new designs)…. and so I’d like to call it my ’summer show’…. and will be offering a range of work, from the tiny to the not so tiny…. oh little artist books too…..
So yes that does mean I have two more weeks of stitching (ah yes!) to share with you… and look out also for a giveaway next week (you’re the first to know:))
Until then, I wish you a very happy and relaxing, inspiring, creative, lovely weekend x
two brooches….. just completed today….. ‘that new kind of novel’ (I like the playfulness of that phrase) - a mixed media brooch…… and a new round brooch, black with lovely pale pink…. In my shop in just a short while…..
oh and if you have not seen already - please take a look at Ressurection Fern’s post about our ‘poetry stones’ collaboration - a new stone completed by Margie using a snippet of my handwriting in stitch….
OK I’ll get on with putting new new new in my shop very shortly….. thank youx
a selection of tiny poetry hearts - in my shop later this evening…. two of the hearts are machine embroidered with the words: ‘write a poem every day’ - which has become a phrase used in several of my artworks over time…. something of a typical phrase of mine, something heartfelt…. another heart reads: ‘poetry saves my life’ - ok perhaps not literally, or perhaps literally:) And another heart reads: I could tell you stories about the rain…. this heart has buttons hanging down to suggest a heart transforming into a rain cloud, perhaps…
I’ve also been working on new mixed media work, including this collage ‘birds wrote poetry’….
birds wrote poetry…… do you see the female figure is holding a rain cloud….. yes I have been inspired by the rain we have been seeing in recent days. Rather than moan about it, better to be inspired….. I kept this work pared-down, I wanted to keep the softness and to give the loose threads as much focus as they need…. this work will also be in my shop later…
watching the rain……
and also I am still just completing a few new brooches, and if I can do so they will be in my shop later too…. I hope your week is going well x
the night you became an owl and we set you free…….look carefully and yes there is a little owl creature there, amongst other figures, in this detailed smaller piece….
I gave my sister a small artwork stitched in dark sepia, a gift last Christmas, and I looked at it recently and thought - must use the dark sepia brown thread…. infact I needed more so… I get through a lot of thread. I don’t mind telling you my average thread ’spend’ is three smaller or two larger reels - a week. I don’t know how many metres or miles it all adds up to, but a lot. At the end of a day’s stitching my working area is covered with snippets, no matter how I try to catch the loose threads and put them in the little wicker basket bin…..
hope you have a good Tuesday x