Natures Lace Makers

This weeks tag theme was Lace, and not being a lacy kinda person, opted for the natural lace makers, spiders. I wanted to try and recreate the lovely dew filled cobwebs you find on a damp and misty morning, so here's what I did.

 The paper I used is an A5 piece of Reeves Acrylic 300 gm paper. I like this paper as it is a good weight and has a smooth and a slightly textured side. For this tag I used the textured side. First I coloured the paper using the distress inks above in the true TH method, applying the inks directly to the craft sheet and spritzing with plenty of water. As you can see, I hate wasting stuff so mopped up the ink with some scrap fabric which will used in something else I'm sure.

Next I added another layer of ink in the colours above, in the same way but with less water.

Then I stamped the seed heads using a water proof ink, this is very important for the next step or it just won't work.

The colours are much too vivid for my desired misty morning look so I took a big mop brush and a little paynes grey water colour and washed out a lot of the colour. I then added a wash of heavenly white H2O water colour. 

As you can see the flash on the camera really picks this up so you can't see a lot of what is happening below this reflection, but you can see how lovely and muted the colours have now become.

I cut my tag from this half of the paper. I have been using a size 8 tag for all my tags this month which are just over 3" wide and 6 1/4" long or there about.

The cobwebs were then stitched with a fine silver thread and a really fine needle. I added a bit of cotton lace to the bottom which was dyed using some of the same coloured distress inks and finally added a few micro beads to the webs and lace using a dimensional adhesive. 

I have shown you a picture here with and without the flash as the weather is just too miserable to get a decent picture in natural daylight.

This week in the Joggles MidWeek Muse, Barbara has made a great video on making a book using tags.
You can watch it here. I love this little book and will be giving a try I think.

I can't believe I have managed a full month of Tag Tuesday, and a big month is was with five tags to be done. Februarys themes are looking very exciting and should provide plenty of opportunity to keep playing with my stash of supplies I have accumulated over the years.

A Good Vintage

This weeks theme for Tag Tuesday was vintage, not something I really do, so I took a different approach and made a little mixed media tag of a Green Man who ensures a good crop of grapes to produce "A Good Vintage"

So I sculpted a little face, about 1 1/2" long for my green man and coloured him up a bit with pastel pencils and acrylic paint for the eyes, which are terrible by the way, my eyes just don't cope with tiny detail anymore, should have gone out into the bight daylight and I may have done a better job, sorry no pics, forgot to take any.

 I made the grape vine leaves from some hand dyed scrim and Aleene's fabric stiffener. I treated myself to a Joggles order the other week and thought I would try this fabric stiffener as it was also used in an online workshop that I haven't done yet. To be honest I prefer the Powertex I already have, it soaks into the fabric much better and doesn't leave a shiny finish like the Aleenes does, but thats what the tags are all about, trying new techniques and products. I also coiled some strips of fabric around a wooden skewer cover in cling film to make the tendrils.

 Then came a frustrating hunt for the purple and red beads I knew I had somewhere! Threaded these onto some fine green wire then just twisted them around till they look a bit like bunches of grapes.

  I had a box board (chip board) tag already cut and tested out my new craft mat and blending tool from my Joggles order along with the distress inks and a bit of moon shadow spray to colour up the tag.
Finally I made up the label using inkscape and printed out on the computer, used some rusty hinge and frayed burlap and a gold pen to finish it off.

So there he is. There are some amazing tags over on Tag Tuesday so pop over and have a look at all the lovely tags there .

Bread Update and Ink

Two posts in two days, what is going on? No reno work thats for sure.
Here is an update on the bread as promised. Up until now I have had to add yeast to my sourdough bread to get any rise out of it what so ever, so although I was getting the sourdough flavour, it just wasn't true sourdough. I have been using the kitchen aid to do the initial kneading of the dough, enough to bring it all together, then doing the hard yards myself but still with little success, plus the fact, when kneading the dough the bowl of the kitchen aid gets well and truly stuck in the base, has anyone else had this problem?
I use my bread maker constantly but only to make dough and always have lovely textured wholemeal bread, so thought I would just substitute the sourdough ingredients and do the same thing. The feel of the dough was a vast improvement on any of my earlier attempts and it rose up beautifully while sitting in the kitchen during most of yesterday, my timing was all out to leave it overnight in the fridge, so did it as I normally would with a yeast dough but over a much longer period.
The moment of truth came for me to flip it out onto a hot tray, use the trusty lame to give it a quick slashing and then hope for that "oven spring"

Well it sprung all right, but only at one end? So I ended up with this weird looking loaf and yes the end is missing because I just couldn't resist tasting it piping hot straight from the oven. So if anyone reading this has any idea why this may of happened, please leave me a comment, it's a mystery to me. I thought maybe my oven is a lot hotter one side than the other, very possible as it is an absolute heap of junk and I can't wait to get another but we won't go down that path right now.
It could have been cooked longer and the crumb isn't perfect, but it is slightly chewy with a beautiful crust and tastes just great.

I made my starter and bread using this cookbook

It is one of the best cook books I have come across for a while. The bread making section is brilliant and not too complicated. The starter is simple and straight forward and as long as you use organic flour and filtered water, amazingly quick. I have the happiest, bubbliest starter sitting in my fridge ready for my next attempt.

I used the recipe for the Rustic White Bread with Madre, substituting the white flour for wholemeal and increasing the water content by 50ml.

I put the ingredients into the bread maker in the order I would if making a yeast wholemeal dough and used the dough setting.  This is the closest I have come to that perfect sourdough loaf, and by using the bread maker, the one that took the least amount of effort. It has been over two years now since I went out and bought a loaf of bread, so hoping I can get this method to work with consistent results.

On to the Inks and stamps, they arrived yesterday afternoon, too late to do anything with, so this morning I went out the back to play around with them. They are so versatile and I know I am only scratching the surface of what they are capable of but here are a few pages I have started and some "handmade" tags.