Wax, Rust and a Sneak Peek

Well I have plenty of time at home at the moment, but don't seem to be getting an awful lot done, but her are a few pictures of what has been happening the last week or so.

The soy wax flakes arrived a few weeks ago and I have been eager to see what they will do. Karen came round on Monday, so we made up some print paste with the procions, got out some old pieces of very pale fabric and had a play. I love this wax, so easy to use and has great potential. Here are a couple of samples.

Karen tried out a tjanting and this is the wonderful result

Simple block print

I also spent a day trying out the rusting technique from the textured surfaces online workshop I have been doing. This is a totally addictive technique and I could have dyed everything in sight rusty. Here are a couple of samples, the last piece is tyvek that has been ironed lightly, I find I do not have enough control with a heat gun so use the iron and a light touch.

Ok, poor Pandora has been completely neglected while I have been trying new dyeing and painting techniques, so here is a sneak peek of her. She still has a long way to go, but as I have changed some of the materials from the original workshop, it's going to take a bit of experimentation to get her right. I have a few Christmas projects on the go at the moment, but once they are done, I must get back to poor Pandora .

Something Old Something New

  A while ago, I made this box from hand dyed fabrics, threads, silk paper and all sorts of braids ect. I have always intended to make a book to go in the box, at the moment it contains two of my favourite novels. The textured surfaces workshop has given me all sorts of new ideas for pages for the book. With the holidays coming up, who know's I might actually get this done.                                             

                                  

 

My Golden paints arrived early this week and I have had a chance to try them out on two canvases I had prepared for the workshop. I bought three interference paints in green, violet and red and just had to try them all out on these. The red has given them a lovely purple glow. I'm quite happy with the way they turned out, but need to do a lot more experimenting with these new paints to get the best out of them I think.

Coloured Samples

This weekend was a strange sort of couple of days, the weather didn't know what to do with it's self and neither did I. So I pottered about, picking up some of the samples I had made for the Textured Surfaces lessons I am currently doing. Added a bit of this and a bit of that and ended up with the pieces below. 

I have bought some lovely golden heavy body acrylics on line, which arrived today :) so can started adding more colour to the other pieces very soon. 

Senior Art Supplies  carry an extensive range of these paints and are wonderful to deal with.

So here are a few samples, love the way they are turning out and having all sorts of wonderful ideas how to use these techniques.

Seed Pods and Samples

While we were away in Queensland I collected these lovely seed pods. I plan to use the jacaranda seeds in place of the shells in my Pandora piece, and maybe the lovely little flowery looking ones. I was told the names of the trees I collected them from, but for the life of me can't remember what they are. I will be covering them in the powertex which I have been using on my FME pieces which should preserve them.

Jenny, my friend from work collected this lovely paper bark, I'm hoping to use this for Pandora's skirt. 

I have also signed up for another on-line workshop Textures Surfaces run by two amazing textile artist Carol McFee and Lynda Monk.

Here are a few of the samples I have made so far. I have been out in my studio finding "stuff" I have had stashed away for years, just waiting for a workshop just like this one. The trouble is I seem to spend as much time looking for "stuff" as I do making the samples. It's amazing how you can put something away, never to be found again!!

Tyvek pieces waiting to be incorporated into a sample piece.

Moulding paste used with texture plate, stencil, and bubble wrap.

Hand and machine couching, mulberry bark and expandaprint

Latest Queensland Trip

Back from our two week trip up North, fishing and generally relaxing. This year we drove up the coast as we called into Brisbane to catch up with an old friend. It has been years since we have driven that way and made a nice change. We stopped at Ballina for breakfast, had the best eggs benedict I've had in years, the cafe we chose was right on the waterfront, where we found these wonderful sculptures.

The first dam we fished was Peter Faust in Proserpine, just north of Mackay. The south easterly blew every day we were there, shutting down the fish, and as you can see from the photographs, we had a few showers, not good fishing, but made for some great photo's.

From Proserpine, we drove back south to Awoonga and spent three days fishing the back of the dam and bush camping. The wind still blew, the fishing was terrible and we were hit by a big storm one evening which made for a wet and interesting night!!

From there we went to Cania Gorge and stayed at the cottage for a week, luxury after camping in the back of the 4 WD. The weather improved and we finally started to catch some fish.

We took a day off from fishing to drive up to Kroombit Tops National Park to visit the crash site of a WWII bomber the "Beautiful Betsy"

Bottle brush trees by the river

The drive took us through several cattle stations, with numerous gates to be opened and closed, and of course no two latches were the same LOL.

We stopped at these cattle yards for a coffee, they have been here since the 1800's

If you look carefully at the lean to by the gate, you will see that the stumps are actually a table and stools, I thought of this as one of the oldest out door settings in Australia.

Here you can see how two trees have been utilised and a ramp made for loading the cattle.

This little guy was very obliging and sat perfectly still for this photo.

Finally reached the top and got these pictures from the look out. There was some burning off going on lower down so the view was a bit hazy.

Still a good bit of 4 Wheel driving to go to get to the Beautiful Betsy.


It took a good half a day to drive to the site, but was well worth it. Although it is a very sad place as eight airman lost their lives here, it was also fascinating to see the wreckage that was not discovered for nearly 50 years. Looking at the wreckage, it was hard to believe it had been there for five let alone fifty plus.
We decided to take a different route back, didn't connect with the road we had planned to meet and ended up doing some pretty extreme 4W Driving. This photograph was taken after the hairy stuff when we are nearly back to the main road. Looks quite lovely, but you should have seen what we had to climb to get there!!

Our last camping spot before we headed home was at Wuruma Dam. There were no other boats there and only two other campers so was very peaceful. Sleeping in the back of the 4WD made it very quick to pack up and get on the water, so we managed to squeeze in just one more fishing session before heading home. This proved to be the best session of the trip.

A brown dragon fly on a brown stick in brown water, but see how the sun has made the wings look like cut crystal.

View of Wuruma Dam

Our last camp with the early morning mist on the water - paradise!!

Ok had to include some fish photo's, it was a fishing trip after all

Steve with a nice Wuruma bass.

Another nice bass safely returned to the water.

A pair of 42cms on a double hook up.

Best fish of the trip, a whopping fat 53cm, my best yet and probably the best 

I will see for a long time

FME Lace

I have been wondering for a while if I could make lace using Free motion, and well, yes you can as long as you don't want it to look like mass produced lace, which would be silly really, cos you can just go down the road and buy it!! I wanted something to go around the inside edge of my gourd so made up a length of solvy about 80 cms long and four layers thick to give it a bit of substance. I used a couple of the pre - programmed embroidery stitches on my machine to make the top part, then hand drew the leaves hanging down underneath. I'm happy with this piece, it has a lace type look about it, but is very irregular and more organic sort of looking. It will do just great for it's intended purpose. I'm sure you can make perfect looking lace with a proper embroidery machine, but it was not what I was trying to achieve, so all good :)

I was having a look on Louise's, face book the other day and came across this photo, it is a project she had to do when doing her Graphic's Diploma. This page set up was done by her friend, but I love this picture of her, and miss her while she is on her travels. She was my colour advisor, now I have to get her on skype and hold the bits up to the camera for her to see, not quite the same, but will have to do:)

This will be my last post for a while as about to embark on another fishing trip up North, hopefully have lots of photo's when we return.

 

A Hot and Windy Day

I really don't like this hot windy weather!! Don't seem to get much done :( , but I did manage to spend an hour or so on the sewing machine making more leaves for my Seven Sins piece. Put away the fabric mover and went back to a hoop, so much easier and really felt like I was painting with threads, was actually quite relaxing.

So here is another picture showing a wider variety of colours, getting there, but still more to do, these haven't had the powertex on them yet, I will wait until they are all made and do them together. 

My sage has gone to flower, looks lovely, but no doubt this is the sign of it's end, will have to get some more so I have plenty for the Christmas sausage rolls. My leeks and beans are going really well, looks like beans for dinner tomorrow as there are some ready for the picking.

       

My new book, James Christensen's, "The Journey on the Imagination" came the other day and I have only had a quick glance through it, but it has sparked my imagination all right, and my next sculpt has been born :) I bought this little gourd at Morpeth a month or so ago, and the little clay dragon head is what is left of a relief tile I made with year 7's. The poor thing didn't make it through firing so I broke off the head and threw the rest. I have big plans for these two little piece's.

Today's Play

Since the beginnings of the school holiday's I have been working on the Seven Sins workshop piece, which is coming along slowly, you'll just have to be patient and wait until she is finished.

Today I got out my fabric mover, I have a love hate relationship with this thing, love it when it does what I want, hate it when it doesn't live up to my expectations. Today it played nicely and I made a few leaves and little flower like forms that will go onto the Seven sins piece. Here they are, only a couple, I have a lot more to do and with other colours too. I have coated them in the powertex which I haven't used before and they are wonderfully hard. I will be using these on the base of my piece instead of the buttons, for those of you that have checked out this fabulous artwork by Marilyn, you will see what I mean.

Really need to work on my photography skill :(