St. Ives Collage

Still enjoying the company of my visitors. Yesterday was nice and we had a "potter" in St. Ives and I took some nice pictures which I will show you at the weekend when I will have a bit more time

On my desk - this is a little collage of St. Ives I'm working on. Here I am just arranging the fabrics, lace and bits and playing with the composition

The shells are from Porthminster beach















I used a photo I took in February and printed it out in very pale sepia. The sky was a white grey and it was very bright that day. I love the light in St. Ives














Behind the lighthouse pier you can see what remains of the wooden posts of another pier. You can only see them at low tide but I like the composition of the posts

Twitter Twitter

Where to start? I recently went to Tenerife and had a lovely time and beautiful weather. It was very nice to have a rest and be able to sit outside in the sun stitching ...


















We hired a car so managed to get around to a few different places and my favourite day was when we went to Adeje, a really old Spanish town with very old architecture, buildings with character, street cafes, beautiful mountain backdrops and pretty flowers

We sat in a street cafe and had tapas, Spanish omelette, fried cheese with homemade bilberry jam and tuna & tomato salad and it was lovely eating al fresco


















From a postcard







White hibiscus













I didn't take loads of photos this time, but got a few nice flower shots

Now I'm back and gradually catching up! I still need to visit all my favourite blogs but I did manage to visit the photostreams of every single one of my flickr contacts, phew! What a lot of talented artists and photographers there are on flickr! I love flickr!!!

Driving back from the airport I was listening to Steve Wright on the radio twittering on about twitter and it sounded fun so I joined up!! So now I twitter, occasionally, I think, as it will just be another distraction that takes me away from creating. If you are on twitter look me up but be warned there are bound to be periods of twitter inactivity followed by enthusiastic bursts of "stuff" now and again!













I joined up on Saturday and by the evening I had been contacted by Felting Craft Gossip. Linda Lanese featured some pages from my sketchbook (the work you see at the side of my blog). By Sunday, the feature had been copied on two other web sites so far (that I know of!). It was all a little too fast for me, I'm still thinking whoa!! Stop, I want to get off!!















Lots of other things to catch up on too!! I'm a bit behind with "A Year of Colour". The challenge for March was "monochrome" and, although I made a monochrome collage, I never properly got round to the task last month. So before I move on to April "polka dots" I am posting a few monochrome pictures

"monochrome" means using one colour or tones of only one colour. So "on my desk" I have gathered some lovely fabrics, threads, lace and buttons in shades of "natural" that I'm going to use in my next couple of stitched collages for my Calico Journal














Gathering vintage lace, threads, buttons and old photographs














Some of this lace is special as I used it on a wedding ring pillow I made when I got married





























I have some Victorian buttons in here somewhere ...














Lots of photographs borrowed from my Mum to scan and work with - this will keep me busy all year ...


















I pulled out a couple of photos that I want to use and I've made a start ... will show you them at the weekend

No mosaic for Mosaic Monday this week I'm afraid. I made one, posted it to flickr, then decided I hated it so I deleted it!!!

Today I had a spring cleaning urge so "Gardening Monday" happened today. The last two days we've had rain on and off but today has been fab so the garden was weeded and swept, the gutters cleaned out and washed, and I washed all the windows and front door too. Arn't I good? Now for some more stitching and blog visiting ... bye for now

Buttons and Bows

On my desk ... a few more little tea light holders I started making last week for Christmas Crow Day that I just need to finish off before I can get back to other things. I made them with my winter white/snow theme that I always love at Christmastime













I had fun making these - I used small cranberry sauce jars and decorated one with vintage heart shaped lace. On one of them I stamped the word "snow" onto the glass with pearlised ink sprinkled with winter white embossing powder, heated with a heat gun and added white snowflakes. This one needs some ribbon round the top and the third one I need to finish off the beading ...


















On the previous post I got round to adding a couple of old photos I found dated "Summer 1964". Even though I was only two years old at the time, I remember the dress I was wearing. My mum made it and she sewed different colour buttons down the front which fascinated me when I was little ... see I loved buttons even then and, by coincidence, I was born at home in a flat above a dress shop that was called "Buttons and Bows" ...

On my desk

I can't begin to think about pink for "A Year of Colour" because I have my seaweed hat on still and I'm currently working on several seaweed pieces, which I will post at some stage. Maybe it's the gemini in me, but I just can't seem to work on one thing at a time. I end up having half a dozen things on the go and then they all come to fruition at the same time. I don't seem to be able to work any other way. My ideas flow quicker than I can keep up with them

This is what's on my desk at the moment














I've photographed each stage of this project and may post it as a tutorial at a later stage

Seaweed

On My Desk Wednesday - I've not had much time this week to work on my seaweed pieces, but I made a start. I went through my box of greens and gathered some interesting fabrics, sheers, threads and bits. Some of the fabrics I'd hand dyed for previous projects. This is what I found:











































I knitted two lengths of seaweed in one ply tapestry threads on very small needles which took ages but I wanted a thin fine look for it. I want to use these on the stitched collage with machine embroidery

Seaweed on my desk

Due to wintry weather Gardening Monday happened on Tuesday for the second week running. I feel really pleased that we have almost finished the winter clearing and I like to think I'm making lots of room for all the little bulbs to spread out and wiggle their toes. While digging around I found these lovely pieces of bark which I had to rescue and I know I will use them in a project
















On my desk I have some angora wool tops (that I got at Exeter Stitch Show back in September), some yarns in olive and mustard and pieces of dried seaweed































I'm sorry that these pics are not all that clear - my camera has been playing up for a while now, the "zoom" has finally decided to go on strike and won't do anything it's told. Hubby is treating me to a new one as a very early birthday pressie as he knows I'm lost without it, so I will try and replace these pictures later. All for now, got to go play ... have a lovely day ...

Oh, one more thing, just to say I am still plodding through my old sketchbooks and posting older work on my "other" blog - Mixed Media Textile Art - I will be posting a new design project next week ...