Crafty As L

Hampshire Open Studios started on 22 nd August and finishes tomorrow.   It’s such a great opportunity to see local artists and their work.   My art group has an exhibition in a local church hall together with some craft stalls and there’s been some fantastic art on display.   I displayed my giraffe eye pastel painting together with a kitten pastel painting that I did from a tutorial by Rob Ballentine , although to be honest, I didn’t watch the majority of the videos as they’re too time consuming.   Here you can see the first stages of the painting, getting down blocks of colour and then putting in the nose and eyes.   I wasn’t sure about the background and regretted putting it in but I think it worked out OK in the end. The next stages were to put in the fur details.   The part of this I found challenging was that the face and the paw were in focus but the leg became less focused and the other front leg was out of focus.   It took close observati...

Several members of the Solent Textile Group have been running workshops over the past few months.   It’s been a great way to learn about new crafts and techniques.   Last week’s workshop was hosted by Chris, (the Group’s “Chair”) giving us an introduction to Shibori and indigo dyeing. Mr L asked me the evening before what Shibori was and I had to fess up that I had no idea!   It is a traditional Japanese resist dyeing technique where the resist is formed by stitching, folding, binding or clamping cloth to prevent dye from reaching certain areas.   I did take notes but any errors in the spelling or techniques are all my own. Chris started with an introduction and demonstration of three types of stitch pattern; nui, ori-nui and maki-nui together with two knots, quilter’s and surgeon’s, that we would use at the start and end of each line of stitching.   We had been asked to bring a small piece of cotton fabric to practice so after drawing lines, we started stitch...

For my Visible Image DT post this week, I’m having a go at a double vision card – a card style I’ve seen all over the socials lately.   As it’s impossible to make identical backgrounds, I used the Tomorrow’s Memories paper pad for my backgrounds.   If you don’t have identical papers, you can make a cheat’s version by cutting just one panel into strips and glueing onto a black background.   A stamping platform is essential for this as the panels need to be identical.   After trimming the paper sheets down to 5½” square, I stamped and clear heat-embossed the branch and lady from Carefree Days . For the next stage, to ensure the stencil was in the same place on both panels, I drew around the panel and the stencil on my grid paper.   I blended Versafine Onyx Black ink through the Leafy stencil around the edges of the panels, added gold embossing powder and heat-set. One of the panels was glued to a square of black card ⅛” larger than the panel.   I glue...

Last week, I had another trip up to Oswestry for what I think will become an annual pilgrimage to attend one of Alison Holt’s free-motion embroidery courses.   I had a great time up there and met friends old and new.  You can see all the students' work here  on Alison's website.   As my Mum is not able to sew any longer, I have inherited her old sewing machine and I’d decided to take this with me as it is considerably better behaved than my basic old sewing machine.   (My new computerised machine isn’t ideal for this course).   At the last minute, I realised that I didn’t have an extension table for it, but with my new-found skills for cutting polycarbonate, I fashioned one to fit. My craft room is not at its tidiest at present! The theme for this course was Colourful Landscapes and I found a great image of a lavender field, presumably at sunset due to the shadows, which I was immediately drawn to.   My style choices always seem to include contra...