Bookmarks

I've had 2 fabulous student librarians helping me at school this year and leading the rest of the group. They are leaving Carncot for high school and I wanted to give them a little something to remember me. They each got one of my handmade Christmas cards in this style

and I made them bookmarks with one of my favourite quotes from Neil Gaiman

They are on a base of Pelmet Vilene (similar to a stiff heavy weight interfacing) coloured with Transfer paints

with stamping of acrylic and metallic paints added. I then stitched 2 layers together to create a firm but soft to the touch bookmark.

Watercolour Journal Cover

As I showed you in my last post, I have started my next calendar journal on a pad of watercolour paper.

The only problem with using this is the glossy paper front which isn't going to be any good as a cover. Problem easily solved because this pad is spiral bound and I have options!
Step 1 : Take a piece of Pelmet Vilene and paint or spray it as desired. I'd created this piece last year with ink sprays and stencils just for fun, and it was waiting for the perfect project

I like the sparkle where I added glitter to the heart and leaves

and the inks I used bled through to the back which are a lovely effect for inside a book cover

Step 2 : Bend the teeth of the spirals out enough so that you can remove the covers

Step 3 : trim down the Pelmet Vilene to size (I trimmed it so 1/4 inch bigger than page measurement so will only be about 1/8 inch bigger all around) then clip the paper cover to the Pelmet Vilene and using that as a guide, use a stiletto to pierce holes in the Pelmet Vilene.

Step 4 : Thread the new Pelmet Vilene cover over the open teeth, and then the Cardboard for the back cover. Squeeze spiral binding together and you have a completed journal.  

Completed front cover

Inside front cover

Inside back cover spiral all back together

Really happy with the look and feel of this.

More Pieces for the Indian Wall-hanging

Last time you saw a full view of my progress the wall-hanging looked like this.

Although I didn't start my wall-hanging until this year, I was thinking about doing an indian-inspired piece back in May 2012. In this post I showed some modelling paste experiments. At the end of that day I had some pieces which I have since transformed. This was the modelling paste through a stencil onto sheet music

I first painted the page with green metallic paint, then gold, and cut it into circles.

They've become the base for pile of punched paper, sequins and beads.

On that original playday, we also added paper castings to a treated Pelmet Vilene background

More recently I added some more gold metallic rubbing to highlight the shape and then stitched it to the background with a sari ribbon edging

I pulled out some metal embellishments the other day

I coloured the triangle shapes with alcohol inks - they look really cool if you click on the photo below to see the detail.

And you may recognise the butterflies from a purchase in Taupo

Hopefully next time I post about this project it will be to show it finished...As you can see there are only a couple of gaps left to fill!

Hope you get some creative time this weekend

Teaching!

I am in a state of excitement and nerves....last month I was phoned and asked  if I would like to teach a mixed media themed book class at Angels In Gumboots - a quilt and craft shop in Ashhurst. They had seen my work and liked my Pansy book

I've learned so much since I made that book. I delivered the new class samples today, and will teach next month.

 A couple of different cover ideas

Here's a selection of some of the pages within the Heart Book

 We'll be exploring fabric printing and transfers

 Ideas for tags and combining different materials

 And different ways of including words in your work... among other things

Hopefully everyone will go away inspired with new ideas. Wish me luck :-)

EDIT 19th April : sadly this class has been cancelled.

Fabric House challenge

The other challenge for our Celebration quilt show was to make a fabric house. This was my entry

Front view

Back view

I constructed it using Pelmet Vilene for the base to stabalise it, with a layer of batting and fabric on top. I just love NZ fabrics, and had lots of fun creating my 'kiwiana cottage'. Would love to have a holiday bach like this ;-)
Here are some shots of other houses in the fabric village display.

The black boxes were for the public to vote by gold coin for their favourite.

Liz won with her smurf house and also got third(detailed shots of the houses she made here)

The Gingerbread house (back view above) got second.
If you fancy making a house of your own, here's a couple of links ::
Debbi Crane's Little Pink House of Cards  
Chris Gray has been making beautiful stuffed and stitched houses.
Also, the theme for August at The Sketchbook Challenge blog has been shelter - so a few houses appearing there too.
More about the quilt show to come....

Play time

Went to my friend's yesterday for a play day. I'm wanting to do an indian-themed piece so with that in my head, we tried out a few new techniques that have left us all inspired & wanting to try more.
Had to use melted beeswax again - it smells so lovely and gives a special look to papers.

I rubbed metallic paint through a sweet wee henna hand stencil onto some Trade Aid Handmade paper, and the other is a piece of serviette glued to a tag.

This is the cool henna hands stencil from Crafters Workshop designed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer that my friend has. Used it for the next experiment too.
I've always wanted to try pushing modeling paste through a stencil:

Like this look, LOVE the next one

-- the texture is yummy. The modeling paste needs to be painted and I'll show you where this piece ends up.

Maggie Grey is hugely talented and experimental. This book has the added bonus of free online classes if you buy the book!

One of those classes guided us through our last experiments of the day. We started with paper castings - another Maggie Grey technique which I shared with you here - which we glued to pelmet vilene.

Then we added gesso and sprinkled salt onto that

Followed by a slightly watered down mix of Quink Ink, and finally highlighted with metallic rub-ons

Very interesting that we used 2 different brands of modeling paste, and one yielded a bluer tone than the other. Check out another example of Maggie Grey's using quink ink over white emulsion paint here. Cool huh?
What have you been experimenting with lately?

Book for Rachel & Livvy

My good friend Rachel recently had a baby girl, Livvy. The above are my presents for her today. The shoes you saw in yesterday's post.

The card neatly fits into my card challenge for the month and becomes Card 5
I dearly wanted to make something for Livvy, but was running short on time by the time I got around to starting. Fortunately I had already sprayed and stencilled some watercolour pages in May with intentions of making a small book. 

With these as my starting point, I have created a memory book for Rachel to put in photos/thoughts/poems - whatever she likes to remember some precious moments with baby Livvy. The cover is made of pelmet vilene - it took the sprays and stencils well and is divine to stitch on. I took photos of all the spreads so figured I might as well show you the whole thing.

And here I am with baby Livvy - I've never had a pink one ;-)

Have a lovely weekend everyone