New prototype earrings...

Well, I've been out of commission for a while being a bit under the weather, but I'm on the mend now :).  One good thing about my crafting is that it can be done with minimal expenditure of physical energy (...not including eyesight!).  


I've been working on some earring prototypes after being given a new idea (thanks Mum!).  I found some lovely vintaj patina metal blanks and earwires on Etsy, here, and have been seeing what I can turn them into.  Here are the results so far!

Clementine

Nous sommes du soleil

Nutmeg

Atoll

Orchid

Gamboge

I've been playing around with the idea of adding beads, as you can see with the 'Gamboge' pair.  I have some lovely findings from PatinaQueen and some fabulous beads from CaladoniaMarch  on the way - so once they arrive I will be able to try out a few more ideas.  I've been thinking about possibly adding a very few beads to my necklaces also - we'll see!

October giveaway~!

Inspired by the wonderful autumn foliage that is adorning Edinburgh at the moment, up for grabs in my October giveaway is a kumihimo braided bracelet in rich shades of lime, copper and amber.

A close-up of the braid texture:

The bracelet is made from a 16-tama braid, made on my marudai.

At the moment she measures 21.5cm long - but I will happily alter her length for the lucky winner :)

If you would like to enter the giveaway, just leave me a comment on this post, and I will put your name into the draw in a week's time~!

Good luck!

My favourite supplies... Part 1!

I've been thinking for a while now about how lucky I am to have access to all the wonderful sellers who produce the various supplies that I use in my work, and wanting to acknowledge that in some way.  The internet, and especially Etsy, have really enabled me to 'make' in the way I do.  When I bought my embellisher, I really had no 'formal' idea of what to do or how to use it 'properly'- but I was able to find shops on eBay and then Etsy that stocked things I had never even heard of, much less though of using, to try out - and what's more shops run by helpful and friendly sellers (which makes such a difference!). It is because of these sellers that I am able to enjoy crafting as much as I do - so as a 'thank you' I have decided to post occasionally about my favourite suppliers.  Hopefully you will see something that will inspire a new project!


~*~*~*~*~*~


My first favourite supplier is Sarah, of therainbowgirl, on Etsy.  Sarah is a fellow UK Etsian (always great as it means the goodies arrive faster!!) who sells really beautiful hand-dyed threads, fabrics and fibre.  

Sarah has a wonderful eye for colour, and puts together many marvellous selections of different hand-dyed fabric like this:

I've used pieces of Sarah's fabric for smocking (the variegation of colour looks great), embroidery and also in my fibre art cards.  Here's some more beautiful examples, which you can find here:

Unfortunately I'm no quilter (but it's on my list...!) - but I can imagine a gorgeous, sunny quilt made using these lovely pieces.

Sarah also puts together fantastic mixed thread selections, which I love to use for embroidery, couching and my kumihimo jewellery. This beautiful sandy and green selection available here:

Another great idea is her fabric and thread kits in co-ordinating colours, like this one:

And then there's these beauties:

- a 'mixed bag' containing cotton and muslin fabrics, lace, trim and threads, again all hand-dyed in such pretty colours.  I have found these packs so useful for using with my embellisher and as the basis for fibre art pieces.

These are delicious silk-carrier rods which give wonderful texture to felted pieces:

-and there are plenty more wonderful delights in a tempting rainbow of colours to browse in the shop.  If you ever buy supplies (and come on, I know you do :P) I urge you to check it out!

I am a regular customer of Sarah's (she knows my address off by heart!) and using her wonderful threads and fabrics in my work is a real pleasure.  However, Sarah is not only a supplier - she is also a very talented embroiderer and artist - check out her new blog for some wonderful work and inspiration.

Thank you, Sarah!

Fibre art cards

My series of fibre art cards is one of my favourite ideas I have come up with this year.  Each one is like a mini-fibre art piece, but small enough for some relatively fast project-completion satisfaction!  They've happily been pretty popular on my Etsy shop, so I've recently made another set of cards, which I'll start listing later today.


Here's how I make them:

First of all, I make small pieces of felted fibre using my embellisher.  I use all sorts of fibres - silk, wool, bamboo, soy, flax - as well as scrim, scraps of velvet or cotton fabric, ribbon, nepps and threads.  Here's the latest batch hot off the embellisher:

I use plain square white cards, to set off the colours - but I mount each fibre piece on a small background square of paper or fabric.  I choose each one according to each fibre piece:

I've used hand-dyed cotton fabric, mulberry paper, mulberry tissue paper, abaca tissue and scrim.

I mount the paper or fabric backing onto the card first, and whilst that is drying I embellish the fibre piece.  I used hand embroidery, beading and couching working with the individual characteristics and contours of each piece.

Here's a couple of pieces before:

and after:

Glass bugle and seed beads, with seed, colonial knot, detached fly and buttonhole bar stitches:

again glass bugle and seed beads, this time with drizzle, seed and colonial knot stitches and some couched thread:

13 in total in this lot - phew!

Exciting news...!

A while ago I submitted some close-up photos of textures of my work to the Flickr group 'Colour Chart'. The group is moderated by the Tate Gallery Liverpool, as part of their exhibition 'Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today', being held at the Tate Liverpool 29 May - 13 September 2009.

The group purpose was as follows:

"Photographs submitted to the group will be shown on Tate Online, and 36 images will be used to make a glossy Colour Chart poster ... displayed at Tate Liverpool. "

All photos submitted had to be 'colour monochrome' images with the main colour making up at least 95% of the image. Check out the group pool to see some great photos.

I had forgotten the original purpose of the group as I had just been enjoying looking at all the photos in the pool so much, with their wonderful range of colour. Amazingly, yesterday I was contacted to say that one of my photos had been chosen, from over 4,300 total submissions, as one of the 36 images that will go on the poster! So exciting!!

It was this image that was chosen - a close-up of the texture of my 'Heliotrope' brooch:

The Tate is also sending out a copy of the poster to all 36 selected. Can't wait to see it!

A crafty Saturday afternoon...

Had a fun afternoon experimenting with solvy, machine embroidery and my embellisher, in between catching up with slightly more hi-tech craftiness happening on Space Shuttle Endeavour/the ISS via Nasa TV (totally obsessed by mission STS-127 right now - can't get enough of astronauts carrying out such complex, hi-tech tasks in their socks!).

So, in my socks too, but with gravity, although without any robotic arms, here's what I came up with! Haven't dissolved the Solvy yet, so I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns out.

Following a suggestion a while back from Lin Moon, (thank you!), I'm going to make a couple of the pieces into paisley-shaped brooch prototypes. Also below are the 'new' necklace prototypes (*ahem* got a bit distracted by other crafty things and still haven't finished these yet) - so these 4 are what I'll work on over the rest of the weekend.

Waves and coral...

I'm just back from a week on the beautiful Scottish Hebridean island of Tiree, so appropriately this entry is about 2 pieces I have recently finished which were inspired by the beautiful shorelines and seascapes of the island.

For both of them I wanted to explore combining fabric and fibres with my embellisher, and adding beading and embroidery as I do for my jewellery pieces, but on a larger scale. I decided to use embroidery hoops as frames, and I used unbleached cotton batting as the backing/surface.

The first piece is called 'Coral', and was made as a 30th birthday present for my dear friend Eli.

Here's the process of adding fabric and fibres. I sewed on pieces of cotton fabric, scrim and muslin, and then added silk throwsters waste, silk noil and mixed threads with my embellisher.

Next I added many glass beads in different shapes and sizes, and some hand embroidery stitches to finish the piece off:

Here are some details:

The next piece I have been working on is called 'Waves'. A while ago I had bought some (more!) wonderful handdyed threads, fibres and fabric from thredfairy, and had been itching to use them in a larger piece. I love the muted grey-silver-turquoise palette - reminds me of stormy seascapes and louring clouds above.

Here's the process - again I sewed on some fabric and paper pieces before adding fibres with my embellisher, and then adding glass beads and freshwater pearls. Hand embroidery stitches finished off the piece.

Here are some details:

And the finished piece:

It's going on the wall in my hall!

I'm quite pleased with the way these two turned out - kind of variations on a theme. Next time I'm going to experiment with different backing fabrics/surfaces, and will continue with the never-ending search for a good framing solution... .

The trip to Tiree gave me so much crafty inspiration, I'm looking forward to trying out all my ideas!

Works in progress...

Some projects I'm working on...

A purple one...

A yellowy-orange one...

A teal one...

Kokoro...

I started off by felting lovely wool roving in shades of rosy pinks and rich reds onto a white felt backing piece.

I added some silk throwster waste for sheen, and some wooly nepps for pebbly texture.

Then I beaded with Toho 'kokoro' beads along contours, and added some couched hand-dyed threads.















Then I hemmed around the edges...

...and sewed black felt and a brooch finding onto the back.

It's quite a wee piece!

'Kokoro' ( 心 ) is Japanese for 'mind', 'heart' and 'spirit', all at once.

Bronze...

'Bronze' is a piece of fibre art I just finished. This time I was focussing more on trying out embroidery stitches for surface embellishment, as well as beading. I found some beautiful bronze-gold silk tops in my local embroidery shop, which inspired me to go for an Autumnal colour feel.

First I made the base layer with my embellisher. I used scrim, vintage Japanese fabric, cotton fabric, paper and silk in shades of yellow, orange and gold. On top of the base layer I added a sprinkling of chocolatey wool nepps, and some lovely wavy smoky brown cotswold fleece.

Next I added beads - some of my tiny glass seed beads, and a sprinkling of toho beads and a moukaite sphere.

Finally, I tried out some hand embroidery stitches of various sorts (I recently bought a book so that I could teach myself more than the basic ones I knew, so this was my opportunity to try them out!). Using hand-dyed thread and copper metallic thread, I tried out: satin, half-portuguese, fly, seed, running, wave, feather, and Cretan stitches, as well as French knots. In the picture to the left you can see the wave, seed and running stitches, as well as some French knots.

I hadn't thought much (again!) about how to frame/finish the piece... so there was very little unused border around the edges. This kind of limited me to hemming and framing like I did with 'Atlantis'.

I really liked the way the colours turned out, and I really enjoyed trying out the embroidery, using all the new stitches I learned. I think for my next project though, one goal will be to try something different from the hemmed, squarish-shaped idea of the finished piece. My Dad suggested trying for a more organic, circular shape (maybe using an embroidery hoop as a guide?) and using a bigger backing piece. Looking forward to giving it a go!