Dubrovnik

As requested a few pictures from my recent holiday, already becoming a
 distant memory.
I did some sketches for my homework whilst I was there, but I still find it intimidating to sketch outside in public. Fortunatley we had plenty of life and activity in the market square just below our window.

A view down Stadum which despite the huge volume of crowds every day remains quite breath taking and beautiful.

Many of the roofs had to be rebuilt after the city was shelled in 1991, and from the walls you can see the contrast between the old roofs and those that have been replaced.

Either someone preserving their summer crop or doing a bit of solar dyeing.

There is plenty of design potential here and below it looks like the washing has been colour co-ordinated with the walls.

The day that a man came round to feed the pigeons; I missed the best picture as a cat pounced on the pile of pigeons feeding on the grain.

Guess who swam the Channel!

You are so right, it wasn't me.
I'm just the proud mother. After a years' training and lots of hard work
 my son's relay team of 6 completed the swim in just over 16 hours.

With jelly fish,container ships and the dark to cope with I sort of hope he doesn't try it again.

A lucky day to be called Penney or even Penny.

Thank you to everyone who joined in the Summer Giveaway. I made the random draw today and strange to say but both winners are called Penny, but the first out of the number generator was:
Penney from Woodlawn, Virginia, USA. I will send you this piece when you let me have your address by email (see my profile). As you may know the material came from Ger and I have added stamps and writing by her. You may like to add something of your own.

Second was Penny from near Victor Harbor, South Australia.

Again let me have your details so I can forward this Birdie Pin.

'Summer Giveaway' last chance.

This is the last chance to join in the ‘summer’ giveaway.

Scroll down to the post for August 9th to see how to join in before I draw the two winners on September 13th.

I came back from my holiday in Dubrovnik in Croatia last night.
We stayed in an apartment in one of the main squares and it was great to see and hear the fruit and vegetable market setting up every morning but like NY Dubrovnik never seems to sleep, so I must admit it was good to be back in my sleepy part of the world.
I will post some photos later.

These are pictures of what I will be sending for the Vintage and Ephemera swap this month; I don’t regularly contribute but thought it would be fun this month and just collected bits and pieces over a few weeks and then this little book came together. See the link in my sidebar.

Waiting on my doorstep was my copy of ‘The Found Object’ by Cas Holmes, which I had preorderd. I opened it in bed this morning feeling quite excited. A book about all the things I love to do, collecting papers, printing, stitching. I wondered if it would disappoint, as at first it seemed quite a slim book, but page after page seems crammed with information to stimulate even more creativity. I started by just looking at the images, which are almost enough in themselves. I like to eat my boxes of chocolates slowly and savour every mouthful, and that’s how I plan to enjoy this book, if only I can stop myself from being greedy.

(e)motive

(e)motive
Originally uploaded by stitchworks-jackie

Exhibition at Milton Keynes until 25th September 2010.
For more images and details see:
http://weloveyourbooks.com/page15/page15.php

Stamps

I have been working on my sketches, but I do get carried away. I have been using

some images from my Life Drawing Class to make stamps from ‘fun foam’. It nice and easy to cut and gives plenty of scope to play around with the shapes.

 I have used an ink pad, gouache, printing ink and acrylic. Acrylic has the advantage as you can put a wash over it easily. The ink pads are very tempting as they are so easy to use, but as I only have one colour this limits me. I have plenty of paint so I should stick to that.

 For lots of information about stamp making you can look at Melanie Testa’s blog and a video by Diana Trout  on You Tube

An issue you may like to remark on, I have a new Stats Counter now. It’s always fun to look where readers come from. One of the categories that can be tracked is the material which readers download. I was surprised to find how often this happens, I have never thought to download from a blog but I have done so lots from Flickr; especially when ‘gathering’ images for a project to show people with whom I work. I must admit to not having always thanked people, although I do try to do so. I am pleased readers like my images enough to want to keep them, and they are there for anyone, however, my point is that I now notice that readers regularly come along, download an image and never even comment. Thank You is recognisable in most languages I think. Moan over. The good news is that Blogger is now making an attempt to stop and track spam, which has become more of a problem recently.

Definitely my last post for a while, so don’t forget to sign up for the Summer Giveaway on the August 9th post before I draw in early September.

EXHIBITION: Inkygoodness 4 - 'Play'

EXHIBITION: Inkygoodness 4 - 'Play'
Originally uploaded by DBO PONDERS

Click on link in sidebar for more details of this exhibition in Brick Lane, London, starting early September.

Workshop

The next workshop at Doodles, Tadley (UK) will be on Wednesday 1st September from 1 to 3pm... We will be working with brown paper, wrapping paper or brown paper bags, to transform them to lovely pieces for book covers, cards etc..

Bring along your own paper if possible but paints, oil sticks etc. will be provided.

I have found some more images of stitched circles squared for my mosaic on Flickr.
I keep finding them all over the place now. These are all in my own work.



Don’t forget to enter the Summer Giveaway on the last post to be in with a chance of winning one of two stitched items. Thank you to those of you who have joined my Followers List to keep me blogging.

Summer Giveaway

I promised a blog giveaway for the summer and here it is. There will be two stitched items. One will be the piece made with Gerdiary’s avocado dyed fabric; basically she gave the fabric to me when I won a virtual voucher for her shop, so I will be passing it on. Except for the backing it is completely make with the fabric she provided and parts of the envelope from Berlin. The other item, well wait and see.

To be eligible for the draw you need to leave your comment here and sign up on my Followers List if you are not already there. I will let you know if you win and you can then let me have your contact details.

I will not be drawing this until 13th September as I shall be busy for a few weeks.

'Contemporary-Medieval'

I had a treat last Friday spending the day at City Lit on a one day bookbinding course. The course was called ‘Contemporary-Medieval’ and the tutor was Ina Baumeister, a professional book binder. I think most of us there were attracted by the idea of the book as sculpture and the idea of using old tyres as covers. Well, there were no old tyres, except in the tutor’s examples, but it was still a good day.

 We started with a basic format, sewing the sections onto cable ties, with instructions on raised band sewing styles.

 In the afternoon we saw the tutors work and were given a range of materials, shoe laces, rope, wire, strimmer tape, and old house signs from which to choose in order to make our own book design. I used a piece of black and silver plastic, not sure of its original use, wire, and plastic thread to work on. It was a packed course, which shows the current interest in book binding and the company was good.

The Squared Circle Group on Flickr is fun. Stitched circles don't really fit neatly, but no worry as someone has started a group for those photos which are 'dumped' from the original group as not being entirely to the rules.

Life Drawing and Monoprints

Over the next academic year I am going to attend two workshops a term at a local college, a ‘Creative Textile’ workshop. I think the idea is mainly to concentrate on design work and it will be good to work with other people. It is a local education college so, at the moment, relatively cheap compared to some of the London courses. I have also signed up for a short course on’ getting to know your DSLR’ camera, which hopefully will leave me less confused.

Back to the course, we are asked to produce a summer sketchbook with a hundred ‘sketches’ which has a wide definition including photos and stitch. So it’s likely that you will be seeing some of the pages here.

At my last life drawing class we did some contour drawing and some monoprinting, both of which were really enjoyable. These are some of the monprints I made at home using water based printing inks. Some on magazine pages.

I have just organized a morning workshop on Transfer Paints for a mother and two daughters. They were v. enthusiastic, which was nice, but I must say that I feel tired out now. I think it may be time for a cup of tea!

Avocado and Flowers

Some of you may remember that not long ago I won a virtual voucher from Gerdiary to use in her shop, I’ve used it now to purchase a pack of her pretty pink materials dyed with avocado skin. Take a look at her posts for more information about this process.

Before using the material I decided to experiment with ‘flower pounding’ which I have been reading about recently. There is plenty of information on the web about it. Basically you take a flower and place it carefully onto your material, put a piece of baking parchment or similar over it and gently pound with a hammer; I only had a piece of heavy metal. Then I turned the sandwich over carefully and worked on the material side, increasing the pressure slightly. The results are pretty, and quite detailed. I have no idea how long they will last and that isn’t too important to me.

I decided to use the material to make a mini long cloth and have very much enjoyed the process. I used every scrap of the material and also the stamp and pieces from the envelope sent from Berlin. I think it was particularly enjoyable as I don’t usually do ‘pretty’ and apart from the pinkness all the fabric was also light and delicate to work on.

As you see I harked back to some of the patching and darning of fabrics we had to do at school but never put into practise. I coated the paper with Acrylic Wax before machining it.

I just have to finish the edges and put on a backing now.

Look out for a blog giveaway in August.

I had a stall at a craft event this weekend, my first since Christmas. It was an enjoyable day, I sold enough at least to cover the cost of being there and had lots of lovely chats, including one with someone who reads my blog.

E-Motive

I am really pleased this year to have my book accepted for the’ We Love Your Books Exhibition’; this is especially so as my book on the closure of Woolworths theme last year was not selected. I felt quite daunted having another go this year, but it made it more special to be selected.

You can go to the website to find the books which will be in the exhibition and the full range of sketchbook spreads which will also be in the catalogue. Each year the organizers,Melaini Bush  and Dr Emma Powell lecturers from the University of Northampton and De Montfort University, ask for an additional element to the artists’ book and this year it was a photo of a landscape sketchbook spread.

The theme is E-motive and I worked on the idea of the colours linked with emotions. I used a series of collagraph prints printed onto cotton with the help of ink aid. I used an actual embossed ie colourless collagraph for the final spread.I made the prints on a Sunday printing course at City Lit. in London. As I now had the prints on fabric I could add some stitching.

It’s unlikely that I will get to the final exhibition but if you live in the area here are the details.

It’s worth having a look at the photos on Flickr as some of the books are really fascinating.

Great Linford Arts Workshop, Parklands, Great Linford, Milton Keynes MK14 5D2


from 28th Aug – 25th Sept, with a preview on Thursday 26th August from 6-9pm.


http://www.artworks-mk.co.uk/

Mini Tutorial

Some ideas for making interesting papers to stitch, for journaling or just for fun using recycled papers, and minimum resources.

You will need:

Old magazines, advertising papers etc.
Brown paper.
Black acrylic or water based printing ink.

Printing ink gives a better impression with detailed stamps and dries less quickly.
Tip if you spread the papers out to dry after using printing ink, be careful where you walk with bare feet!



Old brushes.
Spare scrap paper not too thin.
A brayer/roller if you have one.
Cotton buds or use the pointed end of the brush.
Incense stick.
Crayons.

Spread the ink or paint onto the scrap paper with the brush.

Make marks with a cotton bud or other implement. Here is the advantage of printing ink which gives you more time to work. Put the piece of paper you want to transfer the marks onto face down on the scrap paper and roll with the brayer (or rub gently with your hand).

Once the marks are dry you may wish to stamp over them with a favourite stamp; I used a handwriting one. If you have used ink at this stage you will need patience for it to dry.

If you work on brown paper and want to ‘antique’ it you can rub with some tea or coffee. I also added a couple of tiny drops of Walnut Ink. Use this sparingly as it can be very dark.

Scrunch up the paper regularly but gently.
Tear the edges to look aged. Rub with a gold crayon, markal or similar.
I used a smoking incense stick to burn the edges and some holes in places. Do this over a sink just incase you get too carried away.

Then rub the edges with a black wax crayon or similar.

E-Motive Exhibition.

Jackie Bowcott
Originally uploaded by rejectamenta

My sketchbook spread selected for the 'We Love Your Books Exhibition'. See some of the others on Flickr.