Circles

The post today has brought me my 3 Circles ATC cards from the latest swap at MixedMediaUK_ATC group on Yahoo. I can't remember whether I have already shown the ones I made so here they are:

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I used my own sun-resist painted cotton and free-machined circles in a variegated thread and added beads and buttons.
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The very pretty ATC above is from Pat and joins several other of her beautiful pieces of work in my collection.

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This intriguing ATC with faces came from Maureen.
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And finally Becky, who organised the swap, sent me this exciting interpretation of the theme. The background is collaged with textured papers and I love the metallic thread woven circle. Thank you ladies for your lovely work. :-)

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Also in the post recently were two items that were long awaited and couldn't be resisted!

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Lynda Monk and Carol McFee's inspiring first book and Maggie Grey's latest book Stitches Straps & Layers, which was published on the same day. Both books are a credit to the d4daisy team and are lavishly illustrated with very tempting photographs. The internet is wonderful but you can't beat holding a colourful and imaginative book and taking your time to soak it all in! I've got my eye on several projects from both books when I've caught up on my current projects.

CyberFyber

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I'm sure Susan won't mind me borrowing this photograph of her in front of the many ATCs included in her wonderful exhibition in South Carolina. If you follow the link and then click on the header you will be able to review the amazing week that Susan has had with her exhibition in Columbia South Carolina. Not only has Susan staged an amazing exhibition but she has also made sure, with videos, copies of news reviews and regular updates, that everyone around the world who couldn't attend in person has been able to follow all the events of the past week from the setting up of the exhibition onwards. Enjoy!

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Tomorrow is International ATC Swap Day when ATC's sent in by participating artists will be exchanged. I intended to send 3 ATC's for this swap but in the end only managed to send one but I am looking forward to seeing whose art I get in return. Watch this space!

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The exhibition continues until Tuesday. If only I had a magic carpet.....!

Post and patterns

Before we went away Kate offered a swap with some ATCs she had made. As I like Kate's work I offered to swap with her and yesterday I received said ATC from her.

It was very prettily packaged in a little parcel tied up with assorted yarns in my favourite turquoise and blues.

Inside the lutradur-like outer wrapper was the ATC I had chosen. The centrepiece looks like part of a brooch and I love the colours and the "wish" sentiment.

Also from Kate, from a giveaway on her blog, I received a bag of scraps which I had put my name in the hat for. As Kate has come to the end of her marathon giveaway we all got a bag. There are some lovely pieces in this collection which are tempting me to play. You can just see the top of a batik tree in the foreground which I love as I do all the pieces uppermost in this pile.

Back in Austria I was up to my usual tricks, taking photographs in the 'Ladies'! This fossil was on the surface of the counter round the washbasins in a hotel in Aachensee. I think the rock must have come from the same range of mountains as the Steinplatte, it's a beautiful surface.

This building, also in Aachensee, houses a fitness centre and echoes the shape of the surrounding mountians. I loved the reflections of the clouds in its glass.

It's funny what takes your eye, isn't it? This sandwich was at my feet where the wall of the mountain top cafe met the floor. I like the different textures from the cement wall through the lead flashing to the base surface (not sure what that's made of).

More interesting textures here from the play of aerated water over stones in a pool outside the fitness centre. Must be able to do something with this in Photoshop!

Parties, Atcs and trollies

It's a bit quiet chez nous this morning! Last night was DH's party and we're feeling our age this morning. We had a great night and had a respectable number of guests to make the party swing. We even got to meet some friends from DH's blogland, so thank you to Gail'sman, Gail and Zakscloset for coming across from Nottingham to join us (and for the gorgeous chocolate cake!). My DH had a whale of a time and was slightly(?) giggly/tipsy by the end of the evening. He's very funny when he's had a few, very good natured, repetitive and giggly.

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Today we're off to a wedding near Newark just north of here and my Mum has taken herself off toLincoln to enjoy the shops in the rain.

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I've really just popped in to show you the ATCs I've received in the herringbone swap I mentioned on Thursday. They are all lovely and make my effort look very feeble.
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My photo doesn't do this card justice. The background fabric has been painted in beautiful turquoisy metallic paint and it shines beautifully. Thank you Liz!
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Pat has used metallic threads for this gorgeous purple celebration and included painted washers.

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This lovely card using a variety of weights of thread has been made by Susan.

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Thank you, girls!

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And finally:

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Oh my god! I've joined the ranks of the trolley dollies! lol! With rising prices and a thickening waistline (more of that in a minute) I decided I had to invest in a shopper and walk to town a bit more often. You'll be able to see me coming, won't you? I know I shall feel self-conscious the first few times I use it, and I'll probably wrap it round a few ankles and lampposts, but I will have to get used to it.

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And definitely finally, I have been putting on weight! Now, that may not sound much to most of you but I am a skinny thing and have struggled my way up over the years from 6st 12lbs in my teens to 7st 12lbs in my 40's. When I got my summer clothes out recently I found the trousers and shorts and skirts no longer fitted! Shock, horror! It was only when I got on some scales that I found I have gone up to 8 and a half stone!!!!!! Flippin Eck! How did that happen? (Ssh, don't tell her, it's that 'm' word that gives you pause) It's unheard of for me and I hadn't even been trying to put on weight. I feel as though I've finally arrived in the world of real women and I've got some meat on me! Yay! (Also it's a good excuse for some new clothes!)

Dotees, bits and bobs

This has been a very busy week for me as I have my Mum staying in preparation for my DH's birthday bash tomorrow night. As a result I have been totally un-creative, apart from a short sewing workshop on Tuesday for which I have nothing to show.

Emma was asking about Dotee dolls so I thought I'd put a few up here to give you an idea of what they look like, if you aren't familiar with them. The originator of the pattern was the lovely Dot in Australia. You can make them any shape you wish, they don't have to be the same as mine. If you Google Dotee for images or search Flickr for them you will get lots of ideas. Spread a little Dotee love around the world!

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As you will see from my sidebar I have recently joined StitchinFingers Ning. One of the groups within StitchinFingers has been set up so that we can all participate in a re-run of Sharon Boggon's TAST, or Take a Stitch Tuesday. The idea is to learn or revisit an embroidery stitch each week. I missed the first week but, by coincidence I had been working on herringbone stitch for a swap.

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This is one of three ATCs I made for a swap at MixedMediaATCs_UK - a bit ragged but mine own! ( You may recognise the fabric as Kate's). I will have to revisit this stitch to explore its possibilities.

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Week 2 was Buttonhole or blanket stitch which I really enjoy doing (one of the few stitches I know already). I cribbed a few ideas from other people in the group, for which thank you.

The third stitch is detached chain stitch but I have not started this yet. Thank goodness every fourth week is a catch up week.....I'm going to need it!

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This final ATC is for the June Lottery at MixedMediaATCS_UK on the subject of.............? Wimbledon!! (Excuse the little damage which happened in the making). The dashing little figure is Great Uncle Bulgaria who is, of course, a Womble!

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I probably won't get chance to blog again before next week so I hope you all have a lovely weekend. We have got a party, a wedding, a concert (open air and rain is forecast, no I mean really, heavy, rain!) and friends round for a chinese meal not to mention shopping and seeing Mum off back home so my feet are not going to touch the floor from tomorrow morning until Monday! Wish me luck!

Home from the North

Bob T Bear is right. I came home to 5 more cards from the MixedMediaATCs_UK group.

This lovely mermaid came from Anne and has some painstaking penwork in it and some lovely gold highlights.

Christine made this beautiful quilted card with beaded fish. I like the fact that it is padded.

Irene's card has a lot of work to it. The background has been painted and textured and machine-embroidered fabric has been added before the fish and shell embellishments. Irene wrapped the card in a lovely piece of dyed fabric which I will look forward to using in a future project.

This delicate mermaid is from Stephanie and has some beautiful embellishments. I think the little discs are made from slices of shell - I shall have to ask Stephanie.

This final card is called "Seahorse Dance" and comes from Wendy. It has some beautiful tiny shells along the bottom and is more sparkly than this photo shows.

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All of these cards are even more lovely in real life than the photos show and everyone has obviously put a lot of thought and effort into making them. Thank you, ladies!

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We had a really good weekend away in Northumberland. The tour took us to Beamish Open Air Museum, Alnwick Garden, Lindisfarne, Seahouses and York so it was a busy few days. Needless to say I took lots of photographs, lots! I've sorted about half so far and have the rest to do so I will be posting about it all shortly. It may take me a bit longer as I have just heard tonight that my friend Grace has been taken into hospital so tomorrow will be taken up with finding out what's wrong and hopefully visiting her if she is not in theatre. I have decided not to go to the hospital tonight as she is sedated and I won't be any use to her tomorrow if I am up all tonight, as she is not in the local hospital. Health service reorganisation!!

Bits and Bobs and ATCs

Monday saw us taking advantage of my DH's day off and heading down the A1 to Rutland Water, a large manmade reservoir about 20 miles from us. My friend had told me about the bluebell wood there at Barnsdale and we were not disappointed in the sight which awaited us when we get there. The wood has been thinned out and conifers removed to open up the woodland floor and allow the bluebells to flower once again. I find it amazing that it only takes the removal of the canopy to bring dormant life from the soil.

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The bluebells were absolutely spectacular! I don't think that I have seen such an expanse of bluebells in a long time, and this in a wood that is completely open to public access. Years ago, many years ago, when I was a child, we used to go to Danbury Woods in Essex, and I have a very strong memory of walking through droves of bluebells and coming out with armfuls (not allowable now) of these gorgeous, delicate blooms for my Mum.

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I have been conspicuous by my absence from my Yahoo groups lately so this month I thought I would try and pick up the threads (no pun intended!) with the lottery at MixedMediaATCs_UK. The ATC above is on the theme of Sea Life and is much more sparkly than my photo shows.

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Earlier this year I blogged about the Cyberfyber Exhibition that Susan Lenz is staging in January next year. If you missed out on the chance to join in with the ATC and Postcard swap that Susan ran in January you now have another opportunity to become part of this event. Susan has made more ATCs and Postcards so click here and follow the links to join in.

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What else can I tell you? I can't show you what I am working on at the moment as it will be part of a swap if I manage to complete it. Something I can show you, though you might wish I hadn't bothered, is this fetching photo of DH taken on Monday. He was lurking in a little shed-thing at Barnsdale Gardens - don't ask - I think it's supposed to be a sort of hide so you can watch the birds in the wooded area, or maybe it's for children.............

Goodies in the Post

A few weeks ago I received an email from Nadia Bekker who lives in the Netherlands. She had found me through the Cyberfyber Exhibition site. Nadia collects ATCs and invited me to swap with her which I was delighted to do. When I got back from Ireland Nadia's envelope was on the mat and I am thrilled to find that she has sent me not one but two ATCs. Both are beautifully made and I love them both but I am particularly pleased to have the rust-dyed fabric one as I had admired it on Nadia's blog.

I keep seeing faces in the rust dyed ATC. Now all I have to do is make Nadia's ATC in exchange! Life is conspiring against me since I got back from our hols but I hope to have some crafting time in a couple of days. So far all I've done is washing, shopping and paperwork for a friend.

Jan Osbond and post

Today has been our weekly Art Group meeting and we have been treated to a demonstration of mixed media painting using tissue and texture mediums by the wonderfully enthusiastic Jan Osbond. Jan works in both watercolour and oils (separately) over texture mediums and more often than not uses her fingers to paint with instead of traditional brushes.

At the moment Jan is doing a lot of work in black and white so she worked in monochrome for the purposes of the demonstration this morning. I have done quite a lot of work myself with texture mediums and tissue along with many other materials to provide texture but it was interesting and inspiring to see Jan's work. Most of all she opened my mind up to the thought of working with watercolour pigment straight from the tube, straight onto the paper, applied with the finger. She then manipulated the paint with water, stroked on with her fingers to pull out the paint and create edges or soft areas. The paintings you can see above (sorry they're a bit blurry) were done in this way. The texture mediums were mostly used in the lower part of the painting and included tissue, (which was stuck down as one piece on pva and then manipulated to suggest rocks, black flint medium, sand texture medium and glass beads texture medium. Ideally you need to think about what effect you are hoping to create (eg foreground vegetation, seaweed, rocks etc) when you initially put on the textures.

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The other technique which intrigued me involved applying inks to wetted paper, quite randomly apart from colour combinations, and then putting clingfilm (saran wrap) over the surface. Jan then pushed the clingfilm around on top of the paint until she was happy with it and left it to dry under a weight. Ideally you would leave this to dry overnight. The next step would be to peel off the clingfilm, re-wet the paper, reapply inks, cover again with clingfilm and dry again under weight (heavy book would do). You can repeat these steps several times until you get the result you're pleased with. Jan uses this method to achieve leaf shapes and suggest foliage. You also get a shiny surface with this method. I will certainly be having a go at this technique and will blog my results as soon as I've done it. Watch this space!!! lol

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The post today brought me not only the latest issue of Stitch magazine but also 4 ATCs from Lauren as part of a 4 Elements swap at the MixedMediaATCs_UK Yahoo group.

Clockwise from top left the cards interpret Water, Earth, Wind and Fire. I think Lauren has worked in pastel pencil to make these lovely delicate ATCs. Thanks Lauren :)

The afternoon has seen me fight my way through a pile of ironing so my to do list is not getting any shorter! My house and studio are both/all in total chaos so the weekend is hopefully going to see me restoring a little order as I can't function anymore with all this "stuff" (not forgetting the dust bunnies!).

Post and Posers

I have been tidying (?!) up my fibre art storage today so I haven't any new art work to show but I have received the latest swaps from MixedMediaATC_UK on the theme of Ice, Frost, Snow.

This first card is from Jean. I apologise unreservedly for the photograph which is awful! My fault entirely, I will take a better one tomorrow. I keep looking at the ATC because I cannot decide what Jean has used. It look as though she has heat-shrunk some cellophane which has then been machine stitched, with Angelina trapped. The card is very sparkly with glitter added and sequins and thread snippets, and I think, some irridescent paint. It is a lovely card and really gives the feeling of ice and frost.

This card is from Cathy and includes layered images with embossed stars and a lovely crown charm - The Snow Queen perhaps?

This last card is from Anne W and I'm sorry that the camera has not shown it up to its best. It is a very delicate card with stamped images and motifs.

I have been meaning to post some pix of some scarves that I knitted last winter. They are nothing special but I did enjoy knitting them. I had some friends model them ;)

As far as I can remember I used 12 stitches on thickish needles (How technical is that?!!!). It may have been a 5mm, does that sound about right? Where you see the fancy bands I combined 3 yarns to get the thickness as a lot of the fancy yarns are very fine.

I love the colours in this detail! The scarves were great fun to knit as I made it up as I went along. the only thing was, I could only knit so many rows a night as my hands hurt after a while. The pleasures of middle age!

Arrivals

I meant to show you these two little tree decorations when I posted the pic of our tree. I have a couple of beaded ornaments, a tree and this lovely Santa that has a sweet face. I didn't bead them myself, I bought them locally last year. Most years I try and buy something new for the tree. This year, though, I have a gift from a friend -

As you can see Gina's angel is now in its rightful place on the Christmas tree instead of on the drinks cabinet! You can see her lovely golden wings now.

I think I am about ready for whatever the festive week is about to throw at me. DH has been delivered to the pub for his Friday night social with his mate and mate's daughter. She doesn't normally come out with them but I think she's come out tonight cos it's Christmas. I managed to make the house look vaguely presentable and at least everyone has a seat they can sit on without finding a pin or needle or getting covered in fibres! Having said that, both seats either side of me on the settee have stuff on them already!

My Mum has arrived to stay until New Year's Day when she will go to my brother's. She is a very light traveller (not) and is helping me fill the house to capacity. (She is currently snoozing in the armchair). Bless her, she's even brought a Christmas cake for us - home-made of course!

I think the Santa on the sleigh suffered a bit in the journey, either that or he's had a small sherry! The reindeer doesn't look too upright either! It will taste great though!

I've received some ATCs today from a swap at MixedMediaATC_UK Yahoo group. The theme was weaving.

This lovely card with woven yarns and button embellishments is from Linda.

Marina (what a lovely name!) has woven wool, thread and braid through sequin waste which catches the light beautifully.

Finally, Ula has woven recycled Sari silk through a plastic mesh. This must have taken ages to do! Unfortunately my photo is blurred and the colour is not accurate. I will take another pic tomorrow in daylight.

BTW do you remember me telling you that we couldn't open the patio door from the lounge to the conservatory because we had lost the key (and Mum pushed the bolt in on her last visit!)? I had made a feeble attempt at ordering another from the supplier but 'said' replacement hadn't arrived. Well, I tend to have this "laissez faire" attitude to some things and they seem to work out. Well..........you'll never guess...........DH went up into the loft and fetched down the Christmas Tree decs the other day and what did he find in the bottom of the box!!! Yes!!!! The key to the bolt on the patio door!!!!!! Clever DH! How on earth did that get in there anyway??!! I have a theory that DH was stripping the tree last year, which we have in the conservatory, and didn't notice that he'd knocked the key down into the storage box! Well, it has to be his fault doesn't it? That's what hubby's are for! *lol** Hehehe! Needless to say we have now put the key's onto separate key rings. (Oh yes, there are 2 of them. Why didn't we do that originally?!) Oh no, that would have been much too easy!!!

I expect that some of you will be going away this weekend or may be too busy to be blogging so may I wish everyone a warm and happy time with your friends, family or however you are spending this time. I look forward to sharing our creative experiences throughout the coming year. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to look in here at my inane ramblings and thank you too for taking the trouble to leave me your comments. I really do appreciate all the comments I receive and I hope I have not left anyone out when I have been replying. I have had a wonderful time since I joined this amazing community this summer! Oooh! And I must thank all the wonderful people whose blogs I have enjoyed so much and who have cheered me up with their amazing friends, whether sock creatures, monkeys or bears! Not forgetting all those expert ladies who have so generously shared their techniques and ideas - thank you ladies!

Whatever your beliefs or you God I wish you a peaceful and happy holiday. XxxXoooXxxX