A Mixed Bag

My blogs are usually textile related, but I just wanted to share the first couple of items with you.
This amazing looking piece of fruit is called Dragon Fruit. It comes from a cactus plant and evidently has beautiful flowers that bloom for a single night.
According to legend, when fire-breathing dragons went into battle, a dragon fruit was the last thing they breathed out when their flames were extinguished.
How could I resist it after reading that?

It looks so pretty cut open too. The taste is very similar to Kiwi fruit but not quite so sharp.

The plate it is sitting on is part of a set called ‘Haute Shoes’ by Rosanna.The different pieces all come in their own lovely boxes .......
.....and while I had them out I decided to bake my speciality, Chocolate & Beetroot Muffins, and serve them for afternoon tea – very posh!

This weekend I decided to try out a new surface technique. As ever, the camera just wouldn’t pick up the fantastic metallic look.

And what is it?
Its just your boring old brown parcel paper with aluminium foil and Fibre in-Form foil on top for good measure.
Its quite simple to achieve. Lay out your sheet of brown paper and cover liberally with Goldens Gel Medium. Take a piece of aluminium foil/baking foil/tin foil, scrunch it up, flatten it out and then lay it on top of the medium. Make sure you don’t get any of the medium on the surface of the aluminium foil – it will deaden the shine if you do.
Next you paint the surface of the foil with acrylic paints, Quinacridone colours seem to work the best. I used Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold, Crimson and Burnt Orange in different degrees.
These paints each had GAC200 added to them before application.
If you were to paint the aluminium foil just with the acrylic it would rub off when dry, the GAC200 gives it a film hardness.
Once the paint was dry I foiled over the top. Normally with acrylic paints there is no need to use glue, adhesive webbing or heat to bond the foil to the surface. You can use the back of a spoon to transfer the foil and it will just catch the ridges but I wanted large areas of foil so I used a flat iron.
And just to finish off and very slightly knock back the shine I used a light wash of Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide.

I used some of the finished surfaces to make gusseted gift bags and tags to hold Christmas presents.

The handles are metallic viscose ribbon that has been threaded on to wire. And I have used wire to make some curly-whirlys.

These next photos are glimpsings of a project I am working on at the moment which needs perfecting before I show it. And I can guarantee that it is not what you might think it is!!

And last but not least, just thought I would mention that 12 of us have set up a group to begin on January 1st called ‘Calendar Girls 2008’.
Something to watch out for :)