Yesterday, Carol and I went to meet Maggie Grey and Michael Wicks with our work for the book so that Michael could photograph it.

Carol came to stay with her son who only lives about half hour away from me, so I picked her up and drove us both down and apart from going round the South Mimms roundabout twice on the way down (and twice on the way back, just for the sheer fun of it!) and taking a couple of wrong turnings, even though I had the Sat Nav with me, we made good time. So I had been driving for a good two hours and by the time we did arrive it was raining and blowing a gale.
And why am I telling you all this?

Because Maggie decided we needed to have our photograph taken for the d4Daisy web site and when you see it I just want you to remember all that. :)

It was great to see Maggie again and get to meet Michael and just to make you all jealous, we also had a sneak preview of some of the work for Maggie’s new book. I guarantee when you see it you will all be drooling as we both were .

So thats the photo shoot for our first book out of the way, next is the layout artists turn and then off to the publisher – won't be long now. I think the title is going to be ‘The Textured Surface: Techniques and Treatments’ – but that could change so I will keep you updated.

Last week I received this wonderful embellished card in the post.

It’s from Pauline Charlesworth, you may recognise her name as she is in lots of different Yahoo groups and comments regularly on blogs but she hasn’t got a blog of her own which is a shame if the work she has put in to this card is anything to go by. So if you know Pauline then give her a nudge to start her own blog.

I just finished the Calendar Girls postcard for March and realised I hadn’t shown the previous months.
I thought this year would be easier as each month a member of the group chooses a picture for us all to interpret in our own way with not a flower in sight! But its’ a lot more difficult.
The January picture was chosen by Debbi.

And this was my interpretation. I painted several sheets of tea-bag paper with different colours of silk paints and layered them together on a background of silk painted Lutradur. Added a little more silk paint on top and then gave it a coat of Polymer Medium to bond the layers together and bring out the colours underneath.
The lines have been machined stitched with a holographic effect thread from Maderia called Jewel and the postcard has been mounted on handmade Khadi paper.

This photo for February was chosen by Sandy.
And yes, this is the card I made and sent to Jenny.And by way of explanation: It is ink on a gesso background with sea salt crystals dropped on top to represent the bubbles in the photo. The molding paste triangular shaped piece is the horn of the unicorn and the white wire is the mane.
This is a close up and an ‘arty’ type shot.This is the picture chosen for March by CarolTI had several attempts at this. Some of them have been worked on inkjet acetate and because of the reflection of the acetate the photos are not that good.
This is the first one I made. Its Lutradur that has been sprayed with diluted silk paints, cut into pieces using a soldering iron and held in place with Golden Gel medium.I took a photo of another one I made and printed it on acetate and laid it on a piece of plain white Lutradur. This one is printed on acetate and laid on a piece of Lutradur that has been sprayed with diluted green silk paintThis one has Lutradur pieces cut and attached as before. A photograph of the piece has been taken, printed on acetate and laid over the top to give it more depth.And this is the one I will be sending off. Once again silk painted Lutradur pieces held in place with rows of an invisible nylon thread to reflect the lines you can see when you look at the photo close up.

Have a look at the Calender Girls blog to see what the other girls have been up to.

Next Saturday I am off to the ERTF AGM and ‘Take a look at’ event in Kesgrave Conference Centre. It sounds like it could be a good day, there are speakers and workshops to attend which include ArtVanGo showing new products for textile artists and Kevin giving tips on photographing textiles and our very own Gina Ferrari holding private mentoring sessions.
So if anyone going is reading this blog – I’ll see you there.