A very long post.....

.....but hopefully not too boring. :) Do you realise this is only the 4th post I have managed this year and we are already halfway through March - where on earth is all the time going these days? Mind you, blogger is a lot to blame - it's a nightmare having to upload every single photograph seperately.

Anyway, on with the post.

On her blog last week Sharne showed a terrific vessel she had made using Tyvek paper which had been coloured with the Caustic Soda Rust dyeing method. And then to top it off she stencilled some shapes on the surface with gel medium, sprinkled them with Rusting Powder (from Crafty Notions) and spritzed them with white vinegar. I hadn’t thought of putting motifs on the surface so I decided to have a bit of a play. This certainly has a lot of potential.

The backgrounds are all Tyvek paper but I used a Thermofax Screen rather than a stencil. These first two pieces are on rust dyed Tyvek using Micaceous Iron Oxide paint, which will also rust slightly given time.

On this one I sprinkled some Bronze Metallic Powder on part of the paint and the rust powder on the rest. I waited until it was totally dry before spritzing with vinegar as I had already used the same technique but sprayed it while it was wet and the metallic power ended up in a big puddle!

The background of this one has been coloured using Walnut Ink and the motifs have been stencilled on with black gesso.

The background of these next two is walnut ink with sea salt sprinkled on. Once dry the salt is removed and the surface painted with Golden Fluid paint in Paynes Grey and Transparent Red Iron Oxide. The markings are from where it has been laid face down on a plastic sheet and left to dry. (If you buy the book ‘Stitching the Textured Surface’ you can access free workshops on the d4Daisy website where you can find full details of this surface and ideas on vessels to create using the coloured Tyvek paper). The top motif has been screened on using Golden Fluid Transparent Red Iron Oxide mixed with a small amount of Gel Medium to thicken it up and the bottom one is a stencil using the same paint mixture.

Same technique as above used for colouring the background and for the motif but I used the paint neat from the bottle to screen on a few lines of text so it was quite runny and didn’t make a very good print.

This is one of my ‘arty’ shots. :) An acrylic painted background and this time I used a stencil to push Pumice Gel through before covering with Rusting Powder and spritzing. Now this really is rusty!

I had been playing around a while back with Tyvek paper, one of my favourite surfaces, and decided to use up some old bits. These are scrappy bits where I had previously stencilled a motif on the surface with either gesso or molding paste and then coloured them and I thought I would see what they turned out like if I heated them using the iron – again well worth playing with some more.

I stitched this one down to a cotton duck background, lightly covered it with gesso and then painted with acrylic paints, Quinacridone Burnt Orange and Paynes Grey this time.

And these are other pieces of melted Tyvek paper that I have stitched onto cotton duck, covered with gesso and then painted with acrylic paints. The Tyvek pieces were scraps from other projects that had already been coloured but I just went over the top of them with the gesso and acrylic paints - and of course, a bit of Treasure Gold in these first three. :)

The stitching on this one could do with blending in more but it was the background I was pleased with. I had sprinkled sea salt into the wet gesso before adding the acrylic paints.

These ones are Quink (writing) Ink sprayed or painted on top of the gesso and the first one has a bit of Interference Blue added to the Tyvek surface.

The 'glitzy' bits on the top of this one is Creative Sprays 'Autumn Gold'.

One of my daughters sent me this book for Mothers Day.....

... to go with the other two she gave me at Christmas.

They are fabulous books, really fat and heavy with loads of lovely colourful close-up photos – excellent source material books – and I know you’re not supposed to do this but I just couldn’t resist showing you some of the terrific photos, and not necessarily the best ones either. As it’s not for personal gain but more as a way of promoting the books, I am sure it will be OK on this occasion.

There are loads of books on Amazon similar to this sort of thing and the next one on my list is 'Inside the Body' - it looks amazing.

I have also been creating more vessels using my favourite technique of the moment and these really are terrible photos, the colours are so much nicer. The vessel stands over a metre high and I just haven’t got the room near a good light source to take a decent photo.

I wanted to try something different. I stitched wire into the top of the vessel before burning out the shapes as I wanted to make the top bendy to give it a more distressed feel. Not sure it looks right though, not only because I think I should have made the whole thing bendy but mainly because my dearly beloved (?) looked at it and with pity in his voice said ‘Oh no, what went wrong’ !!! *LOL*

Do you think it’s back to the drawing board on this one?

And now for some really great news which deserves to be in bold lettering as I am so excited.

ArtVanGo have asked me to demonstrate on their stand at the NEC show, Fashion, Embroidery & Stitch  (details here) at the end of this month. So I shall be there all day on Saturday 27th and Sunday 28thMarch.


Please come and say hello if you are going to be there, I would love to see as many of you as possible – just make sure that you say ‘hello’ in my good ear though. *LOL*