More time to play!

What a great weekend - all the family were busy with their own thing on Sunday too, leaving me with even more time to play. There is a new Yahoo group for subscribers to Fibre and Stitch and we've been issued with a challenge - to create a piece inspired by Carol McFee's article called "Lutrador and Lace". I couldn't resist! I think there is a danger sometimes of constantly trying new ideas, new techniques and new products and never really finishing anything or consolidating ideas. So in an attempt to at least stay within a theme I'm sticking to rust colours. The first layers of paint were all metallic acrylics - bronze, copper and gold. The back was painted with a metallic burnt umber.

Onto this I mixed a bronze acrylic with an irridescent medium to add some hidden sparkle.

Then I added layers of Dragon's breath ink followed by Iron Gall ink. The photographs make it look very purple which it is not! It actually looks quite a lot like distressed and aged metal. In fact, now I look at them the photos don't show a lot of difference from one stage to the next but they were quite different!

And finally it has been rubbed over with some treasure wax to highlight the raised areas. All it needs now is some stitching and I can post it on the challenge page for the group - If I ever work out how to do it!

I also played some more with my embellisher. When I was at Missenden Abbey summer schoool I was working in the room next to Myfanwy Hart (of Winifred Cottage) who was teaching a course called "A Week with the Embellisher" Her students made some beautiful things over the week and I can thoroughly recommend taking a course with her if you get a chance. We also struck up quite a friendship and spent some fun times in the evenings which was lovely. At the end of the week I came away with some fabulous goodies - like this Collinette yarn and promised I would have a play with them. And this is the result. Lengths of the yarn embellished down onto a background of felt. I intended it would be a bag but I had a lot of trouble keeping the whole thing flat so think I might have a change of plan. It needs some stitch and some more work on it yet.



I made a few smaller pieces too with a view to making some postcards and ATCs and this is the first ATC I finished. Favourite colours for me (note the distinct lack of rust!)



But this week it's back to work. Lots of planning, notes and sample making for September classes as we're going away next week and I need to have everthing sorted out before I go.