Alter It Monthly

Check out the alter it monthly blog where I've entered my tree textile piece into their monthly draw for September where the theme for the month is tree leaf branch twig.
http://alteritmonthly.blogspot.com/

Rachele

Macro Photography Course

Last weekend I went on a macro photography course to learn how to use my new macro lens. This is my favourite shot of the day, which also happened to be the very last shot after everyone else had returned to the classroom!

Rachele

Jewellery

Today I've been in the art room creating jewellery. Some are for myself whilst others I am planning to sell at the Macmillan coffee morning at work to raise some money for a very worthy cause. I thought I'd do something different to cakes!

Rachele

Altered Canvas

This week I went on workshop with Tina http://tinas-inks.blogspot.com/ to create a canvas. I started off attaching teared up pieces of old book sheets with matt medium all over and then spritzed with cosmic shimmer mist. I used some moulding paste and gesso through masks to create some texture as well as some distress inks. Then stamped on tissue and attached with matt medium. I attached some hand made beads using the same dyed paper with cosmic shimmer mists and finally some butterflies made with cosmic shimmer fantasy film.

The beads were made by rolling up a triangle of spritzed paper.

Thanks Tina for a great project.

Rachele

Headboard

We decided to buy a kingsize bed a couple of months ago and went for a divan. The headboards on the market were not what we wanted and I was looking for something to go with the cream suede blanket box and curtains, so I decided to make my own headboard. Here's the result:

Rachele

Pan Pastels

I am loving the pan pastels new to the market and am going to have to start saving to buy some and try them out. Problem is I want all the colours!
Check them out on Lin Brown's blog where she is giving some away to one lucky person:
http://yoursartfully.blogspot.com/2011/09/pan-pastels-giveaway.html

Rachele

Jacobs Ladder

Back in August I went on a workshop with Tina and made this Jacob's ladder book. The cute pictures of my nephew covering it make it even better :) I love it and have made another 2 since.

It still amazes me how jacob ladders work even after constructing one!

There are 6 double sided blocks in total.

Rachele

Penguins

I've been creating loads recently, but never get round to finishing anything properly so that I can get some photo's on here! My sister came to stay in August and we had a week of decorating and crafting. Whilst she sewed an amazing rabbit, I made a penguin - my favourite animal :)

I do seem to have a thing for penguins. Over the summer I taught myself to crochet and here is the result of my first project. Not a bad first attempt I reckon :)

Loads more pictures to add for my latest creations, so hopefully I won't leave it so long before I blog again :)

Rachele

Paper Artsy Weekend

I've been so busy doing workshops that I haven't had chance to blog over the last couple of weeks. Last weekend I went to Warrington for a whole weekend of crafting fun. I learnt some new techniques and made some great pieces and now I'm bursting full of inspiration.

I then had a lovely holiday in Scotland this week visiting Glasgow and Loch Lomond and thoroughly enjoyed visiting the House of an Art Lover and Hill House, seeing examples of Mackintosh's amazing work. His attention to detail is amazing. Dark dining rooms to allow the colours in men's dinner suits and ladies dresses to show better, colour coded panels on doors to indicate male or female presence and curved ceilings to give a nicer feel to the space are just a few examples.

Back to the craft weekend. The first piece I did was a wooden canvas with grunge board pieces stuck on and then layers of paint built up, darkening the colours to build shadows:

Each word, letter and number has a meaning making this piece truly personal

I finished my piece in plenty of time so was able to do another smaller piece for my little sister. I love the crackle paint effect on the bird and letter c:

The next project was to paint some bottles, which although pretty, was not as rewarding for me as there was not so much creative freedom in the process, but I do love the flowers on the top:

Finally we played with some plaster. Originally I didn't think I was going to like this project looking at the samples, but now I love it and have so many more ideas of things to try with this technique. We covered a piece of MDF in plaster, set in some pieces we made from moulds and then once dry painted and added metallic paints for final effect:

I'm now on the look out for decorative items to take moulds from to make more pieces like this :)

Rachele

Flowers

Last night Katya popped round and we made some flowers out of metal and grunge paper. Here's my attempts:

Rachele

Moulds & Resin

I took advantage of the nice long bank holiday weekend with lots of crafting. Saturday I went on a workshop to create an album on Tim Holtz techniques, which was great, but ended up with black fingers by the end of the day, which wasn't ideal seeing as I was going to my friends wedding that evening. I ran out of time to complete so will post pictures once finished.
Monday, Susan came over for more resin experimentation. I got some mould making material to try and took a mould from some mini F1 car magnets. I used hearty clay and pink resin to see how well it worked and was very impressed with the result, so now I'm looking out for lots more things to take moulds from.

Magnets that I made the mould from

Resin and hearty clay pieces made from the mould.

I also tried a technique in a pendant with resin. I glued in wire and then filled with different coloured resin. I put a little too much resin in so it spread over a little, but it's given me some ideas to play with.

Rachele

Textiles Exam

I finally finished my textiles A level exam. Absolutely shattered, but hopefully all worth it.
I designed a print based on Hundertwasser's Kunst Haus which I printed on stretch fabric and made into a t-shirt dress. This needed a belt to shape it, so I free machine embroidered a belt to go with it. I had to leave the piece to be marked, so no pictures yet, but here's some machine embroidery samples I did for my sketchbook:

Sample in the style of Lorraine Roy - I cut up hundreds of pieces of fabric and trapped them between tulle, which I then embroidered over and appliqued and stitched on top.

Close up of sample

Free machine embroidery on coloured fabrics layered up in the style of Pat Langford

Close up of tree which is made up purely of stitches and no pink fabric underneath.

I've entered these samples into Septembers alter it monthly draw under the theme tree, leaf, branch, twig for September. Check it out here:
http://alteritmonthly.blogspot.com/

Hopefully I'll soon have pictures of the final piece to post.

Looking forward to the bank holiday weekend where I can recover from all this stitching and experiment further with resin.

I'm also attending a class with Val at Snazzy scrapbook and stamping, which I can't wait for:

http://www.snazzystampingandscrapbooking.co.uk/

Rachele

Canvas Art

Currently I'm busy frantically preparing for my art textiles exam which starts on Saturday. Final design is now done and in the sketchbook, but still plenty to do before Saturday and I'm running out of time! I'll share the design soon, but in the mean time I wanted to share my canvas art that I did a few weeks ago. I have so many ideas I want to try on different canvas's including adding wax and other elements, but all that will have to wait till my exam is done.

Rachele

Textiles Exam Prep

Today I've met some new crafty friends in Oxfordshire being creative at one of their houses with great chatter all day, I've been working on my A level textiles exam preparation. The exam starts next Saturday so hopefully I'll be ready in time. One of the artists to look at is Ivon Hitchens so I decided to try turning one of his paintings into an abstract landscape on my embellisher machine. I'm pretty pleased with the final result :)

My version of Ivon Hitchens South Downs painting created with my embellisher :)

Tomorrow I need to finalise my sketchbook and hopefully finish my piece using Lorraine Roy's technique.

Rachele

Resin Fun

I've had a great weekend experimenting with resin. After going on a workshop in Australia last year and loving it, I'd been putting off trying it at home thinking it would be messy, go wrong, etc. Finally I got the courage to try it on Saturday and then couldn't leave it alone for the rest of the weekend. I tried mixing in allsorts of things - pretty papers, glitter, sweets, oil paint and mica powders for colour. Endless ideas and so much fun. Here are some of the pieces:

I plan to make these pieces into a necklace with matching earrings.

These are little chipboard pieces that I've stuck a picture to
and covered in resin. I'm going to make these into earrings
with three pieces joined with jump rings for each one.

Dominoes with picture added and resin on top.

These are some pieces I did in my workshop in Australia that I've now
made into jewellery. 

More pieces from my workshop in Australia that
I've made into matching necklace and earrings

With all the experimenting and ideas I decided to order a few more moulds so I can't wait for these to arrive now to make more lovely pieces :)

Rachele

Introduction

Hi All,

This is the very first posting on my new blog. It seems everyone is blogging these days so I thought it was about time I joined in too.

Hope everyone had a lovely easter. I spent hours completing my canvas scrapbook album that I started in a workshop with Donna Downey a couple of weeks ago. I can't believe how long it took, but now it's finally finished and I'm very proud of it so just had to share the finished result.

Front Cover
Painted with acrylic, Prima flower added and iron on text.

Page 1 - Me on a beach near Southampton last year.
Acrylic background with papers and transfer added.

Page 2 - Gav on that same beach :)
Moulding paste through stencil with acrylic background.

Page 3 - Gav and I on the beach
Text embedded with gesso and water colour over.
Stamped image added.

Page 4 - a photoshop compilation of our beach trip
Bird stamped and tag attached.

Page 5 - me creating art work out of sea weed and shells
Stamped and heart painted with diamontes attached using
heat tool.

Page 6 - Gav and I in Vancouver Xmas 2008
Watercolour background with snowflakes stencilled in
embossing paste.

Page 7 - Gav in Whistler Dec 2008
Acrylic with tree stamp. Papers layered with photo and
canvas bird added, painted and stamped.

Page 8 - Gav and I in Sydney Nov 2010
Acrylic and fabric and paper layered up.

Page 9 - Hearts stencilled on using modelling paste and
mixing with acylic colour

Page 10 - Gav and I in Torongo Zoo, Sydney Nov 2010
Images stamped and flowers embossed.

Page 11 - Gav in Sydney Nov 2010
Watercolour with flower stencil, tag and flowers added.

Page 12 - me on Elephant statue in Torongo Zoo
Perfect pearls background and tag, stamped with
butterflies and birds.

Page 13 - Gav and I in Torongo Zoo, Sydney Nov 2010
Glimmer mist over swirls stencil with flowers and
butterfly attached.

Page 14 - Gav and I abseiling down Swindon football stand
Acrylic painted background with flowers stamped. Sizzix
bird cut out of grunge paper.

Page 15 - Gav and I in our house
Acrylic paints with canvas house and flowers attached. 
Lettering is prima iron on.

Page 16 - My sisters perfect timing of capturing my jump
Acrylic paint and heart shaped out of rusted wire with
ribbons attached.

Page 17 - Gav and I on local walk
Text embedded in page with gesso and then painted over
with trust stamp. Watercoloured stamp and went over
lettering with charcoal.

Page 18 - Gav and I in Bath
Acrylic paint all over then covered with stencil and stipple
over with another colour.

Page 19 - Gav and I at a friends wedding
Watercolour page and attached butterfly painted in acrylic
and stamped with text.

Page 20 - Gav and I on London eye April 2011
Spray with glimmer mist over stencil and then stamped
with London stamps and distressed tag added.

Back Page - Sizzix Butterfly

I'm currently working on turning some resin pieces into jewellery that I made whilst on a course in Australia last year. Only just getting round to making them into wearable pieces, but hopefully it'll be worth the wait. Photo's to come soon. Looking forward to a day of more resin making on Saturday :)
Rachele