Leafygal

Still creating (havoc)

I'm creating - really!!

Just not getting any pictures in to the computer.

This morning scanned in some fabric I quickly prepared for a workshop I am leading tomorrow.

It is hand dyed (by Me) from the rainbow set we did last year in Anglesea.

I printed some felt shapes from a kiddie craft set using acrylic paint and like the result. Filled in with an Indian woodblock (the red line pattern) and the end of a correction pen (small circles)

The fabric will be cut into small dice (sorry cooking is taking over ) squares to use in fabric mosaics.

Stay tuned for results!!

Back from the dark side of the moon

I've neglected my poor blog for far too long. Although It's not quite New Year yet I resolve to visit here more often and share/record the work I am doing.

Most of the year has been taken up with things to do with the Embroiderers Guild - I am the classes co-coordinator for the Geelong branch and that keeps me on my toes.

It also led me into the joys of doing subjects toward the Intermediate Certificate course - you choose at least 3 courses over a period of 5 years. Being me - wildly enthusiastically thrown myself into doing 2 subjects in 2011 and found that a tad too much.

I am still to finish my second subject - Stumpwork - although I am not the only student on our second extension of time. We are due to hand in on Jan 18th so now Christmas is over I'll need to get my skates on, so to speak.

Until I have time to sort out photos of my year's work I'll give you a taste of my insect piece for the Stumpwork. It is a very fancy coloured beetle with purple snakeskin abdomen and beady eyes!

I have yet to paint the box a darker colour to set him off better.

To see some other stumpwork have a look here or at my teacher - Alison Cole's site

There are fairies at the bottom of my sewing box!

Here are the 3 Sweetheart Button Fairies that I made for a swap in a group called Fibre Arts Traders (FAT for short!!!)

I've  been a member for ages but haven't got into a trade before. Hope this is the first of several as they are a very talented bunch.

 

 

Each fairy has quite a different personality caused by the style of picture used for her face. The wings are a stamp that I have and are really more angel than fairy but I really wanted to use them.  The decoration on the wings doesn't show up all that well here, they are quite colourful in real life!

They will be traded at the end of the month, until then they are on display at the group site.

Catch up, or, you're never behinder than this!

Well Xmas has once again whisked by without much of a trace (a few Kilos of extra weight are a sad reminder of much merriness and jollity!)

We enjoyed a break with family at the house in Ocean Grove and are now back in the swing of a new year. Already time is passing at a fearsome rate.

Notable events so far include a new addition to the family - my brother's new baby - shown here on the journey from South Australia back to home base.

He plans to restore and run this 1965 Bedford bus for Weddings Parties and Anything including tours of local wineries and eateries. It will run as Menzies Passenger Services, reviving the busline that my grandfather used to run between Ocean Grove and Geelong.

I think it's a great idea and hope that the work required goes swiftly - I'm looking forward to winery services!

One of my more achievable resolutions this year is to devote more time to the creative side and to this end have once again joined in a "Background paper for Art journals" swap for the group Collage Unleashed. I've been working on the papers for a week, having to wait for bits to dry. I've finished my 22 pages and they will be on their way tomorrow to the States. The theme this time was Year of the Rabbit with the emphasis on Chinese New Year - hence my colours of red and gold.

Here are some samples - back and fronts. Colour looks a little washed out here. They were done with acrylic painted backgrounds with stamps, torn chinese papers and gold and red tissue collaged on.

Gold circles were made using the bottom of a container as a stamp with gold paint and a final spritz with copper coloured Moon Shadow mists gave an aged look to the fronts. I hope the others find them easy to use for journalling. It will be interesting to find out how others interpret the theme.

I can't not mention the disastrous floods in Queensland and northern NSW - the worst recorded.

I know that several friends are safe  above the flood level but are without power. Imagine the clean up that faces everyone once things get back to what will pass for normal!  The fires here in Victoria were a major disaster but I can't help thinking that the clean up of ash - heartbreaking though it was, is nothing compared to stinking, putrid and disease ridden mud.

This is truly a strange country - we struggle through droughts for years, praying for rain then the heavens open and we get back all the water that evaporated in one massive deluge. We are never satisfied, but sometimes it just doesn't seem right!!

 

Serial Celebrations continued

Dinner at  Matteo's was fabulous! Great place, great service, great food and great company. What more could one want for a celebration.

Beautiful little tastes of wonderfully thought out food made the Tasting selection the way to go for me. Included  entrees of

Carpaccio of Hiramasa kingfish, prawn remoulade, ‘shiso’ Japanese basil sauce.
Yellowfin tuna tartare & seared bonito tataki [Skipjack tuna], horseradish & beetroot sauce.
Teriyaki glazed smoked eel on rice crusted tofu, pickled plum & dashi mayonnaise.

Mains

Grilled lamb cutlets, brik pastry lamb neck spring roll, crushed wasabi peas & avocado, Yuzu citrus pepper sauce.

Shu-mai pork pie with dried shrimp & eggplant, edamame soya bean puree

And not to forget dessert which just had to include

Brendan’s ‘Golden Gaytime’  - Honeycomb crumbed toffee & vanilla ice cream terrine.

 

I'm ashamed to say that we continued to eat our way through the week with lunch with our colleagues at The Wintergarden on Tuesday and dinner with friends in Geelong at The  Gold Diggers' Arms on Thursday.

This was my main course

Crispy skin confit chicken on kipfler potato, smoked kaiserfleisch, baby caper and leek salad with fresh basil dressing !

I think that this has been my most thoroughly celebrated birthday ever! I'm planning on lots more like it!

 

Serial Celebrations

I opened the letter and there it was... my application form for a Senior's Card!

Ah well, there have to be some compensations for offically becoming a Grumpy Old Woman.

I started celebrating on Wednesday with lunch with the Girls at The Deck in Southbank.

Continued all yesterday starting with breafast at The Sheraton on the waterfront.

Shopped for my present to myself - a new watch.

Dinner at the newly opened restaurant on The Pier in Geelong. (Its second night). Called Baveras after a water goddess in a fantasy game. The menu is modern and offered a degustation menu, which we tried, or 2 or 3 courses for a set price.

Here is their Dinner menu. My favourite course was the Lamb. Great flavours.

Will be continuing the celebrations on Saturday in Melbourne! More great food and company to come!

PS. I don't feel 60! OR "60 is the new 40"

Wheelie fast!

Well I am not known for my sporting prowess but I have done several walks with the dog up and down the steep hill that we live on. (sorry - on which we live!)

The reason is that the UCI World Championship Cycling races are being held in our hometown of Geelong and it is difficult to avoid them as most of the centre of town is blockaded while the racers are whizzing around.

 Pepper and I decided to take some photos of the race, just because we could and we took the 3rd and 2nd last laps. Then we came home to watch the finish on the Telly. Imagine how excited we were when the Winner was Michael Matthews - an Aussie!

I think this is him on the 3rd last lap - he was reasonably close to the front at that stage, but there was a bunch of aussies there with him and I can't be sure which is which as he  just put his head down as he got to me.

Here are some more.

Love the motorbike cameraman. 

I like to call this one "Bums on Seats!"  

Well that about wraps it up for my sporting career. I don't think there are any more entries in this blog with the tag Sports and I wonder when there will be another!!!

LIttle Boxes...not ticky tacky I hope!

Here are the altered tins I did for my mmartfriends group swap.

We were supposed to use Altoids tins which are cute rectangular tins with hinged tops sold in the USA with mints inside. I know I have one somewhere in my stash but couldn't find it for the swap. They don't seem to sell them here any more, and I didn't like the mints either!!

One person in our swap said she hates them and had to give away all the mints  - she can't even stand the smell! Such dedication to art!!!

I resorted to round tins sold here with what I know as boiled lollies in them - flavours that we were forced to eat were "Lemon Drops" and "Pear and Blackcurrant drops" - just for the record.

My tins started with a lovely paper with Ginkgo leaves printed on it. I added some contrasting red paper around the edges and gold tissue inside the lid.

The medallion on top is a round cut from a polystyrene meat tray with impasto medium stamped to texture it. Painted with gold acrylic paint and them scattered with paper punched Ginkgo leaves. (I love my little leaf punch!)

To finish the top was some greeny gold fibre from one of my mother's stashes.

Inside were the little treasures - I collected charms, transfer stickers, Aussie postage stamps, coloured brads, fibres, painted music sheet, swing tags - some blank and others that I had aged with paint and spotted. I included a scatter of Ginkgo leaves that I punched out.

Feedback from the 2 recipients, one in Portland Oregon and the the other in St Paul, Minnesota. One loved the postage stamps and the other loved Ginkgo trees so a win-win there.

Dissolving into gorgeousness

Finally scanned the items that I managed to get done at the wonderful workshop that I did at the Emb Guild in Melbourne a few weeks ago. Jan Beany and Jean Littlejohn (Double Trouble) were the very creative lecturers.

These pieces are still awaiting final finishes.

First up is the lace net. We laid down a grid of threads onto a background of sticky dissolvable then laid a few more threads, mine in a slalom fashion across the other squares. Covered with Giulietta, a very see through plastic film, and machined all around the grid to hold it all together.

Then added embroidery using threads, beads, ties and pailettes (the lime green shiny ones)

At this stage we were too impatient to wait any longer so dissolved the "cloth"and film away and were left with fabbo nets of lacy stuff. I plan to do some more beading on this and will then mount it on a background - possibly black but I will audition a few colours to see how they look.  (Could it be Purple? Surely not)

Next is the embellisher machine special - a mini landscapey piece.  We used the machine to fuse layers of chiffon in a variety of colours. Some were cut and turned and re fused to make even more combinations.  

Some pink muslin was poked through from the back giving just a hint of tiny points if colour on the lower half of the cloth. The whole thing was a very fast and very seductive process, Jo and I are seriously in danger of purchasing machines while they are on special for Mothers' day.

This piece now needs some hand embroidery to complete the design. I'm thinking that it looks like a murky skyed sunset.

Next up is a piece that looks a bit revolting at this stage. I'm hoping that the needle felting embellishment process will give it a fabulous new look, but I'm not really holding my breath. We'll all have to wait and see.

It is done on a dissolvable fabric doubled for strength and stitched in an embroidery hoop.

A design shape was outlined and then woolly fibres used to stitch. You have to cross over stitches so that the fabric will become a piece of cloth in its own right once the fabric is dissolved away.

Stand by for what it looks like once I've attacked it with the needles. I'll have to do this by hand as I ran out of time at the workshop.

Seeing Red

I've finished my ATC's for the mmartfriends swap. I decided that I really ought to do something NOT blue or purple or turquoise for a change. So...RED

Painted the background with acrylics and stamped a background stamp.

The little pics have been in my swag for a while - they are from a copyright free book of old advertising designs. I decided to glam them up with some gold tissue and was going to swoosh a colour over the pics but decided that I liked the black and white contrast to the red.

I went to the Australian Quilt Convention exhibition on Friday and now my bank account is red as well!!

I'll show you the yummy stuff at a later date!