I realised it has been a little while since I've posted. At the top are some fabric beads I made recently.

Second is a felt postcard I have painted and now need to sew before melting!

I have also been toying with the layout of my canvas piece. Also considering how to make the squares seem more a part of the overall. Have learnt a few things for next time.

Australia Day! Feelin' Hot Hot HOT!

I realised unfortunately that when I have been blogging via Picasa, sometimes my posts have been getting saved as drafts. So there are about three including this one - that I haven't uploaded til today (26th Feb!!) Well today was a hot one. 42C in some places around Perth. 7:30pm and STILL like a furnace outside. Today i made some felt beads and painted some acrylic felt in readiness for sewing and burning some fabric postcards. Following in the vein of my LIFT series, I was playing with some calligraphy letters and plan to sew on these. The paint works nicely as a resist, preventing that part from burning away.

Painting!!

I finished my canvas yesterday. I just gave it a crack and I'm pretty pleased with it for a first attempt. Learned a few things like KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF THE CANVAS. :) Here tis....

Do you need to varnish the canvas with acrylic varnish or is it ok unsealed?? Nexz step is to play around with the squares on the canvas. I'm thinking of using some ribbon to frame them as they are really small in comparison to the canvas. Thanks for the interest in this. I'm keep for any feedback you might have. He are my two babies!! Note the lounge lizard on the left...

Plotting and planning

I have made small 8x8cm squares on hand painted cotton and was thinking of creative ways to market them. Thought about framing, but its expensive. Then I thought about mounting them on canvas! That's cheap! Now what to do to the canvas. I want it to look good. But not detract overly from the tiny focal points (there will be 4 on a canvas) and I don't want to spend as much time on the canvas as I would on a whole new piece of art.

So here are my experiments....
This is a piece of A4 canvas that I played with. I quite like the wash effect and the 'mountains'.

This is 2 of the four squares laid on the canvas to see how the colours go etc. (My actual canvas is 80cm x 40cm so will somewhat dwarf the squares...



Close up of squares...

The two above are designed to continue the image. The top one sits to the left of the bottom one. See?


This last piece is not in this set but in another set of 4 for which I will do a similar thing with the canvas...

Stay posted for results!

What I did today

Well apart from climbing on the roof to prune palm trees and having a mouse fall on me it has been a relatively nice day. Not too hot - its been overcast the last couple of days. I had the SD card I bought on ebay arrive for my camera yesterday. I bought it for $40 with postage instead of $120 which they are selling them for in the shops. Today my 2007 diary arrived!! I thought I had missed out - ordered it from the UK a month ago and it still hadn't arrived. Upon e-mailing the company they said that it should have but that they couldn't send me a replacement because they are now sold out!! So luckily it came today. :) The spirit of the diary -being to procrastinate - is obviously embodied in it as it took its time getting here... I have just joined up to a new yahoo group - textile challenges. The current challenge is 'altered surfaces'. I had a play today with this concept in mind and the ocean theme which I am exploring for the Margaret River Gallery. I am trying to achieve depth in the water without being, i don't know, cliched. Trying to do something new. I'm still finding it difficult to correlate my designs with the actual finished product... I seems to be a leaping off point, inspiration, rather than a clear design.

I will add stitching over the top of all this. It is basically a sampler as I wanted to see the effect and transparency of each fabric I used on the top. Learnt not to iron the sequins for too long either... :)