Journal Cover

You may remember that I put together a journal for Word of the Year but didn't put a cover on it.

Valerie is doing a series on her blog called Washi Tape Adventures which gives ideas for using all that lovely washi tape you have squirrelled away.   I have such a lot of washi tape so I thought I would use it to decorate the cover of my journal.   First I glued wallpaper lining paper onto my journal using Golden Soft Gel Medium.

I put it under a weight while the glue dried and then trimmed the edges.  I put an extra wide tape down the spine.

I put stripes of washi tape across the front.  I was going to do it with small bits of washi tape - so that there might be 2 or 3 patterns on one line but decided it was too complicated!

I trimmed the edges and put vertical strips.  I folded over the tape on the outside edge.

And then I did the back.  I deliberately didn't match it to the front.

And here it is.  If the tape starts peeling a bit - and it might with handling - I shall Gel Medium over it.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group: Living Your Word of the Year

Join Mary Brack, Valerie Sjodin and I in our Facebook group where we are giving participants the opportunity to live out an A-Z of their own word throughout 2019.  Mary explains what we are doing in her blog post.  We don't like a lot of rules, so we will have suggestions and options to spark creativity, and to help in recording and exploring our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We will each blog about our experiences and our art.

 Living Your Word of the Year 2019

Hashtags on Instagram:  #livingyourword2019

Check out the other blogs:
Mary: www.foundonbrighton.com
Valerie: www.valeriesjodin.com/blog

To ensure you get updates from Valerie, Mary & I why not subscribe to our blogs.

A new project

I am doing a Seasons based course at Littleheath Barn which I realise I haven't shared here but I will do soon.  One of the things that Liske has been suggesting is making a different style of book for each season.  Her Winter book has been a Wabi-Sabi book.   Whilst this style of book doesn't fit with what I am doing for the four seasons, I loved the idea of making such a book.

I have bought lots of rust dyed fabrics and decided I would use those and I stamped and printed circles onto the fabric.  I cut the fabric to the size I wanted them to make a book.

At this point I was just playing with fabric and not really having a plan.  And then the light bulb moment!

I wrote about how I played with some ideas at Committed to Cloth in this blog post. At C2C I was working on the theme of Senses and in particular Taste and oranges and lemons.  The week of play produced this amongst other pieces.

I could see the influence of the work above on the printing I had done on the rust dyed fabric.  Great - I have a theme for the book.

I sorted out the fabrics into pages and was sure I had made 12 pages.  However it turned out to be 11 and then decided rather than have one book, I would make 2 books.

I cut circles and wedges from other fabrics I had and bondawebbed them to the pages.  I had also realised that the book needed some contrast and bought some hand-dyed fabric from Leah Higgins.  I started some free-machining on these pages but soon realised that it's not really my thing - insufficient practise really!   So I am now going to hand stitch on the pages for now.

This is the larger book.  The photos show both sides of the page.  When you sew on one side, the stitching shows up on the other side which is interesting.  But as you can see I'm not good at free machining circles!

I'll show you how I get on with these books in later posts.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

F is for Focus

In our Living Your Word of the Year group we are using a fortnightly (bi-weekly) A-Z challenge throughout the year to help us focus on our word and live it out.

Because of the way I have made my journal it's a case of going with the flow of what background the pages have when I turn to them.

The reason for the A-Z challenge is to help us look at our word of the year through another word.  I have chosen focus for F, as it's not really possible to commit to something unless you focus on it.   Mary often does a page with sun rays on it and I thought that would be good.  I was planning to put the name Jesus as the focus point.

I drew various lines on the back of yellow cardstock - making up the design as I went along as I couldn't find the instructions I had from Mary on how to do it!

I cut along the lines with a scalpel

I stuck it in my journal.

At this point I realised I hadn't taken a photo of the journal pages before I started, so here it is with the right hand page.

I found some large letters in my scrapbooking stash.   I printed out most of the words from Be The Centre by Michael Frye and glued them to the page.

As I said, I had planned to put the name Jesus in the centre of the circle, but I found this sticker which says Delight yourself in the Lord.  I figure that God must be saying something to me as this is from Psalm 37.  This Psalm keeps cropping up.

I decorated the strips of paper with the words on and added a verse from Proverbs.  'Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.' Proverbs 4:25   How focused is that!

Thanks for  joining me today.
Bernice

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group: Living Your Word of the Year

Join Mary Brack, Valerie Sjodin and I in our Facebook group where we are giving participants the opportunity to live out an A-Z of their own word throughout 2019.  Mary explains what we are doing in her blog post.  We don't like a lot of rules, so we will have suggestions and options to spark creativity, and to help in recording and exploring our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We will each blog about our experiences and our art.

 Living Your Word of the Year 2019

Hashtags on Instagram:  #livingyourword2019

Check out the other blogs:
Mary: www.foundonbrighton.com
Valerie: www.valeriesjodin.com/blog

To ensure you get updates from Valerie, Mary & I why not subscribe to our blogs.

Sandra Meech workshop

I recently attended a workshop led by Sandra Meech.  We had to take photos with us that were in colour and copies we had made of the same photos as black and white drawings.  I used Picasa to change mine as I don't have photo elements.

Here's an example of what I took with me.  This is at Kingswood Junction on the Stratford Canal.

We started by painting some of our black and white photos with Brusho.  We also monoprinted with textured wallpaper.

Then we each made a black and white collage and a colour collage.

The collages have been photographed and will be printed onto transfer paper ready to iron onto fabric.  The paper collages can also be put on fabric as they are, and sewn into.

In addition we were given a piece of the transfer paper to drawn on and paint.  This is my painted paper.

Which looks like this ironed onto the fabric. I feel this is a bit dark so I will either sew light threads into it or put a sheer fabric over it to knock it back.

This is the transfer paper after ironing which I can collage with.

You can find out more about Sandra's techniques in her book Connecting Design to Stitch.

There's lots of things to do from this workshop.  I hope to share the results with you sometime.  I have now started Module 2 of the Master Practitioner course and plan to use the ideas I learnt here in that work.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Catch up time

Last summer, just after the bandages were taken off my hand, I spent a glorious 5 days at Committed to Cloth.  The retreat was called Breakdown Printing with Colour Studies.  I went with the intention fo getting as much out of it as I could even if all I did was watch and listen.  I wasn't sure my hand would be up to doing any of the actual work.  But I did.

I have at last spent some time cutting up the colour families I made and putting them into a sketchbook.  I haven't been able to grip the rotary cutter firmly enough to cut up the fabrics into little squares.  But now, here they are.

Leslie dyed a colour family in the washing machine to show us how it is done.  It  produces an all-over dyed  smooth finish (above) whilst the ones I did produce a variety of textures based on the unironed fabric.    Dark Brown - Turquoise

Lighter versions

 Dark Brown/Royal blue - Turquoise/Royal Blue

Various experments

Then a change of colour

I managed to do all the breakdown printing whilst I was there.  All 8 metres of it.   I used the various colour families I mixed on the breakdown screens.

I ended up with some lovely fabrics although I still have no idea what I'm going to do with them.

If screen printing or breakdown printing interests you, there are 2 books I can recommend.
Screen Printing by Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan
Breakdown Your Palette by Leah Higgins


Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice