M. I. A.

It's been a little while since I last posted.  I have been so busy but nothing actually completed that I could blog about.

I've been working on Altered Book class for His Kingdom Come and wanted to design some Thermofax screens for it.  Shonna kindly drew this for me and this and the other designs she did are currently at the makers.

I've been working on a book study for His Kingdom Come which starts in May.  we are going to read The Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer together.

And I've been working on a new collaborative class that the Foundation Team are going to put together when we meet up next month in Florida.  How exciting is that!

So all in all, I have been exceedingly busy and nothing to show you for all my work.

Last year I took part in a Junk Journal Swap organised by Sandie Cottee.    When my pages came and all the amazing bits and pieces I didn't know what to do with it.  I knew how to assemble a Junk Journal - I just didn't know what I would use it for and so it got put to one side.    Last week a new online friend, Angie, introduced me to an online class called Remains of the Day.  And at last I could see what I could do with all the pages an ephemera Sandie had sent me.  I resisted buying the class for all of an hour!

So as an antidote to all of the stuff going on above I jumped in and started the class.  I found all the pages that I'd been sent in the swap.

I gathered together lots of bits of paper - you know the sort that's too good to throw away but not big enough to do anything with.

And these bits of scrapbooking cardstock that were cut off some other project.

I sewed these strips together to make pages that are 8 inches by 6 inches when folded.

I sewed bits of paper on the sides.

I sewed lots of pieces on all over the place.  I have 28 pages so that's 56 sides and that's a lot of photos - so here are the pages in a rather wobbly video.

Here are few of the pages.

I also included some of my gelli prints and pages where I had cleaned stencils!

I added bits of fabric.

I divided the 28 pages into 4 sets of 7 for the signatures of the book.

But put together they make a book around 3 inches thick.  So now I'm wondering whether to make 2 books instead.

I love the process of making things rather than the finished thing.  This journal or journals was a satisfying process because I didn't think I just bunged stuff together.  I could probably do the same thing with glue and doublesided tape rather than the sewing machine.

And as for the pages I've made.  Well, they're not very me and I don't know whether I will ever use it.  Still, I have been very creative and that's what matters.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Workbook or notebook or what?

In May 2014 I went to a worskshop called Workbook In A Day with Anne Brooke.  While I was there I started on the Workbook using my small Dylusions journal.

Anne showed us how to use this journal as a diary or a notebook or a sketchbook or a workbook - whatever you want it to be.

And these are the pages I started at the workshop.  By the way there are a lot of photos in this blog post!

 

And these are the ones I started when I was still full of enthusiasm back home.

And then as with most workshops I go to, the enthusiasm wears off and I leave it unfinished.

However recently Anne mentioned on Facebook that she had put a Start Your Workbook workbook on to her Folksy shop.   So I ordered one and it ignited my enthusiasm for my Workbook or whatever I shall decide to call it.

For Anne this style of working is a way of life and her workbooks are works of art in themselves.  I'm still trying to work out whether this is something that totally appeals to me and currently I'm really only copying Anne's ideas until I get creative myself.

Here are some of the pages I've done in the last week.  I don't really do doodling so have copied these from Anne.

I used a stencil and some distress ink for these.

And drew with a black pen using a stencil on this page.

 This one is almost just me!

I hope you have enjoyed all the photos.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Playing with dyes

Last Friday I spent the day at the wonderful studio belonging to Ineke Berlyn.  Ineke showed us how to start with 2 colours of procion dye thickened with Manutex and how mixing these two colours produced a series of other colours.

Then she let us loose on our fabric.  I used calico from Ikea.

I started with Golden Yellow and Cerise.

I did a second series of colours making up a blue/grey and yellowy orange.

On the third cloth I used colours from both colour ranges.  It's a bit messy but will be useful for cutting small bits for embellishments.

I have since washed the cloths that I made.  On the edge of the fabric I had painted each colour so before I washed the cloths I cut those swatches in half to see if there was any difference in colour after the cloth was washed.

The strip on the left is the one that wasn't washed.  On the whole the colours didn't wash out although the original Cerise and Golden Yellow has washed out a bit.  I'm quite glad really as these colours were rather dominant.

In this strip there's hardly any colour difference.

So next time we get together at Ineke's studio I am hoping to make one of these painted fabrics into a textile book.  I am particularly taken with the book that Ineke features in this blog post.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice