Metamorphosis

My local Cancer Research charity shop is a wonderful source of broken jewellery and bits and bobs that I recycle into more jewellery and other things, frequently combining them with Friendly Plastic.  They are very good about saving me all the bits that might ordinarily go in the bin, so in return for their time and effort, I have made a piece of work using some of those bits, and I called it Metamorphosis.  The idea is to give it to the shop so they can either sell it, or raffle it to raise money for Cancer Research.

You can see from this photo that there is a lot of odd and broken bits of jewellery – pieces with rhinestones missing, single earings, charms etc.  I have added my own recycled items in the form of small pebbles, ribbon, lacquered metal motifs from some Indian fabric, and also some little balls made from Elizabeth Shaw’s chocolate wrappers (the chocolates went on the Christmas tree).

The brown beads in this image are some pretty revolting fused plastic beads, the sort that have no holes in them, they are just fused to the string.  A little bit of Metal Gilding Flake adds some contrast, and Gleams Gilding Wax harmonise the colours.  I mounted the canvas onto another canvas which I covered using some ancient peacock blue rayon that had belonged to my husband’s grandmother back in the day.

The only new thing in the piece was some ribbon.  The base for the work is a canvas painted with texture paint and various glazes including a good rub of Gleams and Rub n Buff in different colours.  It was fun to do, and a great way of using up all sorts of odd bits that would otherwise have gone into the bin.  When I took it down to the shop the staff were delighted with it, I hope it will raise a little bit of money for their funds.

What do you do to creatively recycle things?

Friendly Plastic Beads and Farewells

Sadly the fun has come to an end.  I took Linda and Mariah back to the station today so they could return to London.  I was sorry to see them go, we had had such a good time, tried out a number of different things in Friendly Plastic and Polymer Clay (Linda gave me a quick lesson), shopped, explored, brain stormed ideas and generally had a thoroughly fun and productive few days.  It is just a pity that those few days were so short.

In my last post I showed you the Pandora Style beads in the making, below are the results of our developing skills at making the beads with Friendly Plastic.

As you can see from Linda’s efforts above and my efforts below, it took a while to perfect the shape.

We steadily got better, but the earliest attempts were decidedly wonky.

Many of the beads were made using very small offcut sized pieces, the one on the right has embossing powders on it.

This bead I made using some scraps that I foiled (using heat transfer foils) in two colours, and the foils broke up as the bead was created.

Peel Offs and Rub Ons make great decoration.  The glossy coating was created with Envirotex Lite, into which we dipped the beads (you could see them on the drying wires in the last post).  It does require a bit of attention to keep wiping the bases of the beads to remove any drips, but the finish was worth it.

Linda added some Peel Off to the turquoise bead in the front.  The silver coloured ends to the beads will soon be available on the website, I have not had time to update it recently with some new things for you.  Fingers crossed it will just be a matter of days before I do.

Hotel Chocolat, Primark and Friendly Plastic

It is absolutley fabulous to have Linda Peterson and Mariah, her daughter who are over from the States share my studio and collaborate on new ideas for Friendly Plastic.  We have been working on a number of ideas, but most of the drizzly dark day has been taken up with perfecting our technique for making Pandora style beads.   They started out very wobbly, but with 2 heads, some ingenuity, experimentation and a few expletives we think we have managed to come up with a good technique that we will share with everyone soon.  The trick  is getting the shape right, and you can see below that some of our first attempts were interestingly irregular.

Paperclips and kinky wire are the hanging devices of choice here, the beads have been dipped in Envirotex Lite, but I will be up for a bit yet, wiping their bottoms as the drips run down.

Mariah was not feeling her usual self, so we decided that a bit of retail therapy was in order.  Most sane people would choose almost any other shop than the one that Linda and Mariah chose – Primark.  They are addicts.  They will very soon be able to map the entire country by the location of Primark stores!  I thought shopping with  my sister was a gruelling experience (she loves TK Max), but wandering around Primark takes the biscuit.  I am not a good shopper, I make a better porter of shopping bags whilst everyone else does the shopping, but the expedition was not in vane, pyjamas, t shirts and plenty more made their way into the basket, and everyone was happy.

I took them on a short tour of Nottingham city  centre and we found ourselves outside Accessorize and Hotel Chocolat.  A quick whizz into the former proved disappointing, but a longer linger and tasting session in the latter put smiles back on their faces and chocolate in their bags.  Happy campers all we came home to a playful dog and an evening of more Friendly Plastic in the studio.

Virtuous and Very Excited!

Ooops, that title sounds a bit like a chapter in a racy book!  If that is what you are after, then don’t bother reading any further as I am definitely NOT writing, reading or featuring in any racy novel, the very thought would have me rolling in the aisles laughing.

However I am feeling very virtuous because my studio is now fairly tidy; at least I can walk around without falling over stuff, I can even see the occasional empty flat surface – something that has not been visible for the last 12 months.  All this was made possible because my very good friend Erica Thomson came and spent a day with me clearing and tidying.  I tease Erica because she is one of those rare people who love tidying up other people’s spaces.  I loathe doing my own, let alone any one elses, in fact, I actively prefer other people to have messy spaces because it not only makes me feel better about my usual chaos, but it is much more interesting to poke around in when there is loads of stuff about.  Anyway, she motivated me to carry on as I have a very good reason for wanting some space to work in.  I need space not only for me, but for my best American buddy to come and play along with her daughter.  So…… drum roll…… Linda and Mariah Peterson are coming to stay tomorrow, and I can’t wait, I am really excited.  Linda is the lady behind the Art of Friendly Plastic Blog, and the Face of Friendly Plastic in America.  She also works with polymer clay, metal and mixed media.

Linda has been in London doing the step by step photography for her new book in her series “Mixed Media Inspirations“, and she is finding the time to see a few people, including lucky me.  Last time Linda came over we did not have enough time to really get in to playing, so on this occasion we have a bit more time and hopefully we will bounce ideas off each other, have some fun, and no doubt Mariah will have loads of ideas too.  It is amazing the things you can come up with when there is more than one head on the case.

So watch this space.

February Friendly Plastic Class

Do you fancy a bit of messing about with Friendly Plastic on February 11th?  I only ask because you can have a play about with FP in  my company at Coles Sewing Centre (formerly Husqvarna Studio) in Nottingham.  We will be making a Little Book of Secrets using a nifty folding technique and some fun Friendly Plastic ideas.  The little books make great gifts, are also very handy to record and store your FP experiments that you want to keep a record of, or you can fill it with witty quotes to cheer you up on a bleak winters day.  If you like the idea, then please book the class through Coles

I am not running many classes this spring as I need some time to work on my own things as I have a Nolitex Exhibition coming up this August and the deadline is April. I will tell you a bit more about this in the coming months, but it is exciting as we are taking our textiles and mixed media into the garden for two weeks.  Easton Walled Gardens near Grantham to be precise.

Anyway, here are a couple more photos of the Little Book of Secrets to whet your appetite.

 

The cover of my little book has been stamped and pieced and scribbled on and painted and generally had fun with.

The inside of the Little Book Of Secrets can contain whatever you want it to.  There are built-in pockets for little notes, photos etc.  I often use this sort of thing to display some of my FP samples.  Much nicer than shoving them in a drawer.

Fine Lines and Website Issues

It has been hard to get back in the studio after Christmas and New Year, not least because all every time I pick up something, particularly a Craftynotions product, it reminds me of Sarah, and then I spend my time thinking and not doing.  However the other reason for not getting cracking is the totally chaotic mess that was my studio.  It is still by no means tidy, but at least I have a small bit of space on which to work now.

Rare Bird Web Site

Before I tell you about what I have been up to I need to let you know that we are currently experiencing some problems with the server of the hosting company for our Rare Bird website, so please do not panic if you cannot  see the site, it is just a technical issue that we are trying to resolve as quickly as possible.  Sadly it also involves receiving emails to the enquireis@rarebird.ltd. email address.  We can send but not receive at the moment.  So if you are trying to contact us about an order or a query please be patient, we cannot currently even see the orders that are arriving. If it is really urgent try this email: rarelizzie@hotmail.co.uk.  I do apologise for the inconvenience, but my technical expert (AKA my husband) is on the case right now. (Update, the web site seems to be back on line, but the email is still an issue, and the hosting company are on the case)

Fine Lines

Back in the autumn we had a joiner doing some work for us, and I noticed how beautifully fine the curls of wood were that he was planing away.  After much discussion and experimentation with an old plane (for some weird reason he would not let me use his beautiful, finely tuned and very expensive precision piece of engineering, I can’t think why!), I managed to cut myself a pot full of curls of Friendly Plastic.  The maximum width of each piece was about 1.5mm (approx 1/16 inch).  I won’t say this was a breeze to do as it involved a bench vise and much tinkering with the old plane.

My next challenge was to see what I could do with these fine curls.  Every time I heated them with a heatgun they uncurled rather erratically.  I took to trying the griddle and as long as I made my arrangement directly on to a protective sheet on the hot griddle, the plastic stuck in place.  So with some experimenting I came up with loose loopy circles which I dragged into the middle to become flowers.

The flowers can be manipulated into 3D shapes  which was quite fun.  You do have to watch out that you don’t have any free floating loops of individual strands of FP because these will quickly soften with heat and distort.  However for non jewellery purposes, it could be a fun technique for you to try.

Friendly Plastic is very bendy, and with a bit of work I  managed to bend some of the curls straight again.  This made it possible to create the finest linear patchwork that I have managed to date.  As you can see from the 5p piece, the stripes are narrow, narrower even than the thickness of the Friendly Plastic.  The fineness of the stripe really appealed.  For those who are not familiar with a 5p piece it is 17mm across, or 11/16″

I applied transfer foils to the back and edges before I transformed my flat strip patchwork into a curly wiggle using hot water.  So for the ultra neatniks amongst you, go find yourself a plane and get curling.

Forgot to say Happy New Year!

A Farewell For Sarah

The sun shone on us all on Wednesday when we gathered to say our farewells to Sarah at St Leonard’s church in Newark.  There were so many people who came from all over the country, and their very presence brought some comfort to David, Tom and Fran, knowing how well-loved and respected Sarah was.

I was honoured to be asked to prepare and read Sarah’s eulogy, and with close collaboration with David, Fran and Tom, we came up with some words that I hope reflected Sarah’s mark on the world.  If you want to read it, then please follow this link:

Sarah’s Eulogy

Sarah’s Wild Women Book

Funeral

Sarah’s funeral service will be at St Leonard’s Church, Lincoln Road, Newark at 11am on Wednesday 14th December.  David and his family really appreciate all your comments, thoughts and wishes, they are reading them all on both Sarah’s blog and this one.

This picture of Sarah  with her then newly published book “Silk” epitomises her enthusiasm for sharing her wealth of knowledge with the world.

We are all so much richer for knowing her.

Sarah

I have some really tragic news,  my very dear friend Sarah Lawrence who many of you will know,  had a heart attack on Friday night and desperately sadly did not survive.  She had been enjoying a family night in Nottingham and was having a lovely evening with her husband David, their son Tom and daughter Fran.  Her untimely death cut short a life that was so full of creativity, love, energy and enthusiasm, it is so hard to contemplate that she is no longer here.

 Sarah was a very good friend to me and many others, and her inspiration, energy, knowledge and innovations touched the lives of so very many people, she will be sadly missed by even those who did not know her personally.  Sarah packed so much into her life, she was a driving force creatively, she was the lynch pin of her family, caring for David when he was not well, looking after their two children (now grown), and caring for “The Grannies”.  She always put other people before herself, she cared deeply for her friends, and despite a very busy schedule she always managed to find time to chat.  You may only know of her through her very successful business Craftynotions, as a textile artist and felt maker, or her TV appearances, but she was a very special person and her creativity touched many lives here in the UK and all around the world.

 I can’t believe she is gone, we have done so much together, and planned so much more.

David has posted on Sarah’s blog so please visit and leave a comment, he is touched by your words.

Yours in sorrow

Gloves For Art’s Sake

And now a little plea on behalf of a gloveless artist! 

I am planning on creating a piece of artwork using gloves for the next Nolitex Exhibition at Easton Walled Gardens near Grantham next year.  The ideas are buzzing, but sadly I do not have enough gloves to make it happen.  So this is where you might be able to help me.  I can give a good creative home to any old gloves that you may have lying around, whatever they are like.  Mens, women’s children’s gloves.  Singletons, holey ones, mittens, gardening gloves, sporting gloves, knitted gloves, fancy gloves, tatty gloves, just any gloves at all.

 I need around 100 gloves

Currently I have about 5!

Every person who sends me gloves will receive lots of brownie points

A glowing feeling inside,

And a little creative gift from me.

So if you have access to any lost property boxes, find any gloves whilst walking the dog, or simply dig some out of your own family stash of odd gloves (yes, we all have them), I would be more than delighted to relieve you of the burden of caring for them.

So please get searching and bundle those goves up ready to send to me.

 If you would just drop me an email and I will give you the address to send the gloves to.  Make sure you include in the parcel your own name and address or I won’t be able to send you the promised little gift in return.

(No it won’t be a baby or anything cute, I was struggling to find an appropriate grin picture to put in here, and this was the best I could do!)