Glorious Grimsby - Beautiful Bags

The ladies of Grimsby Embroidery Group were all extremely well prepared for the “Chiffon and Lace” class on a gloriously summery Saturday in May.  Each arriving with their bags made up to the point where the Friendly Plastic needed to be added.  This made life much more interesting as I could offer them a choice of techniques to proceed with rather than sticking to just the one.  The results speak for themselves - every bag was different, every bag was delightful.

 Hard at work, no time to stop for a cup of tea.

In the morning we explored some of the techniques that they could consider for their bags.  But Work stopped for the most welcome interruption of a delicious faith lunch.  The food was gorgeous, and there was so much of it.  Loads of salads, really tasty meats, and mouthwatering cakes and fruit salad.  I am surprised that anyone got anything done in the afternoon.

I had my whip out and cracked it!

Glorious lacework on the way

This is the most considered and precise design I have ever seen using lacework. Carefully planned and thought out, it is going to complement the striking bag it is about to adorn.

A little bit of Oooze! adds variety to a charming header for a non gathered bag.

Decisions, decisions.  What to choose for an embellishment.  Stamped and highlighted, the header bar for this gently gathered bag was perfectly in keeping with the more opaque material.

Dipping the edges of the pieces to be joined in hot water.

These beautiful header bars are a combination of lace, stamping and Oooze!

Beginning to stitch.  When the Friendly Plastic comes off the tin foil it is transformed.  Put it on the fabric and it looks a million dollars.

Most pople choose to sit to when they stitch, but Grimsby folk are a rum lot!

Here are the bags as they were at the end of the day.  They need finishing, but they are well on their way to completion.  My photos do not do them justice, and I hope that when the bags are finally finished, they groups will send me photos and I will be able to share them on the blog and on the web site.

Delicate and lacy bags in shimmering shot colours. The bag on the right appears much more pink than it actually is, the head bars complement the true colours of the bag perfectly

     

           

You can see the circle of lacework before it was cut in half to make the headers for this bold and strong design.

        

      

My photos definitely do not do these two justice as they do not capture the soft, delicate and hiden nature of the bag on the left (out flat before it is stitched) - all the trapped jewels are softly hidden behind a layer of organza, the flash has made them stand out too much.  The bag on the right has a wonderful swirling design on the fabric itself, complemented by the swirls of stitched beads.  The header perfectly picks out the colours and mirrors the shapes  brought to life by the bead work.

             

                                

 Very elegant, very simple the lacework looked so good set against the fabric.  By using little Friendly Plastic flowers scattered over the bag, the header design was brought together with the lovely stitched leaves of the bag.

       

 

The joy and spontenaity of the bag on the left is most pleasing.  Not only has there been experimentation with Oooze!, but also joining cut out shapes to add contrast and draw the colours up from the bag into the header.  I believe that dangly bits are to be included in this design.

The bag on the right is just stunning.  The bold use of black and gold complement the wonderful fused and speckly nature of the bag itself.  This is a stunner.

 

    

     

Here are some of the lovely ladies from the group at the show and tell where we all get the chance to see each others work.

   

 

A huge thank you to you all for a wonderful day, you were a pleasure to teach, and you inspired me to try out some new ideas too.  Just remember to send me your photos of the finished bags - I can’t wait to see them.

If you live within striking distance of Grimsby, then why not get in touch with the Group, they are about 70 strong, and hold monthly meetings and have about 5 workshops a year.  If you want to get in touch with them, just drop me an email, or leave a comment and I will contact you with their information.

Chiffon and Lace

I have just finished this bag for the class I am teaching tomorrow in Grimsby.  Nothing like be well prepared in plenty of time!  I do have a collection of other bags, but unfortunately they got damaged in a shop window when I was taking a class last summer.  They look fine from a distance, but close up they are welded together and only viewable from one side!  The heat of an English summer magnified through plate glass did for them.

This little bag is made from 2 layers of organza with freemotion embroidery all over the place.  The top, handles and little flower decoration are all made from FP.  I have brushed on the Duraclear varnish from Decoart to protect the FP.  I have trapped some lovely flat Czechoslovakian glass cabachon style beads in the plastic for extra bling, and Accent Beads fill the centre of the flowers.  If you want any of the glass beads just shout, they are not on my web site but I have them in blue and iridescent crystal.  They have two transverse holes for threading, but that gives them a lovely striped effect.  The backs are silvered.  I use these beads in my Molten Jewels kits if you want to see them more clearly.

Hopefully I will have some photos from the class to share with you over the weeekend. 

Have a good one

Stop Press!

Wonderful news.  Stop throwing out your Snappers!  I have been told by the USA FP expert Jana Ewy that she reconditions her snappers and makes them good to go again. Isn’t that amazing?

Jana uses the dry electric skillet method to soften her Friendly Plastic, she puts the FP on a Teflon sheet in a dry skillet and heats it from the bottom up until soft.  This tends to leave the FP surface relatively unchanged, but can make it very hot to handle.  Because it can reach a high temperature she has discovered that by leaving the FP in the dry skillet for 2-3 minutes after it has softened, it reconditions the plastic and when it is cool (leave on the side to cool naturally), it is pliable and bendy just as it should be.

What we don’t know is how long the reconditioning lasts for.  So if there is anyone out there who does know this, then please let me know.  My heating methods (heat gun and hot water) don’t tend to get as hot as the skillet method, so I have never, until Jana told me, had success in reusing the Snappers.  That is set to change.

Just think of all that FP in everyone’s stash of stuff that we thought to be useless and would have chucked out.  Get it out, get it hot and get it bendy!

Jana has a whole heap of experience with FP, and she has plenty of tips to share with us on the Yahoo Friendly Plastic group including some interesting things to do with glazes and coatings.  She is also preparing her own web site which I hope won’t take her too long as I am very keen to see all her great stuff.

Take a peek at this photo pinched from her ETSY site.  Her jewellery is beautiful

Consequences

Well where did the week go?  I had hoped to post to the blog days ago, but a load of stuff happened.

The DOT meeting was great fun; besides sharing our consequences images we talked about origami and Erica showed us how to get through an interminably boring formal dinner by making beautiful skrunkly (I have submitted this word to the OED!) creations from  paper napkins that resemble  water lilies or some exotic flower.  If you want to see what I mean go take a look at this You Tube film.

 

 It was lovely to have Chrissie and Eillen join us this time, and we even had Hilary on the phone all the way from Southampton.  Our Cactus Consequences proved to be most interesting and instructive, not least because it was clear that we aer a bunch of folk who find it hard to stick to the rules of engagement!  Creative interpretation is the best way to describe the progress of the images around the group.  Each of us started with the same cactus image (see previous post), we made our changes and passed it on in such a way that the image we each received was never revealed to the next person in the chain, they only got the one that we had adapted and sent on.  The pictures below follow one Cactus as it goes from person to person (all these stages were not revealed until the meeting, and we had a series like this for every member of the group).

This image had not even done the rounds of the whole group at this point, so you can see what I mean about creative interpretations, particularly as we were supposed to be trying to stick to a 10cm square at 150ppi, no more than 1mb!  This variation stretched the ingenuity of members trying to get it back to a square format at the right size.

We all presented the story of each transformation we made to each image and talked it through with the aid of the computer.  This meant that particular stages could be explored in full and useful tricks shared with everyone.  You can see from the image below the things I did to the image I was sent (1.original) to arrive at the design I then sent on to Pat.

 

Everybody went home having learnt something new about the programme, and with the inspiration to try out the ideas on their own images. 

We enjoyed the challenge so much that we are starting on a new one in time for the next meeting in August.  I hope that some of the ideas will make it in to stitch in some way, if not directly, then indirectly through the greater understanding of the programme (photoshop Elements) and our ability to use it more effectively.

Going Dotty

Tomorrow is my DOT Group meeting.  Designs On Textiles, or DOT for short. 

 

We are just a small group of folks who love to use the computer as a design tool for our textile work. Pat and Ros, Margaret, Eileen, Chrissie and I are all in to stitched textiles of various sorts, and Erica is our knitter.  She designs and knits on the knitting machine using wire to make stunning jewellery.  Take a peek at Erica’s website if you want to know more. 

We help each other out when we face the inevitable “how on earth can I do this” moment, but more than that, we inspire each other to try out new things.  As we only meet once every three months, it is nice to have a challenge or a bit of homework to do in between meetings!  One ongoing project is our DOT to DOT books.  These are small sketch books that rotate around the group with each of us adding 4 digitally manipulated images  at a time.

This image shows four pages ready to be cut up and stuck in to our little sketch books.  The theme for these images was fireworks.  Somehow we have managed to get ourselves a little confused about who’s turn it is next for each book, but I am sure it will all come out in the wash.  At the end of the exercise we each should have a book that all members of the group have contributed to.  It is interesting to see how people progress with their use of the programme (Photoshop Elements) and discover more than just the filter buttons.

Our current inter-meeting challenge is “Cactus Consequences”.  We all start off with the same image of a cactus (as above), and we each do something to it and pass it on.  No one knows exactly how the person before them arrived at the image they pass on, that is until tomorrow.  Hopefully we will all have the story behind the images to share with the group, and that should prove quite interesting and informative.  I will tell you more about it, and show you some images in the next post. 

If you are interested in using the computer as a design tool for your creative work, you should check out the Computer Textile Design Group’s web site, and our DOT blog (started out life as a forum for members only, but it is moving on from there).  The CTDG is an international organisation based in the UK, and has members all over the place, on line forums, workshops, and a great magazine called Design IT.  Val Campbell Harding started it all up, and the organisation has inspired a huge number of people to get onto their computers and begin to use them as a tool for their creativity.

If you live near Nottingham , then you are very welcome to join us Dotties, just drop me an email, or leave a comment.

The Ladies of Mid Wales Embroidery Group

Llanidloes, Powys

Thursday morning 7.30am, ready and packed.  The car jammed to the roof with everything I needed for my trip to Llanidloes and the Mid Wales Embroidery Group.  Three and half hours later and I was in Welshpool having a cup of coffee at the Old Railway Station -  a great place to stop, stretch your legs and have cup of coffee.  You might  want to browse through their many little shop areas as well.

The scenery got better and better as I neared my destination, unfortunately I cannot wield a camera and the steering wheel at the same time so no photos here.  Driving in to Llanidloes was like stepping back 30 years, and it was so peaceful.  The beautiful old Market Hall stands bang in the middle of the street.

 I was met at the Minerva Centre by Pat, Sylvia, and Ann from the Mid Wales Embroidery Group who treated me to a lovely lunch after helping me to set up all my stuff ready for the afternoon talk.

The group gathered and attentively listened as I presented my “From her to There and Back Again” talk which I rounded off with a demonstration of Friendly Plastic.  The ladies were very interested, and kept me hard at it until they began to gasp for lack of a cup of tea!  They obviously took a lot on board as the workshop the following day was made much easier because they could all remember what I had shown them the day before.

The sun was still shining so I took myself off around the town to stretch my legs.  There was a very pretty little park by the river Severn, lush despite there being no leaves on the trees, and the daffodils were still blooming (not that you can see them in this picture).

The town really does have the feeling of being 30 years behind the rest of the country, and the next photo emphasises this point.  I don’t think you will find too  many National Milk Bars left nowadays

Sylvia had kindly arranged for me to stay at The Severn View Guest House where I enjoyed a cosy room, a gorgeous Burmese Kitten and a sumptuous breakfast care of Angela my host.

Being able to walk round the corner to the class venue and not have to spend 1 hr setting up was bliss. I strolled in at 9.30am and we were all ready to roll by 10am.  Everyone worked really hard, and they had all been paying attention to the demo the day before.  This meant that they got further along with developing their own ideas and produced a huge amount of samples.  Many of them had plans for their samples - applying them to some textile boxes they were due to make in a subsequent workshop, turning them in to jewellery, buttons and other accessories.  Covering books, and boxes were other choices of things to do with their samples.  you can see from the photo just how prolific they were.

Lladies of Llanidloes, I am so glad I came to meet you all, you are a great bunch of dynamic, talented and very interesting people, I hope we manage to get together for another workshop some time.  You were great.

A special thanks to Sylvia, Pat and Ann and all the rest of you who made light work of all the packing up.  Don’t forget to send me your photos of your finished work.

 

A Carnival of Masks

It has been a bit of a troublesome day today, and I won’t bore you with all the details except to say that it involved a large amount of deisel, the house alarm, the puppy, and a fair bit of mud.

All that nothwithstanding, I wanted to share with you the results of the Mask making class at Camelot Crafts in Radcliffe last Saturday.  Everyone worked really hard, in fact it was a job to get them to stop for 5 minutes for lunch.

 This is Helen’s mask in the making, she had a plan and followed it though with great focus, and the results were wonderful as you will see in the final photos further down.  Helen added shapes cut out with Salizah cutters designed by Sarah Lawrence and myself and made by Fine Cut Sugarcraft Products.

Dian was busy adding small Ooozed pieces that we had worked on earlier, as well as imaginative touches from her own stash.

Glynis, a total Friendly Plastic Virgin was ready to laminate her fabric to the her beautiful and striking mask

Glynis, Pat, and Leslie consider the effects of some lovely sparkly paint effects care of Dian

Leslie was pleased with her mask in its flat form, laminated to organza.  Her fine filigree lacework was ready either for stitch or to be moulded into a face shape.  There was a little distressing and fraying of the fabric to do first, but otherwise she was ready to take the plunge into hot water and at long last shape the mask.

Glynis was ready to take the plunge, she just needs the courage to do so!

 

Everyone managed to complete a mask up to and including moulding it to shape.  They were all fabulous and so different. 

I think their creations were all a reflection of the individual’s personality: from the minutely and intricately wrought and finely detailed creations of Pat, Coby, and Leslie to the bold and flambouyant masterpieces of Pam, Helen, Gylnis and Dian.  All were wonderful.

All I can say ladies is that you were a joy to spend the day with, and thank you for working so hard.  Please send me photos of your finally finished masks and I will happily put them on the web site and of course blog about them too!

Masks in Progress

Tomorrow I am going to help a group of ladies turn their creative fantasies into fantastical masks using some Friendly Plastic, a bit of fabric, and some imagination.  I love masks, they fascinate and apall me at the same time.  I love their decorative posibilities and the fact that Friendly Plastic is absolutely brilliant for creating light and extremely unusal creations.  Rather than just pull out the same masks that I have had for the last year or two, I decided to make a couple more to inspire the class. 

As I often incorporate stitch, I usually back my masks, or at least integrate them with textiles, my Lacework technique (see a short video of me doing this at the East Yorkshire Embroidery Society Meeting) is perfect for this as it leaves lots of holes to stitch in to.  Below is the mask in the making.  Little fabric flowers are embedded in to the plastic as I wanted a fresh spring-like feel to the mask.

The finished mask

Travel across the globe to the far east and that is where the inspiration for the next mask came from.

Neither of these two masks are actually stitched, despite using the Lacework technique as I wanted to show that you can produce a mask like these in a one day class.  The finishing flourishes of dangly bits take a tad longer, but that can be done at home.

If you are wondering what the background is, I had to cover a chair in some blind fabric and it is slightly translucent so you can see the pattern of the throw on the chair behind.  I did not want to wait and set up my “photo studio” to take proper photos as I wanted to get these images on the blog for you straight away.

Hopefully I will have some photos from the class at Camelot Crafts to show you what everyone managed to do.

Networking

A good friend of mine, Chrissie Day suggested I take a look at the Fibre Arts and Mixed Media website, and sign up for a page.  I took a peek and discovered a community of talented artists all wanting to discuss and share ideas, network and make new contacts, and generally inspire each other.  They might be in Australia or Chile, France or Canada, but this web site allows them all to connect with each other.  How wonderful is that? 

Having set up a page, within a couple of days I am in touch with a number of folk from across the world, and I love browsing their pages, seeing their work, and popping in on interesting discussion groups based around subject matter that interests me.  It is free to join, just upload some images and get going.  When I get a mo I will adapt and change my page and add more images.

If that is not enough, another friend of mine, Joanne (French Joanne or Craftaddict) started up a yahoo group for Friendly Plastic a while ago now.  It is not a very lively list just now, but we do get some posts.  In my wisdom (I don’t think I have any), I thought a Flickr Group might stimulate more activity, so bless Joanne, she is looking in to this.  I have uploaded some images to my own pages and started a Friendly Plastic Group and it was really easy to do, all we need are members!  The nice thing about it all is that it is a visual thing, with the discussions coming afterwards.  I would be most interested to hear what you all think about the various merits of a Yahoo group and a Flickr Group / page.

Just to show you that I have fitted in a tiny bit of creativity, here is a little bit of knitting using the Wonder Knitter, and the yarn they came from:

From bourdon cord, to tape yarns, multi stranded Italian fancy yarn, skinny spotty stuff and mega fluffly stuff, I have been having a bit of fun whilst I sit with the rest of the family.  All I have to do is turn them in to necklaces, I am just not sure when though!

Speaking of yarns, I have a huge collection of interesting bits and one of the things I find quite soothing is to weave them over a thick piece of cardboard.  I run the warp threads (top to bottom)  all around the card, and then weave whatever takes my fancy as the weft.  Simply knot the end of one to the next yarn and carry on going round and round the cardboard, turning it over as you reach the side and weaving on round the back until you begin at the front again.  This is so easy to do that a friend of mine Christine Plummer  who took over organising the Young Embroiderers for the East Midlands Region of the Embroiderers Guild made it in to little kits for the Young Embroiderers to do and even the youngest turned out lovely little purses.  The small bag below is unfinished, but you should get the idea.

Whatamess

I am ploughing on in the vain hope that I will eventually bring order to chaos and tidy my studio enough to be able to begin creative working again.  As you can see, I am a long way off.

Some areas of the studio display a modicum of order:

Others, however, do not!

The trouble is that my head is so full of ideas that I want to try out, that I really don’t want to spend the time clearing up before I begin.  Perhaps I shall just sit and contemplate the chaos and think who to pass on the Pico award to that I have been presented wtih by Leonie.  Being a new blogger I was unaware of these awards, apparently they are given by other bloggers who like what you do (criteria listed below), which is in itself an accolade, and you then have to pass them on to other bloggers who’s work and contribution to blogging and crafting you admire.  Below ismy list of who I nominate for the award and also the list of criteria which I am supposed to display so that you all can see what the award is all about.  Do follow the links to the other blogs and see if you like them as much as I do. 

I have to say Leonie, that you have put me in a dilemma as I would have put you on my list of 5 great blogs as I love what you do, and the way that you do it, and the fact that you always make me laugh.  You are always you; no pretensions, no airs, just straight down the line Leonie, and I love you for it!

1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting
   material, and also contributes to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
4. Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico” blog , so everyone will know the origin of this award.  http://arteypico.blogspot.com/
5. To show these rules.

 The lovely laughing Leonie who gave me my award: Leonies blog

 I would  like to make the Pico award to the following blogs:

Linda Peterson (polymer clay artist extraordinaire)

Dale Rollerson

Sharon

Chrissie Day

Plastic Masters

And just to show you that I have not abandonded all my creativity in favour of looking at my mess, here is a photo of a very simple necklace made using Friendly Plastic which has been foiled on the reverse.