This Week : Family Fun and Felting

Last Saturday we had a large family gathering to celebrate my Aunty Jeanie's 70th birthday. Most of my cousins whom I rarely see were there - a big get together from the Yan side of my family. It turned out to be a really beautiful day and some of the family meeting for the first time! We all had a great time, but I think Dylan, our grandson, enjoyed the birthday cake most of all.

This week was also a big week for our oldest grandson, Brandon, who completed his week long orientation at school. He was very happy and excited about being at "big" school and really didn't need his mother to accompany him. We looked after little brother William while their mum, Kellie, went to school to learn about Jolly Phonics and Numeracy to support Brandon next year.

Felt is still my creative passion of the moment. This week, I prepared a few samples for my felt embellishment demonstration at Dollies today. I am really happy with my 'Underwater Fantasy" felt embellished bag and my little needlefelted elves (photographed near my felted bag, now complete with handmade wooden button). The idea of using cookie cutters to provide a template for needle felting was also a hit with some of the Dollies members - the sample shown is the little needlecase. All the other samples will probably be arty brooches, pieces of fabric to make dolls from, or additions to my handbags. Busy week!

I gave Bobbi her birthday present today - another little "felted" item, a collaged felt covered journal. It features a stamped image on a used tea bag paper, applied to cloth with gel medium. Bobbi told me how to apply your own art work onto a used tea bag and I decided to try it out. I stamped the images instead just as an experiment. The yo yos were also from a piece of silk scarf Bobbi collected in Thailand. Hope she liked it.

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Fish and Sticks : Art Dolls

This week I've been working on fish and sticks .... The sticks are the message stick art dolls which were very popular, attracting some attention and a few orders at the Wise Women exhibition. Each of the message stick dolls are from the Wise Women series, each with her own personality and message of wisdom, handwritten on a handmade timber tag. I gather the sticks during my walks around my neighbourhood and the tags are made from special bits of timber, some collected by me or my husband or from off cuts gifted to us from another doll making friend whose husband makes bagpipes. These dolls start off very simply with a wrap around a stick, in the general shape of a body. 'Naked" message stick dolls - strips of wadding wrapped around found sticks. Then I usually wrap other layers of fabric, wool, and/or fibres, over which I do some simple embroidery. I sculpt or mould small face masks for these dolls. I really like using "sari ribbon" as w...

Textile Art Tips

Background : Today is Tuesday - Tag day. I belong to a very talented group of artists who weekly produce a small work of art as a tag. We post photos of our tags on the Tag Tuesday blog . Currently our theme is alphabet, and we each could decide on our own sub-theme. I chose Australian plants and each of my tags is an experiment with a textile art technique. Here are February's tags and a brief descriptions of the techniques used. Technique 1 : Heliographic Art (Sun Painting) as in the photo above - close up of Tag E . When special sun/light sensitive paints are applied to wet fabric where objects have been placed on top, the outlines and shapes of the objects are transferred to the fabric. In this example I placed dried Eucalypt (gum tree) leaves on top a piece of originally white cotton painted with yellow and orange" Setacolor" transparent paints and left it in the sun for about an hour. I then cut one of the leaves out and ...

Winter Beach : Tag Tuesday

"Beach" tags for Tag Tuesday Last weekend, I was very privileged to do a workshop with Belgium based artist, Jette Clover. One of Jette's series of small works features postage stamps of famous people, so after the workshop I rediscovered my stash of stamps ( most of them still attached to envelopes). Fortunately for me, this fortnight's Tag Tuesday theme is " The Beach" which seems to be recurring theme for Australian stamps. These collage tags have been assembled from torn bits of painted paper, magazine pages and stamps. I have called these tags "Winter Beach" as the beach still looks as bright and the water as blue even in winter here in Newcastle. Today's winter maximum temperature was 16 degrees C with a clear blue sky and warm sunshine. ...with Jette Clover in fromt of her art work " Lives of Girls and Women" in the STITCHED UP exhibition.

Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

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