12 Days .... festive or not?

Days 5 & 7 - the Gold Rush Era Stamp Series

It seems so long ago now since we were celebrating Christmas and New Year.... hope you enjoyed a great festive season. I took some time out, not doing much at all but I did set myself a little challenge of doing some tidying up which meant spending a little time each day using scraps of fabric and paper to create something a little playful or as the mood took, useful!

Unlike the long projects I usually undertake, this was a 12 day project ( 12 days of Christmas ) - completely random, but finishing half done projects or recycling. For example the first photo shows some collages I did on days 5 and 7 to use a postage stamp release, the Gold Rush Era series, first issued in Australia 1981 ... yes I probably have had it in my stash since then!

Completing some other little projects was very satisfying .... On Day 1, I assembled a folded paper folk cube from a kit my daughter gifted to me last year for my birthday. The next day, I sorted and ironed many pieces of eco dyed fabric which has been languishing crumpled in a plastic bag since a dyeing session early last month. On Day 8, I was putting away things in my workroom and rediscovered a little kit, a friend gave me, so I made it up - not sure this little owl was designed to look as though it's wearing a skull cap, but I was happy to finish it.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 8

Recycling was definitely one of the aims of this projects .... I stencilled newspaper, brown paper and kitchen paper to create some great gift wrapping , and used strips of fabric scraps to make some very strong twine. You can see that I used this twine , Day 9 , as ties for fabric scrappy bags to be used in a gallery for purchases from the gallery shop, instead of commercial packaging. Day 10 was a big day - I made 4 cushions, one for each of my gran\d children. One was made from fabric from a jacket I wore when I acted as the Secretary General at Model United Nations Assemblies; the second , for a grandson who is planning a trip to Japan in May, features a strip of fabric showing a street map of Tokyo; the third uses an embroidery made by my late mother, and the last is a painted cloth from Thailand - a travel memento.

Day 3

Day 4

Day 9

Day 10

Other days' projects were merely on the agenda... like gathering and treating sticks for an upcoming workshop I am presenting next month, and on the twelfth day, I packed up all the Christmas decorations and started a little cross stitch project to do while streaming some 'summer' movies.

Day 11

Day 12

I also played with some photo manipulation which I hope to explore more later .... overall, it was a good start to the year .

Day 6

Is it a mutant? Is it an alien? It's an octopus - or is it?

Have you ever thought how strange a creature the octopus is? This week's fascination started when I asked the question, "What colour is an octopus when it's underwater?" The answer is "any colour it wants to be " - An octopus' coloration depends upon its surroundings. An octopus possesses the ability to alter its coloration depending on its immediate environment. This defensive technique protects the animal from predators and entices prey to come close to the animal . ((from https://www.reference.com/pets-animals/color-octopus-be94f74fcdc74ebe) . Why did I want to know the colour of an octopus? Because I wanted to draw octopus tentacles as mermaid hair for my art journal! Then, I began to think it might be considered a little too weird and even perverse to give a mermaid octopus hair.... Facebook friends assured me that this was not so, citing Medusa and her snake hair as a precedent, and even one friend said that she thought it was l...

Christmas Countdown Characters #22

So close to Christmas and it's getting harder to find Christmas celebrities but today here's a wily W character. W is for Wilma . Yes I am Wilma but I am NOT today's Christmas celebrity. Wilma the weasel is the one of the main characters in T he Flight Before Christmas , a 2008 animated movie and its sequel Little Brother Big Trouble: A Christmas Adventure . The Flight Before Christmas centres around the problem of Niko, a small reindeer afraid of flying, and in search of his unknown father who is one of Santa's Flying Forces (that is, one of the eight main reindeer who pull Santa's sleigh) Wilma is a street wise fearless singing weasel, who Niki and his surrogate squirrel father, Julius befriend while saving Santa from a wolf pack attack . Long story short, the climax involves Niko, Wilma and Julius killing the wolf leader, the Flying Squad saving themselves in order to save Christmas, Niko...

Lilly Pilly

Today is Australia Day. I chose a photo of some Lilly Pilly berries as a celebratory image for this national day. Lilly Pilly is a common name for a plant, Syzygium smithii which grows mostly in Eastern Australia, from the northern rain forests of Queensland, throughout NSW to the southern Wilson's Promontory in Victoria. In New Zealand it is called "monkey apple, but other names used in Australia, besides lilly pilly, are Eungella Gum and Coast Satinash. The largest Lilly Pilly recorded was found in Dingo Creek Flora Reserve, near Tenterfield where I once lived. The tree now growing in my garden was once a small seedling which I was gifted when I left Woolgoolga, a small coastal town in northern NSW. Its name is said to come from the Aboriginal word 'weelgoolga' describing the lilly pilly which grows in profusion there. It is probably no surprise that the lilly pilly berries are edible as bush tucker, and make a beautiful jam or jelly. I have even seen re...

Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Search This Blog