Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

 Background Information:  Temari (literally translated “hand ball”) is a Japanese folk craft that is alleged to have originated in China and was introduced to Japan five or six hundred years ago. Traditionally, the balls were constructed from wrapped kimono fabric remnants and silk threads. They were made by mothers and grandmothers for children to play with. Nowadays, decorative embroidered temari represent a highly valued and cherished gift symbolizing friendship and loyalty. Recently I've wondered if your don't use traditional techniques whether you should call what you create "temari". That is an ongoing debate but today I share what I do to make a "non-traditional temari".... 1.I start  with a polystrene ball ( traditionally the balls were wound  silk scraps or other organic materials) and begin to wrap with approx 4 ply wool, turning the ball as I wrap.  2. I then wrap another layer of wool in a similar fashion , this time a 3 or 2 ...

During the Easter weekend, I have been doing some" catch up" work, completing some orders and finishing a little art doll I started a week ago as well as eating a chocolate Easter egg or two and going out to dinner  and movies with friends  - perfect weekend!  Here is my little Forest Friend, rescuing a nest of eggs at Easter... and here are the basic steps: 1. Have a good friend to inspire, motivate and help... Bobbi (Lambo Art) explaining anatomy and armature 2. Make an armature from wire and check the proportions against an anatomy chart. Wire armature, secured with insulation tape.   3. Flesh out the armature by covering with lots of  aluminium foil. Armature covered with foil   4. Make foil bases/ armatures for head, hands and feet Foil armatures  5. Cover and sculpt with polymer clay. I used Sculpey" Living Doll" and I made two pairs of hands because the first lot looked like lobster claws!   Cure in an oven at 130 ...

As the saying goes, you're never too old to learn something new - that includes tearing up bits of coloured paper! I am going to share some of the "tips" I picked up this week. None of them is related to one another, but I think perhaps at least one of these might be useful. Tip 1:  Play with paper to refresh design ideas whether you usually work with paper, textiles, clay and /or mixed media. I attended a mini-workshop with Judy Hooworth (NSW textile artist) at the Newcastle Creative Embroiderers and Textile Artists . We started off with a postcard of someone else's art - I chose this one, called Pandanus and Pelicans Townsville Common by  Sylvia Ditchburn , I have always liked the subject, the composition and the colours. Then we enlarged the postcard to A4 size - black and white and made a tracing of the outlines on tracing paper. Here's the interesting investigative bit - divide the tracing in half both horizontally and vertically, and join up points of in...

It's a Wrap   is  my newly devised workshop to be offered in 2011... wrapped art dolls. During the last couple of weeks, I have been busily trying to create a few samples for the workshop promotion. My ideas behind the concept for this workshop were: 1) make an art doll without a sewing machine; 2) use found objects and 'recycled'and 'upcycled' materials; 3 ) use  one or more wrapping techniques: and 4) include a surprise or something unexpected as part of the doll.  All of the dolls also use polymer clay and some have air dry clay bases as well. And so here is  the first of the samples "Unravelling" - no sewing at all, an armature made from sticks, wrapped with leftover wool, and an old bead sample, and for the unexpected, the doll is starting to be unravelled by a little bird nesting on her head. Sample 2 " Clearing away the Cobwebs" is made the the same way ... This one is my own favourite, although I took ages to make the cobweb. A reworki...