Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

"Have a Heart" is a happy theme for Tag Tuesday's fortnightly challenge  - already some brilliant tags have been posted here . Hope you will go and have a look, My offering is a very simple tag, - a cut out house from a piece of painted paper ( paper used to take the excess paint off a brayer), a cut out bit of scenery from a magazine, and of course, a cut out heart shape.  The background is an old book page, with a little bit of coloured pencil shading. Then I traced around the outlines with black felt tipped pen. The time taken to make a tag like this is between 15-30 minutes, depending on if you can find the bits and pieces you need quickly or not! " Home is where the heart is" - a reminder to "have a heart " - be kind to someone today!

Take a carved wood block, print , sew, cut and stitch.... this is what I did to create some simple but arty flags.  The wood blocks were carved by a local print maker, Bob Seal, for use in works for the annual exhibition of the Newcastle Creative Embroiders and Textiles Artists.  You can see my other work here, in a previous post.   I had three prints left so I made these decorative  flags. The technique is my version of reverse applique. Firstly, I printed onto a cotton fabric and then appliqued it on to the background. Then, I layered other fabrics underneath and cut out shapes.  Usually, in reverse applique, the edges are neatly turned under and stitched by hand, or if raw edges are left, they are embroidered to ensure that no fraying occurs. I did a blanket stitch around the outside edges , but on all the other edges, because I used a strip of fusible adhesive on the edges, I just machine stitched to secure. In fact, I did a lot of ...

In my most recent series of works, Garden Stories, I drew inspiration from a workshop I did  in 2017 with British textile artist Anne Kelly. These  new works are a series of folded stitched books in response to the exhibition challenge by NCEATA ( Newcastle Creative Embroiderers and Textile Artists). We were challenged to print from wood blocks created by a local artist, Bob Seal. The blocks were stylised natural elements - a bird, a fish and a flower. When I saw the flower block, I immediately thought of a sunflower, so the plan was born... I have also recently become a fan of reverse applique so I knew I wanted to incorporate that as well as develop the layering and stitching approach we took in Anne Kelly's workshop. I used only one of the blocks  - the flower for this set of books, but added one other feature on each - bees, birds, or butterflies. The background is an old , recycled cotton table cloth  with a stamped, unworked embrodiery pattern)...

Happy New Year to all!  I hope that this year will be a  bright, positive, happy and brilliant time for all my family and friends.  To celebrate a new year, this art tag remembers the past with some torn paper and an old broken zip which is opened to reveal a colourful and sparkling future year, in the form of cut paper and glitter stars. I included snippets of a colour which trendsetters are calling this year, "ultraviolet"  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/dec/27/ultra-violet-pantones-2018-colour-of-the-year Pantone describes ultra violet as a “provocative and thoughtful purple shade” that embodies individuality and spirituality. According to the company, it alludes to the mysteries of the cosmos and the unknown. Ultra violet: the colour of 2018 – in pictures   View gallery Laurie Pressman, vice-president of the Pantone Colour Institute, said: “The Pantone colour of the year has come to mean so much more than ‘what’s...

Rather late arriving at the Tag Tuesday's Christmas party, but here I am with some Christmas Memories tags.  The first one is a simple watercolour and pen drawing, with a Christmas embellishment. The others are made with torn paper. I made a quite a few of these this year, using stamps from Christmases past - so I think they qualify for the "Christmas Memories" theme. Here is a three minute video  I made for Timeless Textiles Gallery . It is a shortened version of how to use the torn paper collage idea for cards... just press the arrow to begin.

And so ends this year's Advent blog series of Christmas Firsts - a first Christmas 'selfie' for us and with it, very best wishes for a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. 

Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse... It’s Christmas Eve…. And you just have to read out aloud, to your family, to your friends, to your pet or to yourself, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ …. This classic poem was FIRST called ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’ and published anonymously in 1823. It was later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore in 1837. I have discovered this last month whenever claiming a Christmas FIRST, there is always a but… but now some literary historians now think that the author might have been Henry Livingston Junior.  While most of the evidence  has  favoured Moore, most recent studies might suggest otherwise ...      MacDonald P. Jackson, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand has spent his entire academic career analyzing authorship attribution. He has written a book titled Who Wrote "the Night Before Christmas"?: Analyzing...