WOYWW 494–Turtles and Tortoises, Ants and Pants

Studio Time!

At last I have managed to have a good long session in my studio, so for once I’ve got a real desk to show you for WOYWW. I’ve got a few projects with a deadline, and I’m waiting for some supplies from Ebay, but in the meantime I’ve been able to make a start on embellishments, in the form of a flower factory. Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine, has been working overtime.

I’m afraid I can’t go into detail about the projects for the usual reasons, but all will be revealed in due course.

A few weeks ago my hubby gave me four little frames that he’d bought at a church sale, and then discovered that they didn’t have glass in them, so he didn’t want them. He offered them to me and I was sure I could do something with them.

I dismantled them and took the embellishments apart for use in other projects. The first step will be to paint them with gesso, and then they can be embellished.

Sourdough

After my success last week, I decided to try making two small loaves instead of one large one, so I could use my small bannetons again. I made it on Saturday and ended up with two small turtles again – it collapsed completely. I was very disappointed and frustrated.

Where it did rise a bit, it had formed one big hole, that you can see in the photo. Again, it tasted delicious. I decided to make some more straight away, so the next day I did a repeat performance, with great success, and ended up with two tortoises instead of turtles!

Here they are, with the bannetons.

Really not bad at all. The only problem is, using the Dutch oven method, I have to bake one after the other, which means having the oven on for quite a bit longer, but it’s only once a week.

I realised that I’d made a couple of mistakes with the first batch. I’d put the salt in too soon, before the autolyse had had time to rest, and I definitely over-worked the dough, which results in developing the gluten to the extent that by the final proving, it starts to break down and the dough collapses. Success is all in the handling, and with the second batch, I followed the instructions to the letter and got much better results. It’s still a bit flat but the dough felt a lot less wet and sticky, and it did hold up better.

I did some other cooking as well during the week. I made a couple of big casseroles for the freezer so we’ve got plenty of ready cooked meals – a beef one and a tarragon chicken one, both very tasty.

I also made some sugar-free marmalade at the weekend, adapting a recipe I found on a diabetic site. I adore marmalade and could eat it all the time, but am always conscious of the high sugar content, especially as I am watching my weight. My hubby is no longer pre-diabetic since he gave up added sugar, and when he was last checked he was absolutely fine – normal, with no indication of diabetes at all, which I am sure has been helped by our general change in diet over the past few months, with more low GI carbs, fewer processed foods and all the fermented stuff – kefir, kombucha and sourdough.

The marmalade is sweetened with Stevia, and thickened with soaked chia seeds which produce a natural, unflavoured gel. The recipe warned that the seeds make the marmalade look as if it’s full of ants but I don’t care about that! They are full of nutrients and also prevent dehydration which is good news for ileostomates too! I made the marmalade with one of the tins of Mamade I had in the pantry –this is just prepared Seville oranges with no additives, to which you simply add sugar and water and boil it up, so the next best thing to completely home-made, just without all the hard work! The sugar-free version is delicious, even if it doesn’t look that palatable.

I’m not sure how long it will keep, so I’ve put the jars in the fridge. I don’t think it will hang around for long, though, especially if we are both digging in!

I’ve got a couple of events coming up for which I need to make some little presents, so I’m hoping to be back in the studio again this coming week.

Health update

I’ve had three days this week when I’ve been completely wiped out and not able to do anything much, which is a bore, and this has not been helped by another dose of hair-tearing frustration today over my ongoing support garments saga.

Not having heard anything, I phoned them a couple of days ago, only to be told that the GP had only prescribed one additional pair instead of two. The first pair (which had to be made twice because they messed up on the first pair, which didn’t fit me) was issued on a single prescription, so getting a further prescription meant more delay. I was annoyed that the company hadn’t seen fit to inform me of this, and if I hadn’t phoned up, I wouldn’t have known, which would have caused more delay again. I emailed the GP surgery straight away (hopeless trying to phone), asking what was going on, and had an immediate reply, saying they had issued another prescription straight away, for two pairs! If all goes according to plan, this will mean that I should end up with a total of four pairs, rather than the maximum of three that I am supposed to have. Three is the absolute minimum – one on, one in the wash, and one for emergencies in case Kermit has a leak or something. I told the GP about all the problems I’ve been having with the company.

The woman I spoke to at the company said she would check with the work room and see what progress was being made on the single pair that they were making, and she would phone me straight back. I sat by the phone for two or three hours and then phoned again because I had heard nothing, only to be told that the woman had phoned back and left a message on our answering machine! I told her the phone had not rung, and when I checked, there was no message. Hopeless. Anyway, she said the pants would be sent out on Friday, which means I won’t get them till early next week. They were supposed to be pushing this through as a matter of urgency, after messing me about with the first pair, and now I’ve got to wait another whole week! I told her that I had been wearing the only pair I have got so far, for nearly 3 weeks and they need a wash!!! The old ones from last year are not giving any support at all so it’s pointless wearing those.

I told her I was fed up with all this messing about, and I was very unimpressed with how unbusinesslike the whole thing was, and how frustrated I felt. I told her my hernia had definitely returned and that these garments are essential medical supplies, and it was completely unreasonable to have to wait for 3 months from when the stoma nurse made the initial appointment, to receive even one pair. I told her I’d had all this nonsense last year as well, and I didn’t know what I would do if they got the subsequent garments wrong, so they’d jolly well better get them right! She said she was very sorry, and completely understood how I felt, etc. etc. I said this is what they all said, but nothing ever got done! What I need is some action, and some results.

Shoshi spitting tacks again. Grrrrrrrr and double grrrrrrrrrrrr. I shall definitely tell the stoma nurse when I see her in December at my surgeon’s appointment. She was appalled last year, and said she would contact them about it, and reported back to me that she hadn’t had much joy with them, either.

Hopefully by this time next week, I will at least have got a second pair.

Kitties

No kitty photos this week. Neither of them has done anything very interesting except eat and sleep and keep me warm, and a bit more mutual washing on my lap! They are both eating well now the weather is colder and they’ve filled out quite a bit. Two nice little substantial kitties! (Or should I say, “Fat and lazy!”)Ruby hasn’t got out again now my hubby has cut that tree right down.

Copper and Sepia Thank You Card

This evening I made a thank you card for a friend. She had seen my Mamhead album and admired one of the sepia tracing pages, so I made her a card based on the same photo and the same technique.

The photo doesn’t really do it justice unfortunately.

Here is the original photo.

I printed out the photo to the size I wanted for the card, and laid some parchment paper over the top and taped it down. I traced some of the outlines using a sepia pen.

I used copper Perfect Pearls from my Perfect Pearls palette to pick out some leaves and stems, with a fine watercolour brush.

I cut the two pieces of paper out with a craft knife, allowing a small amount extra of the parchment down the left side, which I folded under, and stuck to the back of the photo, so that the parchment tracing could be peeled back to reveal the photo, as I had done for the album – the album page was done in gold rather than copper.

This is a lovely technique because both layers enhance each other, and it makes the page (or card) interactive.

To finish the card I matted and layered the picture onto some copper metallic paper and some mottled brown paper from my stash, and mounted the whole thing onto a tent-folded piece of A5 pale yellow card.

I thought it needed something extra, so I found some silvery-grey “Thank You” sentiments in my stash box which I’d cut with my Cougar electronic cutting machine some time back – they tone really well with the parchment paper – and stuck them down using Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive, and outlined them with the sepia pen. Using a home-made ink blending tool, I also sponged on some Tea Dye distress ink around the edges because the card base was showing a bit, and this definitely improves the appearance.

I added a tiny spot of two-way glue pen onto the top right corner of the photo – if you apply this glue and allow it to dry, it becomes like the glue on post-it notes. I did this to keep the tracing in place and to stop it flopping forwards. It can be peeled back to reveal the photo, and then repositioned. It did occur to me later that it might have been more sensible to attach the parchment piece at the top rather than at the side but I’ve been feeling pretty exhausted and brainfogged lately so put it down to that!

Earlier today I continued to work on my Infusions album, sticking the samples onto the flattened toilet rolls – I didn’t bother to photograph this because it really wasn’t very interesting – just a rather tedious, messy job! You can see when I started this the other day. This is my least favourite part of making an album. I seem to be making an awful lot of pages and I think there are too many for a single album and I am thinking about binding two or three separate ones into one large cover, which could be quite intriguing.

The latest pages are now under a stack of heavy books to flatten them.

WOYWW 360–Technology and Narrow Boat Painting

Better late than never – it’s now Wednesday evening and I have yet to show the world my desk! I couldn’t seem to get myself going this morning and all I managed to do was some singing practice, and then this afternoon I was busy producing something to show you!

Here is the corner of my studio to the right of the window, with my main work area on the right, taken from across the room. I took this photo this morning.

Yesterday I rolled up my sleeves and decided it was high time I got my cutting machine going again. She is called Sheba and is a Black Cat Cougar from Thyme Graphics, and I haven’t used her for several years, what with everything that’s been going on in my life over the past few years – problems with elderly parents, moving house, illness. During the past year I haven’t used my iMac much and like Sheba, it was in the corner of the room gathering dust. When I got it, I had the cutting software licence transferred fro the PC to Mac but never got round to setting it up, so I had to start doing that yesterday. Open on the screen you can see Final Cut Pro X, the Rolls-Royce of video editing software (available only on the Mac, unfortunately) – this is something else that I haven’t looked at for ages and wanted to revise my knowledge! On the right is my old laptop which works OK for some things but was replaced a few months ago with the one I am using to type this.

Hopefully if I can get Sheba up and running soon, I should be able to start producing more flowers and butterflies, and make some stencils etc. for my art. Watch this space.

Last week I began practising my narrow boat painting skills and soon realised that I didn’t have the right brushes so I ordered some on Ebay:

They came a couple of days ago, so this afternoon I did a bit more practising.

I am very grateful to Diana Taylor for her hint about translucent acrylics – she suggested mixing a bit of titanium white with the yellow and this certainly worked. The square of yellow roses bottom right was done this way, and the randomly-spaced ones have another coat of paler yellow on top which I quite like. I thought the spontaneity of the single brush stroke for each petal might be lost if I added more, but it seems to be OK. I can always add more yellow if I want. The new brushes are much better, but I had to experiment to get the right size, and also the right flow of paint – too thick and you can’t tail off the small petals to a nice fine line – too thin and the paint becomes translucent and too watery. Anyway I think I’m getting the hang of it now. In some ways it’s a shame that the boxes are painted red because it’s not an ideal background colour for this technique – a dark green or blue is better. Anyway I think I shall proceed with the acrylics and not bother to get any Humbrol enamels which I might not use again.

Happy WOYWW everyone, and a good productive week ahead on the creative front!

2014 Annual Review of my Art

The third of three posts for today, and the second of two review posts, as there was too much for a single post! WARNING: Long post, picture rich!

WOYWW visitors, please scroll down to the first post for today.

Working in my New ARTHaven

My new ARTHaven is proving to be a total delight and joy to work in. I love this room. I am surrounded by all my materials and equipment, organised how I want it, and the layout is so conducive to mixed media work, with each work zone flowing freely into the others. It is wonderful to be able to have my sewing machine out permanently, and have easy access to everything. I tend to use the main work zone most of the time, which doubles as a paper art and mixed media station, and I can easily bring materials out as required.

Recycled Mini-Album

The main project of the year was the creation of my recycled mini-album, a gift for our niece, all about her grandfather (my father) who died almost exactly a year ago. It took me eight months to complete. The book itself was made from scratch, entirely from recycled materials – the cover from a dried milk carton and the pages from recycled Christmas cards. For the non-recycled materials and embellishments (e.g. metal hardware for the cover, thread for stitching the signatures, etc. etc.) I used only materials that were already in my stash, and with the exception of paints and gel mediums etc., it hasn’t cost me a penny to make! The discipline of using only recycled materials was great fun and gave a tremendous sense of achievement.

The pages were decorated with mixed media techniques with many different materials being used, from crumpled tissue paper to fruit net and Polyfilla (joint compound). I used acrylic paints and gel mediums, Perfect Pearls (mica powders), rubber stamping, Zentangle, collage, stencilling… Not only was this tremendous fun, but it also increased my knowledge base in the use of many materials, and was an adventure in mixed media.

I enjoyed the feature I made of the borders, which were consistently black and white throughout, emphasising the carefully graded page sizes within each signature so that the borders became layered and compound as you turned each page. (For full details of the construction of the book, and embellishment of the pages, please see my blog archive in the left-hand side bar under “Recycled Mini-Album.”)

Card Making

Throughout the year I had to make the usual collection of cards. I am considering myself less and less a card maker and I don’t want to be type-cast as one, but they need to be done. Part of my problem is that I seem incapable of making “simple” cards and each one involved a huge investment of time as I want to make each one a completed art piece, and then I feel demoralised by the thought that if you take any piece of art and place it on a piece of folded card with a sentiment on it, it immediately becomes ephemeral, and I can’t escape the thought that its ultimate destination will be the waste paper bin when the birthday cards come down!

Here is a selection of some of my better efforts during the year (not in chronological order). For all the following items please click on the links for further information.

A house moving card. This was an original drawing in waterproof pen with colour added in the form of distress inks.

“Bejewelled” card. Background created with acrylic paint spattering and the application of sparkles, sequins and gems. Applied butterfly cut-outs.

Thank-you card for the teacher of our soap making course – rubber stamping, inking, glass bead gel medium, printed photos cut out and applied.

Also for the same teacher, this time for the felt-making course, a mixed media card with pop-up inside, involving many techniques and materials and taking several days to complete.

A bereavement card for a Christian family.

With the front overlay turned back:

Another mixed media card.

Birthday card for a bee-keeper.

A tag for a honey and lemon cold remedy:

I acquired some Stampin’ Up equipment and made a few cards using this – these first are using the Mosaic Madness set.

First card:

Second card:

Using the Six-sided Sampler set, I made this new home card:

Teabag Art and Zentangle

Throughout the year I have been collecting used teabags and drying them out for use in teabag art, which is something I am hoping to work on next year. For this year, I took watercolour paper and laid out the drying teabags on this, and they left beautiful and unique marks which I used as the foundation for art.

To begin with I have been concentrating on adding Zentangle art to these marks, using a fine sepia pen – this is very fine work for which I sometimes need to resort to a magnifier. I have done a number of abstract  designs, picking out the natural creases and “holes” in the imprint.

Taking this a bit further, I created a few cards, sometimes using the marks left by drying round tea bags. I made a small landscape for one of these, adding some colour in the form of distress inks.

Apart from this, I haven’t done a great deal of Zentangle this year, but I made this card for my hubby for Valentine’s day.

Other teabag art was mostly experimental, colouring with inks, stamping, etc.

I was hoping to add some machine embroidery and start joining the teabags together but it was then that I discovered that my old sewing machine was irreparably broken and that had to be put on hold for the time being.

Miscellaneous Projects

Other projects included an altered pizza box:

This mixed media project included the use of ripped corrugated cardboard and iridescent gel medium, together with applied images and text, acrylic paints and marker pens.

I did some experiments with different materials such as Tyvek and other meltable fabrics. This was a card I made, with a piece of melted nappy liner painted with acrylics. The texture was amazing, and it is a shame that the photo doesn’t do the colour justice, as the mixed browns were emphasised with the addition of gold gilding wax.

When we were away on holiday I came across some stuff called puff binder, and purchased a small quantity – it is very expensive so I experimented with different materials to see if I could make some myself, not very successfully, but the results could be used in similar ways.

Backgrounds, Scratch Papers and Masterboards

I spent one morning creating alcohol ink backgrounds on the back of solar panels fliers that we picked up at the county show (never throw anything out lol!).

During the course of the year I created a number of backgrounds and useful papers by cleaning off brushes and stamps and mopping up, and saving the results. I made quite a few from kitchen paper used for cleaning up, trying to keep the colour schemes coherent as I worked on other projects. The advantage of these is that their layers can be split apart and you get more backgrounds for your bucks that way.

No matter that sometimes holes appear – if the layers become stuck together with dried acrylic paint, it just adds to the distressed look!

Some background sheets maturing nicely!

I also made some interesting “scratch” papers – large sheets of paper or card used for cleaning off brushes and using up left-over bits of paint.

A blue one, where I emphasised circles and swirls.

This is what this one developed into:

Another one, mostly black and white, again emphasising my favourite circles motif.

A mixed colour one using a striped theme. This one also includes metallic acrylic paint.

These scratch papers are A3 in size.

I also made some masterboards (the same sort of thing, but created deliberately from scratch). With this first one I got a bit carried away and could have stopped earlier, when it was already looking pretty good. The end result is a very dark circles pattern, and with all the embossing resist it has a slightly waxy feel to it.

This one is a seaside-themed one with shell rubber stamping.

Again, the masterboards are A3 in size. They were created with a view to cutting them up and using the pieces as backgrounds in projects, but so far I haven’t cut any of these sheets up (masterboards or scratch papers) because I like them as they are, and they are also extremely useful as photographic backgrounds!

Knitting

I have been working on and off on a major knitting project which I am ashamed to admit that I started two years ago! My excuse for taking so long over it is that we did move house in the middle of it… It is now finished, in the nick of time before the end of the year. Nice to have at least one UFO (UnFinished Object) done and dusted!

Dyeing

I got my dyeing equipment out again after many years:

and produced these browns for the knitting project:

For the felt making course (see below), I dyed some Merino rovings, but this wasn’t terribly satisfactory as however careful I was, the dyeing process tended to start the felting process, so I ultimately abandoned this and managed to source some ready-dyed rovings at a good price on Ebay, which also saved a lot of work.

I also did some experiments with dyeing from avocado stones and skins, which produce a lovely pinky-beige tone.

As I develop my textile art skills further, this is an area I shall definitely be pursuing.

Felt Making

In the autumn I took part in two short evening courses. The first was on felt-making, and I was able to produce several interesting pieces, only one of which I have so far finished (I consider the others to be test pieces, learning the different techniques). The finished piece is a hair clip, using the poppies we made in the wet felted flowers class.

These are some of the unfinished pieces, the first being a wet-felted picture of poppies, which I am in the process of embellishing with some needle felting.

My second picture, which also requires some further work:

My nuno felted piece – one end of a scarf.

Soap Making

Before Christmas I attended the second course, this time on soap making, and have since been making soaps at home. Here are the natural soaps I made in one of the classes:

Honey soap that I made at home:

Other soaps made at home:

All packaged up and ready to go:

In the course we also made bath bombs and bath melts, which is probably not something I shall do again.

Since completing this course, I have joined the Soap Makers’ Forum online, and am on the mailing list for Soap Queen, and am learning a great deal from both of these sites. I shall definitely be pursuing soap making in the future, and it is neatly combined with other techniques too, because many of my skills can be employed in creating attractive packaging.

Notable Purchases for my ARTHaven During the Year

Kitty Squad stamp – from Stampotique. I have yet to unmount this stamp and remount it on E-Z Mount Foam – it will be a useful stamp, especially when I cut the kitties apart.

Darkroom Door Alphabet Medley stamp set – another very useful rubber stamp with a useful alphabet style for mixed media work.

Stampin’ Up stamp, stencil and punch sets, and some useful sentiment stamps. See posts above for details.

Various other miscellaneous stamps, stencils and embellishments.

Felt-making and soap-making supplies so I can continue this at home, having completed the courses.

Envelope punch board – the first envelope making board I’ve ever used that actually works (at least for me)! I have discovered lots of other things online that you can do with this, which will be fun to explore.

A trawl round the charity shops provided me with some great textiles for the altered clothing I want to tackle next year.

Plans for the Coming Year

Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine, has remained in the corner unused all year, I am afraid. As you can see, there has been a great deal else to do, and from my previous post you will see that we have been dealing with other issues in our life too, so it has taken a back seat for now. I would very much like to get going with it again, but it has been so long that I think I shall need to start again as a beginner, and one of the things putting me off starting again is the fear that I will need to invest a great deal of time in it, at the expense of other things. There are things I do need to use it for, though, so hopefully in the coming year this will become a priority.

Now that the mini-album is complete, I can return to the other album I started about Dad at the beginning of the year. This is an ongoing project, as is my Fine Art album which I started a couple of years back, and my small art journal. I should like to work further on all these books. I also want to get much more into book making in general, and explore different bindings, and make small books which take much less time than the major project of this year.

I am also drawn to working more with textiles. I have some charity shop stash to make up into upcycled clothing which is an area which interests me greatly. I also have a half-tester over the bed which requires drapes to be made, and the old four-poster drapes can be adapted and added to. This will involve using the sewing machine, and also quite a bit of hand embroidery, which is another area which has been neglected over the past many years and which I should like to return to soon.

I also have another knitting project waiting in the wings – another unravelling and remaking job!

The teabag art is also a major area of work. Over the past months I have accumulated a huge number of used teabags which can now be emptied and used as the basis of art work, and made up into projects.

I also want to get more video work done. This is very time consuming, but very enjoyable and creative.

In my ARTHaven I have a lot of equipment and materials which have not even been used yet, and during the coming year it would be nice to be able to put that right!

Who knows what the coming year will bring? I am hoping that health-wise and stress-wise, it will be better than the one just past, and that I shall have more opportunity, and more energy, to spend doing what I love best, being creative in my beautiful studio, with a clear conscience, and that I may continue to be stimulated by fresh ideas for design, and unusual ways of combining my beloved mixed media materials.

Thank you to all my faithful followers and visitors who have been with me throughout the year, and for all your lovely comments which were so encouraging and appreciative. A happy New Year to you all, and here’s hoping for a creative and productive year ahead.