The One Ring...

Had another fun jewellery making lesson the other day, we made rings...


I shut my self up in the print room all day today for a feather day but I got a bit excited and did some leaves and flowers too...

I had to use Helens desk though, mine was a bit of a mess

 #ring #printing #feathers #flowers #leaves

Shoulders (knees and toes, knees and toes...)

Remember all those beautiful flowers I made yesterday?  I sewed them all onto a little shoulder shape I made and can start making my final one now!

Then I decided to be a good friend and help one of the girls dye a dress for Hallowe'en (we're dead Hollywood stars, Marylin Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Rita Hayworth!) but it was polyester so wouldn't dye, we did mention this to her. I think I need new gloves for when I dye, mine don't seem to be doing so well...

(The flash took a lot of the mouldy/dead look out of my fingers, they looked like when Dumbledore had put on the cursed Horcrux ring!)

#flowers #neckpiece #Halloween #Hollywood #dye #harrypotter

Flower Power!

Had a fun day making flowers. I dont want to jinx anything but it all actually worked, my pull throughs didn't run everywhere, my dyes all turned out nice colours and making the flowers didn't make me want to cry!

This is my blue jay flower, just made from cotton, I was supposed to embroider the black on but I  got too excited and was half way through sewing it together when I remembered!

Silk Fuchsia, it needs its stamens etc cos it does look like it's missing something

 Organza butterfly flower, possibly my favourite! (yes that is a roll of double sided sticky tape holding it in place, it kept falling over haha)

 Silk peacock flower, this just needs shaping a bit better

#silk #organza #cotton #butterfly #flower #fuchsia #dyeing #printing

Leaves

Been playing with leaves the past few days. I've hand embroidered these ones and the one on the right has wire in it to shape it a bit.

And I saw this great artist who embroidered onto actual leaves and I really wanted to try it, I made a petal and a jay feather

 

#leaves #hand embroidery #blue jay #petal

Peacock products

I decided print just wasn't my friend after several slightly rubbish attempts so I stuck to what I'm good at and did a bit of embroidery today and everything worked out fine (apart from it taking so long, I forgot how quick print is and it skewed my time perspective haha)
Anyway, I made a butterfly and a peacock flower. I'm afraid I don't have a proper pic of the peacock flower, just a petal while I was making, cos we were rushed out of Uni so I'll have to show you my peacock leaf instead.

In keeping with the peacock theme of today's post I also printed a peacock feather onto Chamois leather (I'd never heard of it either, apparently you clean your car with it?)
It was the most difficult thing to cut out, it wouldn't cut properly unless I slipped and cut half a feathery bit off but it still looks pretty good. I might have a go using it for some other things too

And, I'm afraid this isn't peacock related, sorry to disappoint, I went a jewellery making course the other night which was very fun and had a bit of a play.

Firstly I had to cut the shapes out, the circle was a bit fiddly, then anneal them by heating them so I could shape them. I made the dome by hitting it with a round nosed hammer to give it the texture then bending it using a dome-making tool. It was a concave sphere that I put the copper into and hit the corresponding convex sphere shape into it to bend it. The rectangle was given the texture by running the copper and sandpaper through a machine that pressed them together - a bit like in kids play areas there are the two rollers that you have to roll through - and the just shaped by hand

#peacock #chamois leather #petal #butterfly #jewellery #copper 

Fingers crossed it works this time!

Been doing more pull throughs (I checked and turns out I did use the wrong fixative, oops) so have re-done my samples from the other day and, hopefully, they'll work this time...

I did some new samples too, they're not finished but you get a cookie if you can tell what they're going to be

#printing #sewing #embroidery #leaves #flowers #feathers

Stitch and Print

Had an interesting week. I've been experimenting with how to make my neckpiece out of fabric and what bits are good to print/embroider etc.
We learnt about pull throughs which is a print technique where you paint dye onto the screen then pull the paste through instead of mixing it all together. I did actually quite enjoy it and it gives a really nice soft effect and tried it for feathers and petals...

Ooh, how pretty and colourful! But then it gets washed and steamed and this happened

It all washed out! Not entirely sure why, probably didn't use the right fixative/the paste was off/didn't steam properly so I will try again and hopefully it will work cos I really would like to use it.

To cheer myself up after I did a bit of sewing for some leaves. They worked nicely and didn't go wrong at the last minute.

 I'd used a water soluble fabric with the leaves so when I washed it away they went a bit gluey and sticky (I've been covered in glue all day after cutting them out lol) but I can shape them and they can look all leafy

#printing #embroidery #pull through #leaves #feathers

Designing Excitement...

I've had a busy week, I've been designing different neckpieces I could make and trying not to put too many pin holes in my drawings...

(No idea why this one doesn't want to be portrait, it did the same on my Facebook page and I've no idea how to fix it lol. I'ts been saved properly, honest)

Heres a leaf to make up for a silly sideways picture...

#leaf #design #neckpiece #drawing

More Blue Jays...

Been playing with the Blue Jay feathers again, decided to turn them into petals and made a little flower..

It took a while, I thought with it being so small it'd be dead quick but with all the different stripes of colour it was a bit fiddly. This is what it did to my desk haha

 #flower #bluejay #feather #drawing #workbay

Feathers and Flowers

Here are my Blue Jay drawings as promised! It took a while but I kept being a bit dippy and forgetting my camera.

You wouldn't have believed me that the feathers were so tiny so I had to use my trusty Lion King ruler to prove it haha.

This was done in fine-liners and because it's s big it took me forever to fill in.

 

Now we're up to date (I might have missed the expressive drawing work we did because I was quite shocked at what I produced, interesting mark making but looked nothing like a feather half of the time!) I can show you what I made today. I decided that I might want some smaller flowers on my neckpiece and it's always best to draw first so I made some of varying sizes - all are smaller than my original ones even though I have no Lion King ruler to prove it - to use for design development. These are what I made...

 #feathers #blue jay #flowers #LionKing #drawing