Happy New Year

Posting Early for 2011!

Thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to follow my ramblings for another year and leave me comments or send me links to sites that you know will pique my interest. Wishing everyone a fantastic, creative and happy New Year. Have a good one everybody!

Paper wonderful

If I can find more even paper animations like this in 2011 I shall be a happy bunny.

Train of Thought from Leo Bridle on Vimeo.

Silly season

We have a friend coming down to spend Christmas Day with us and I made this sign to welcome her. I don't want there to be any illusions that she'll get the traditional Christmas dinner from me as I hate those little green knobbly things with a vengeance. I have friends who swear by a post Christmas recipe to lose weight fast: it's sprout and baked beans soup! You just heat up cooked sprouts with a large tin of those beans and blitz them. Apparently it tastes delicious and works a treat. I suspect it makes you 'turbo charged' and makes a stranger of close companions! Still, for those of you going down this route I made another sign taking my lead from Government warnings.....

...... but for the majority of you here is the real message I want to send. Here in Wales we say Nadolig Llawen but who cares what language it's in as long as the sentiment is truly meant. Thanks for being great friends this year. I've been overwhelmed by people's kindness and generosity of spirit and feel lucky enough to have got to know some great people via our blogs. Long may it continue in 2011. Have a good one everyone!

The Bee Carol

I found this beautiful poem by Carol Ann Duffy in last weekend's Guardian newspaper on the same day that my husband checked his bees. The trays were filled with waxed pieces, signs that they are uncapping the seals and eating the honey to keep them going through this cold, cold winter. Despite repeated requests for jars of honey this summer it made me really glad he'd let them keep the rewards of all their hard work. I hope it keeps them going until the Spring and that you enjoy 'The Bee Carol' :

Silently on Christmas Eve,
the turn of midnight's key,
all the garden locked in ice-
a silver frieze-
except the winter cluster of the bees.

Flightless now and shivering,
around their Queen they cling;
every bee a gift of heat;
she will not freeze
within the cluster of the bees.

Bring me for my Christmas gift
a single golden jar;
let me taste the sweetness there,
but honey leave
to feed the winter cluster of the bees.

Come with me on Christmas Eve
to see the silent hive -
trembling stars cloistered above- and then believe,
bless the winter cluster of the bees.

Postscript

Thank you all so much for the positive comments about my shawl and other items. I'm really not as negative as I must have seemed... honestly! The issue with the yarn has been resolved . I had used a lovely Rowan yarn and stockists are few down here (i. e. 2!) but I called the second one yesterday morning and they had 4 skeins of the colour I needed and yes.... they were definitely dark, so I headed off on the 25 mile trip to Fishguard and snapped up one of them. When I got home, I unpicked the wrong bit and re-crocheted the edge, sewed in all my ends and then delivered it to the friend who is going to wrap it before we present it tonight. She loved it and asked if I'd make her one too. This time I declined gracefully. So I can draw a line under that one and get on with something else, but while in the wool shop I saw a mannequin wearing a fab knitted top over which was worn a similar necklace to this one above. It used the same crocheted motifs, some of which had vintage diamante buttons sewn into their centres, and it looked stunning. The owner told me it is a FREE download from Rowan so if you're interested have a look here. There are some great patterns if you love knitting and crochet or patchwork. Am I going to start crocheting one of these? No.... really I'm not..... please don't ask......

All present and correct...not

I go out with a group of friends most Tuesdays and a couple of weeks ago one of them turned up wearing a lovely knitted shawl with a fluted edge. After a lot of 'oohing' and 'aahing' and questions about how it was made - she did not know as it had been a gift - I had a quick look and said it was simple triangular knitted piece with a ruched crochet trim. One of the others asked if I could make one for her as she would love it, particularly if it was in black. At this point I was politely assertive and said something like ...'in your dreams'. The following day the others phoned me and suggested I made one for our friend as a Christmas gift from us all to cheer her up. She has had a tough year of it with illness and relationship issues and the suggestion was that we all club together to buy the wool if I would make it..... at this point my assertion skills deserted me and I agreed. If only I had realised what a nightmare it would be.I remember now how much I hate knitting. I have had to pick it up and put it down frequently because the black was just too wearing on the eyes and the large scale of it has meant hours of work. Worst of all I ran out of wool whilst crocheting the border and had to go out and buy one more ball yesterday but the shade number is different and you can see a clear difference in the last few inches of the border. I am not happy with this but the option of starting again just doesn't come into the equation, especially as it has to be finished by this Tuesday evening when we will give it to her! I need to sleep on the problem and think about something else which is exactly what I've been doing all the time I've been stuck with this project. Every time it got the better of me I went off and did something completely different.....

First thing I did was make these felt wristwarmers for another friend. I am trying to use up my supply of wool rovings so if I make anything it has to be in colours I still have. Luckily enough she is a lover of earthy colours so these will be fine. Despite doing it for years I've not made much felt in the past year so when these came out so well I decided to make something else rather than go back to the shawl. I then decided to make some boots and a hat for the daughter of a friend. She's expecting a baby in March and I love making small things but the first pair of baby boots were a disaster. They went into the compost bin. I made another pair. They went into the same bin. Undeterred I decided to crack on with the hat - doing anything except that **** shawl. These pictures are not it. Somehow the template I made was a bit off so that is currently on the side folded,pleated and now made into a bag waiting for a button to close it with........don't ask.....

In times gone by I could turn out a baby's handfelted hat in an hour so I had another go. I used to make lots of them based on the 'flower fairies' figures so the mohair and little pieces inside are meant to be stamens and anthers (use your imagination please)

Once they're felted I used to cut the brim to resemble petal shapes but my nerve had deserted me by the time this one was done. The way my luck was going gave me no confidence I could do it properly! I'm just grateful it has held together so I quickly finished it with some buttonhole stitch. I thought about embroidering little french knots on it to make it look like a strawberry but suddenly realised that I was just making more work for myself.

I can do no more to the shawl until the wool shop opens tomorrow. I'm hoping I can get a skein that is closer in colour to the original. If not, I will have to decide what to do for the best. In the meantime I am distracting myself making a bag for another friend for Christmas. You have to pity the poor souls who will be on the receiving end of my efforts this Christmas. Next year, I will plan things better....... what was that phrase I said?.... oh yeah, 'in my dreams'.

Make your day

Hope this makes your day. It made mine when someone mentioned chocolate....oh,yes, chocolate!

WHAT MAKES YOUR DAY? from Napatsawan Chirayukool on Vimeo.

Challenges

It's ironic that I wanted to make a post about challenges today. Ironic, because I have been unable to produce the words in my head on the same post as the video about the mini planners below. Blogger seems to be technically challenged itself today.... or maybe it is me? I found the video through some circuitous route whilst reading about many of the sketchbook challenges doing the rounds at the moment. The common denominator for all of them seems to be the fact that they're all using Moleskine notebooks to collect the images in. I've never bought or used a Moleskine so do not know what they are like. I wonder what I am missing?

Anyway enjoy the stop motion paper cutting work in the video and also pop over to read this post on the blog of Australian artist Sophie Munns. It's all about an artist led challenge using stamps as the inspiration. There are some fascinating links and Sophie's other posts are well worth checking out. I really enjoyed reading about the whole thing and it made me itch to get involved in a challenge of some kind in 2011. I have a few ideas......

MINI PLANNERS from Moleskine ® on Vimeo.

Mariko Kusumoto

Every week I receive a newsletter via e mail from Hand Eye magazine. In the latest was an article about the amazing miniature metal sculptures of Mariko Kusumoto. It made me want to read more and I found gallery images of her sculptures, some of which had been animated with stop motion work. I picked this one because I loved the quirky song but they are all fascinating pieces of work, so intricate in their detail. Have a look here to find out more and then follow the link to more videos.

Christmas is Coming

I try to do my weekly shop first thing on a Monday morning just after the supermarket opens its doors for business. Normally I am on autopilot and nothing disturbs the old grey matter but this morning my peaceful reverie was interrupted by Bing Crosby... hearing 'White Christmas' so early in the day sent a chill down my spine.... but there is no escaping the start of the Christmas season so I am getting in early with my annual plea for the albatross. It won't be long before you either send or receive your Christmas cards. If you are able to save the stamps and send them to the RSPB after Christmas it will help in the vital conservation work they are supporting in order to save this magnificent bird. This year I'm going to put a little plea in each of my envelopes to try and encourage as many people as I know to save their stamps. If this is not the cause for you, a quick web search shows other charities that can make use of your stamps so I hope you'll find one you'd like to support.

This little video was produced in 1951 so the posting dates are not to be taken as gospel! I love stop motion films and Lotte Reiniger used papercutting for her films to huge effect. I know it's very dated (aren't we all) but where she led , others have followed. She was a pioneer in this field and her films have an old fashioned charm that find a ready home with me.

Eliminate the negative

A couple of months ago I started a drawing course with Aberystwyth University. The first section which was traditional drawing skills finished a couple of weeks ago and we're now into a 12 week section where the emphasis is drawing from the imagination. This week we had to draw a huge stack of chairs which everyone (except me) hated. I have found a love of drawing detailed, complicated things with lots of negative spaces. I'm not saying I am any good at it.... but I enjoy it! Similarly I also enjoy abstract stuff too and this week's homework required cropping our chair drawing and using other mediums to display it. I decided to make some collagraph plates as part of my response. I made five plates and today I have spent about 5 hours in my shed printing them. Of the five, only two work in a way I am happy with. The image above shows one of them, inked up with three different colours of varying viscosity.

In the summer I did a short term consultancy project for an old employer and I used some of the money I earned to treat myself to some good quality rollers. My friend Sue gave me the right advice of which ones to buy in order to be able to do viscosity inking successfully and today was my first try 'at home' of the technique. As I put out too much ink I decided to ink up a couple of older plates to use it up. There is a limit to how many plates I need for my 'homework' so I produced the prints above and below. The colour combination is a favourite one.

I must have pulled over 20 odd prints today and some should never see the light of day but that's the whole point of proofing plates and trying things out. You can think a plate will be wonderful until you pull that paper away from it and realise it leaves a lot to be desired! If there's a downside to a full day's printing though it must be my inky hands.... and backache....

Going down to the sea again....

It was announced a couple of weeks ago that National Geographic had named Pembrokeshire as the second best coastal destination in the world along with the Tutukaka coast in New Zealand. This means it beat places such as the Seychelles and Bermuda! The magazine rated 99 of the world's islands, coastlines and beaches for sustainability and authenticity and their top 15, which included Pembrokeshire, were chosen because they are in excellent shape, being relatively unspoiled and likely to stay like it.

Perhaps that's because there is so much to see around here that none of it ever gets really busy even during the height of the summer tourist season? Anyway, we decided to test that theory yesterday and headed north of the county for a brisk walk along the coast. The peninsula of Dinas Island which is owned by the National Trust starts and ends at a place called Pwllgwaelod. When we got here it was heaving with kayakers and coasteerers so we took a walk along the path to the beach a short distance away at Cwm yr Eglyws and found it deserted.' Now THAT is what Pembrokeshire is like!

The little hamlet at Cwm yr Eglyws is well known for having its own microclimate. It is often a few degrees hotter and drier than other parts of the Pembrokeshire coast. There is a sandy beach and a slipway for small boats. It is the site of the 12th century church of St Brynach which was almost completely destroyed by the Royal Charter storm of 1859. Only the belfry, west wall and part of the graveyard remain as you can see above. The Royal Charter went down off the coast of Anglesey in a horrendous storm in 1859 which affected many parts of the Welsh coast. It was responsible for over 800 deaths in one night and also led to the setting up of the gale warnings from the Meteorlogical Office. Not that there were any gales in sight yesterday afternoon. It was a beautiful day but darkened as the afternoon wore on. Last night saw one of the worst storms of the autumn so far and I hear on the news that it is now making it's way across mainland Britain. If it's anything like we experienced here, I'd batten down the hatches!

Oh Mrs Heelis, what would you think?

I do embrace new technology - honestly - and I love pop-up books... but I still like to hold the thing in my hand and turn the pages by myself. This is really clever stuff but nothing will ever beat the old fashioned way for me I think.

Canine Capers

Reading Bird in the House this morning I see that the next exhibition at my local gallery in Carmarthen is going to feature the textile taxidermy of Donya Coward. I love the inventiveness of this work and the subject matter. It reminded me that there is another dog related exhibition I'd love to see next month but this one isn't local sadly. It will be at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London and features the work of Peter Clark. Now, I've mentioned Peter before on this blog because I think the things he does with the paper that others discard is nothing short of magical. The exhibition is called 'Dogs are for Life, not just for Christmas'. These are all the images on show at present and 'Young Sea Dog' here is my favourite. Well, it's done with maps so no surprise there...

Gloucester Cathedral

A few weeks ago my friend Sue went to see 'Crucible', an exhibition of sculptures at Gloucester Cathedral. Her post, here, inspired us to get up to Gloucester to see it, something we finally managed yesterday on a warm, sunny, beautiful autumn day. Her photos do it better justice than mine so I will not inflict too many of my efforts on you here. Suffice to say it was a fabulous exhibition in a magnificent setting. We arrived early to avoid any half term crowds but the cathedral was packed by about 11.00. Not surprisingly the exhibition has been extended because of huge visitor numbers and will now end on November 7th. If you live in the vicinity I urge you to go. There are 76 sculptures in situ inside and outside of the cathedral. Some you'll love and some you'll be ambivalent about but all of them provoke you to think about them.

This is Close V by Antony Gormley lying prostrate in a small chamber of its own. Very atmospheric. When I went back later I found a young man also lying prostrate nose to nose with it. How amazing to want to connect with something as much as that. No-one entered the little chamber while he was there. It was if we were all giving him the space he wanted... alternatively it could have been that great British reserve and not wanting to intrude... or plain embarassment that he could do such a thing in such a place....

...but the place was truly magical and somewhere I am ashamed to say I have never been before despite living 'just down the road' for most of my life until my mid 40's. As the sculptures are dotted all over the building you explore most of it whilst searching for them. I got lost in the delight of the tombs, the medieval floor tiles and the nooks and crannies, most of my photos being of the floor and oddities that I came across.

This early 17th century memorial was so detailed but what thrilled me most was the scratching and etching it had been subjected to by years of visitors. It was covered in little marks of graffiti as were walls everywhere. Names and dates were carved into the walls. I found some from 1705, 1763, 1841.... proof that Banksy was not the first graffiti artist in the West Country.

They began building this cathedral in 1089 although it was originally a Benedictine monastery as long ago as 700AD. When Henry VIII started to abolish the monasteries it was saved purely because his ancestor Edward II is interred there so you have an unbroken timeline of worship here for 1300 years. I know Sue is going to visit it again and I will be going back too, maybe before the end of the exhibition as there are many things I want to see again. My photographs have shown me things that I just didn't look at well enough first time round!

Jones - her book

The contemporary weaving exhibition I saw at the National Woollen Museum the other day was called Warp+Weft, the museum being just one of a three site venue for the event. More interestingly, for me, was the other work I went specifically to see. This was the response, in drawing and in stitch, by Julia Griffiths Jones to the museum, its artefacts and its production. I first saw Julia's mild steel work a few years and I love the strong graphic quality of her work. One of the outcomes of the work at the museum is a digitally printed book of her drawings on wool. It sent my mind thinking yet again about marrying printmaking and felt or woven textiles. Something to revisit perhaps? Anyway I'll let the artist tell you all about it herself and if you're intrigued to see more visit her website where there is also another video showing the book in all its detail.

A woman's work is never done.....

I went to an exhibition today at the National Woollen Museum and had to detour on my way home because of roadworks. As I went through town there was a space outside the one charity shop that is usually 'off limits' because of regular traffic chaos so I figured it was a sign that I just had to stop... and I was right because I found the perfect book for me. The Housewife's Guide almost had my name on it. As soon as I saw those pictures on the front cover of hard graft I recognised myself...... or perhaps not......

It includes a daily timetable of chores that makes boot camp look like a holiday and if you look closely at the above it will tell you all the key things we need to do every month to be a good housewife. I see that this month I need to get out my winter wardrobe, especially my furs! I don't know how I will possibly fit it all into my timetable. It seems I also have to inspect the house and carry out small repairs this month! There are chapters telling me how to clean the house efficiently without getting backache, how to wash my chamois gloves and silk stockings , how to entertain and how to arrange flowers to make the house a welcome place for visitors. There's even a chapter showing me how to mend a fuse, change a tap washer and.... lay a fitted carpet!!!

The book is full of sensible advice but I can just see the reaction if I pulled up a stool by the sink after dinner tonight..... mind you, the husband needs to support his wife wherever he can because he may need her ministering hand at some time..... indeed there's a whole chapter devoted to 'the sick room' and 'looking after patients'.

I can't find a date for when the book was printed but it is stereotypical of women's roles in the home looking after the poor chap laid up with a cold or something. I suspect she's giving him a cup of home made beef tea .... or arsenic.....

As he improves it suggests , as you can see, that a rope fastened to the end of the bed will help him pull himself up easily..... hmmm.....I can think of a better use for that rope.... a definite sign that I am not a good housewife I think!

Off to the Metropolis...

We went to see this last night. It was originally made in 1927 and is hailed as a classic of silent cinema. Two years ago a longer version of the original film was found in a studio in Buenos Aires and it has been digitally remastered and re-released. It's doing the rounds in the UK at the moment accompanied by its original orchestral score. It has a few creaky moments in it - the movements are very staged and the eye make up is very exaggerated - and that's only the men! The female characters wear very risque dress - or undress - so it must have been made before too much censorship came about but it is pretty wonderful to see. At the end of it, the audience, to a man, applauded spontaneously. I've never experienced that before. If you had told me once that I'd sit for well over two and a half hours watching a silent science fiction film I'd never have believed you. The things we do for love eh?

May the force be with you....

I've lost count how many times I've watched the original 'Star Wars' trilogy. I'm afraid that's what happens when you marry a man who is a keen science fiction fan. Perhaps that's why the images in this great little video are so familiar. This is great papercut, stop motion work by Eric Power. If you love this sort of thing, check him out.

Jeremy Messersmith - Tatooine from Eric Power on Vimeo.

A bit of a giveaway....updated

I've mentioned before some of the magazines that I subscribe to or like to buy. If you don't know it already let me introduce you to 'Bound and Lettered' which is published in Canada by John Neal Booksellers. It started out life as 'Tabellae Ansatae' and was the brainchild of book artist Shereen La Plantz before changing its name a couple of years ago. If you're interested in book arts, paper arts or calligraphy this is a great magazine to look through. I used to buy it for many years from a small bookshop in London, its only UK distributor, but they retired and I now just purchase quarterly online. Due to a mix -up with my current order I have been sent a recent copy as a goodwill gesture, but it's a copy I already have, so I have told them I will pass it on to someone who is interested in the same sort of things as me. So, if anyone reading this wants my free copy please e mail me or leave a comment. Should there be more than one request I'll put the names in the hat at the end of the week .



This is not so much of a giveaway, more of a 'pay it forward' type of thing I suppose but a project I've been playing about with this week is definitely the product of a 'giveaway'. The 'giveaway' in question is a paint chart from Farrow and Ball, a left over from some recent decorating we have done.

It struck me how good a quality the paper was and that it was evenly and crisply folded - the great base for an accordion book and no measuring and cutting to do! First thing I did was collage some old book pages onto the front and back. They came from an old gardening encyclopaedia which had lots of fern pictures so I made sure they were postioned on the mountain folds.

Once the collaging was done I took some bracken from the garden - there is a surfeit of it after all - and made up some green printing ink which I then rollered onto the fronds before pressing them on the pages. I only did a small amount of type stamping on it before adding some hard covers and making a slip case to hold it together. The extra paper gave the paint chart a bit of 'spring' and it works better within some sort of enclosure. The slip cover was a discarded monoprint using the bracken. I painted acrylic wax onto the print but because I had used water based printing ink originally it all smeared! Not to be daunted I covered my tracks with some more bracken prints using a gold stamp pad. The print was a trifle short in length but I am not bothered. It performs the function I need it to do!

It's not a brilliant work of art but it does show you that the means to make books is within your grasp if you look around. This sort of paint chart could be cut in half or cut shorter so it lends itself to other structures. It is also the perfect shape to make a flag book with. I think I'll do that example next as I have another paint chart I can use. Please note I am not advocating a wholesale rampage through the DIY store grabbing charts you don't need but I am encouraging you to look at things you already have and that you may be going to discard with new eyes and if you want to try making books and read that magazine... just let me know!

Thanks everyone who e mailed or left a comment. I put the names in a bag this morning and my assistant (aka my better half) pulled Dan's name from it. There's obviously a keen interest in making books and lettering out there and I'm sorry that I've only got the one magazine. I shall look forward to seeing what creations it might inspire Dan to produce!

Tidying up

We realised this week that we have been in our current home for nine years exactly. I used to be quite a nomad, rarely settling in one place for long so I suppose this is evidence of the 'pull' that this place has had on me. Despite that, I've been feeling very restless lately and talking about moving on. I think my husband wanted me to banish these thoughts by making me so tired I would drop the subject so he suggested we get started on the annual clear up in the garden. The ash trees have started to shed their leaves everywhere and the ground is littered with ash keys and sycamore wings. It is certainly time to get on with things as you can see.

In the time we have been here we have made beds. moved beds, planted cuttings and seeds, watched them get huge, moved them, split them. composted them etc etc.... and the garden has done what they all do... it has evolved and changed and I have always loved every part of it at all times of the year. In fact we often say we bought a garden and the house was an afterthought.

There are two borders halfway up my garden that are planted with lots of grasses and architectural plants i.e large overgrown things. It is time to get in there and make some semblance of order but we usually leave things to provide seedheads for the birds in winter, plus nothing beats tall grasses covered in frost..... so the plan yesterday was to get into our front garden and tidy it up as I noticed our postie has suddenly taken to coming up the path with a machete....

Well, that was my husband's plan but I got sidetracked. First off I found a frog hidden in the undergrowth to study at length , then I found the wing of a swallow (not attached to the swallow unfortunately) and then I noticed the huge number of butterflies swarming over one of the eupatoriums in the overgrown middle borders. I am easily distracted when this is the reward.

Working on the premise that 'if you can't beat them, join them' my husband then provided me with a tray to 'collect' my treasures in. He started off my collection with some fabulous leaves from the paeonia lutea in the front garden. They are already being pressed for monoprinting sessions but these are the seedpods. They are about three inches long and all knobbly and chunky. The colours are fabulous and the seeds inside are shiny, black and hard as marbles. They cry out to be drawn or painted don't they?

There is more 'hacking' on the agenda today. I ended up more fired up by finds than physically exhausted yesterday. I might have to show willing and put in a bit more effort today but I have my 'collections tray' at the ready, just in case I am lucky enough to be distracted.....

The Last Knit

I've always had a love/hate relationship with knitting but things have never been this bad for me.......

What's in a name...

Over at Purple Podded Peas, Celia has been sharing the early Penguin and Pelican books she has recently found. When I was clearing some shelves yesterday in preparation for some decorating I came across this old copy of Tree Fruit Growing from the same sort of era. It was first published in 1943 and we must have bought it from a charity shop or somewhere to add to our gardening books collection.

Reading it is very enlightening. I found out that there was an apple with our name to it, the aptly named Crawley Beauty. It must be fashioned after me as it is ....'very fine with a very late season. Blooms very late (how true) , missing all the frosts, and should be put with another late-flowering variety (this has come to pass!) Makes a good size tree and fruit is medium to large and of good shape (I couldn't possibly comment....) Colour is green flushed and striped with red (well., given my time of life that's no wonder!)' Luckily I'm not much afflicted with scab and my season is Christmas to March and later so I've yet to peak for this year but am sure I will get there eventually!!

I'm very taken with the names of the apple varieties. I'm wondering how they came about and whether some of them are still around. My imagination went to town with some of them and I started to visualise the people they were named after... there was the upstanding Rev. W Wilks ; the doughty Arthur Turner and his pals, Charles Ross, James Grieve and George Neal ; the haughty Lady Sudeley and the aristocratic Lord Lambourne; the flirtatious Belle de Boskoop and her friend D'Arcy Spice, described as a 'little tart....'

I'm most enamoured with that sweet young man about town the Rt. Hon Allington Pippin. Word is he was set upon and beaten to a pulp by some lads who were under the influence of too much cider.... I know....perhaps I need to get out more.....

Less than positive

The video I posted last was one I found a few weeks ago. I wasn't going to do anything with it but I was struck by how many comments that were left on the seaside project pages posted by Chrissie, Cathy and myself were saying how people wanted to join in but didn't think they had the creativity needed. I guess I just wanted to somehow say that we can all do anything we want to and no-one is going to judge. After all, we are often our own harshest critics aren't we? I constantly judge what I do but I have learned to go with the flow and enjoy my experiments. This is how I am still approaching the cyanotypes and last week I gathered loads of seedheads from the garden and took a few photos. I love their structural shapes and outline.

After cropping them and sharpening the image I made a positive and a negative image of all of them. I then printed out the negative images on inkjet transparencies and now I have tried to make cyanotypes on small pieces of mountboard using them. As the substrate has to be rinsed in running water I didn't expect the mountboard to stand up to the treatment. In fact it didn't even take the solution very well. The coating puddled and dried in odd shapes on the pieces. Either it wasn't totally flat or the mountboard has its own particular coating which might have stopped the solution from permeating the surface well enough. I also have the added variable that the solution is now over ten days old and should really not be viable at all.... but I had some great results which I'm over the moon with.

I did these yesterday in between heavy rain showers so my timing went all over the place. Some are still drying out but you can see where the original solution dried in patches and stayed that way. I think I will utilise these experiments and make some small coptic stitch notebooks. I know I cannot replicate them again. The whole process keeps throwing up ideas and I will just see where they lead although that Indian Summer I was expecting seems to have evaporated. I hope I don't have to abandon my cyanotypes until next year as I want to do some work with images inspired by our bees. Over at Bee House Hives the lovely Sarah has said I can use a couple of her photos. Even if you're not interested in bees please go and take a look at her wonderful photos. They are stunning. She tells me it is snowing in Montana whereas it's just raining again here in soggy Wales. No cyanotyping today then!

Out of the mouths of babes....

The tag end of it

Thanks to everyone who read and commented on the posts that Chrissie, Cathy and I wrote about our seaside tag project. Those that did will remember that we had to finish the project by creating a container to house them all in, something I had had sort of pushed to the back of my mind.... I had actually made a start by trying to make a large tag shaped box from scratch but when my husband told me it looked like a large coffin ...well, something did die, namely inspiration...

...and then Chrissie sent an e mail last week saying she'd made hers and how were Cathy and I doing? Well, I went into rabbit in the headlights mode and cool Cathy said she'd better her skates on too. I was lost for an idea and then remembered this little suitcase that I'd bought earlier in the year. I'd been reading about a group of book artists in Scandinavia who were creating books in a box like these and had bought one when I'd seen it in a shop that sells all sorts. It was covered in lots of 1980's style shoe pictures and needed covering . There was no question that I was going to use a map. At last, a chance to get a map into the project! I picked a map of Scotland because it was all I had but also because I wanted large expanses of sea for the base of the case. I set about covering the lid and other side with the main map, using the sea to put a strip around the sides. I gessoed the inside and painted it with acrylic paint to hide all the illustrations inside. It took a few coats but it eventually worked.

I made a mess of getting around the handles but hey, this is for me so that's fine. I cut out lots of little line drawings from an old book that has been a good friend on this project and I stuck them all around the side . The map had not stuck well on the front of the case for some reason but a judicious byline from the Guardian came to my rescue and sort of acts as camouflage. I then painted some small wooden letters that I had and stuck them on the top as an instant reminder of what treasures lie in my box. Finally I printed a hard copy of the tag posts that the three of us did, complete with comments so that when I open my box I will be able to see and read everything to do with this great project.

All three of us are posting today about our containers so go and take a look at what Chrissie and Cathy have made. As ever we have all approached it quite differently yet in the same vein. All of us are missing the creativity, the sending of parcels and the communication so we are cracking on with discussing what we shall do next and when. All of you who said you'd like to join us are duly noted. If anyone else wants to add their name please do. If not, there will be 9 of us involved in the next idea. The thoughts of what creativity that could unleash is exciting. The thoughts of what creative friendships that could forge is even more exciting. Watch this space!

Regrets.... I've had a few....

I get such a kick out of things that go wrong as much as I do when they go right! Sometimes the 'happy accidents' yield things you love but can never replicate. This has proved to be the case with the cyanotypes I've been experimenting with this week. Up above are three pieces of watercolour paper that I cut last week with the intention of doing the photograms with the lace doilies on. Well, they dried a bit streaky so I discarded them, finding them two days later virtually black where they had reacted with the light. I never thought I'd get an image but I exposed two of them with some leaves from the garden and the third with a transparency I'd printed out from one of my photographs. When exposed and rinsed the images were a dark blue on a marginally lighter blue background so I painted them, whilst wet, with neat bleach and I really love the effect. Will I be able to do it again....mmmm.... doubtful, but I might give it a try!

Similarly, I thought I'd try the process on fabric again and grabbed a couple of pieces of what I thought were white cotton. By now my solution has been made about 3 days and it is only supposed to have a shelf life of 24 hours so I didn't expect much. The material above was painted and left to dry and then exposed. It's not a dark blue but it's getting there whilst the piece below was painted, covered while wet with an inkjet transparency from one of my moth photos and exposed for the same period of time. The colour difference is quite marked and I have to experiment more to find out why they are different. Is it because one fabic was exposed wet and the other was dry? Or, maybe I haven't even picked cotton fabrics? The process does not work on synthetics so is my moth printed on polyester cotton and therefore paler?

Every piece I produce makes me ask more questions. It is a fascinating process and I hope I make a few more mistakes today.....