I don't wish to see another floor tile!!!!

No textiles this last week as I have become tiler's mate to my husband. We have been tiling the floor of the new lounge at the cottage and after spending a solid week working on the tiles we have almost completed 45 square metres.It is looking great but I am exhausted after the marathon and feeling deprived of creative stimulus. It has been a beautiful week and I have spent very little time on the garden so no doubt my time next week will be spent on the growing grass and weeds so little or no time again for textiles, never mind!!!

How time flies

A friend has just spent a week here helping David work on the new lounge that is in the course of renovation, and I have done very little textile work. I have made lots of soup and evening meals, constant tidying up and attempting to keep abreast of the dust - without much success - but nothing productive in the art world.

I have attempted to make some ATC's and also made some beads from dyed paper towels that I found in my 'bits box', nothing inspiring but useful to file away in the 'could be useful box'. Whilst pottering in a non productive way, I decided to go back to printing some dyed material and I am pleased with the 2 pieces I have produced - not sure what I am going to do with them yet but I was pleased with the end results.

Today has been yet another Fete Day in France - Ascension Day, and we awoke to a thunderstorm this morning , I thought it was only in England that we had wet 'Bank Holidays' but the day did improve as it progressed and the sun was very warm by late afternoon, ideal for drying the printed fabrics. I will post a picture of one of the printed pieces with this post.

Another year older!!!

Where does time go to, I had promised myself on our return from England I would get down to some textile work and keep up my blog but needless to say I have not done very well with either.

May 6th brought another birthday, not as exciting as last year when I spent the day in Paris celebrating, but the weather was fabulous here so I spent the day relaxing in the garden reading Cloth,Paper,Scissors and Quilting Arts and shedding a few tears at the beautiful flower arrangement I received through interflora from my son. I will post a photo of the basket of flowers.

May 7th was a Saving Graces day held at Gloria's house. Unfortunately Annie was not able to attend this time owing to visitors but Di made the trip down from Paris. We explored the potential of the moulds Di and Gloria brought back from their trip to the Stamp Bug and made lots of examples to have in stock for future use and I ran a workshop on making an Indian Bird Mobile, which we will complete for the next meeting on 11th June. As usual we had a super day sharing ideas etc..

returning from grandparent duties in England

I am sorry for the delay in updating my blog but we spent 2 weeks in England on Grandparenting duties and then on our return have spent time catching up on the gardening,so textile work and blogging dissapeared out of the window. We had a wonderful time in the Lake District over the Easter weekend and had fabulous weather to enjoy the countryside. Our daughter lives in Ambleside so it is an ideal base to visit from. We took the steamer strip across Lake Windermere on Easter Sunday and it was a wonderful experience with fantastic views all around. I will try to post a photo as I have no art work to show at the present.

Thank you for the comments and I hope the cuckoo has dried out in the wonderful sunshine last week, Di. I have read of your visit to The Stamp Bug with Gloria with envy - shall look forward to looking at all the goodies at our next meeting - 7th May.

I have prepared my catalogue for the classes organised by Maggie Grey and will attempt to develop some interesting art work - there are some wonderful examples on the Forum of her classes. So hopefully I will make a start on that this week.

Another sign Spring has arrived

Today I saw the first swallow in the region and I also heard the Hoopoo, both signs that the weather should be more settled. The weather today has been glorious and the nippy wind was missing so the temperature was really warm making gardening a pleasure - although it does restrict the textile work. I had been waiting with baited breath for the next internet class from Maggie Grey using the catalogues that have been residing in gardens all over the world for the last few months - and I was not disapointed apart from the fact I had not got time to do any work from the lesson. I will study the classes and take part as and when I can.

I will try to post some of the other photos from my altered book but I am not sure how they will turn out - keep your fingers crossed.

It must be Spring - the cuckoo has arrived

The cuckoo arrived on Saturday in this part of the Vendee, so it really must be spring. The weather has been fabulous with wall to wall to sunshine, although a sneaky chilly wind has made its presence felt.

Last Thursday it was a group meeting of the Saving Graces group. This is a group of 4 textile artists who meet up once a month to hold a workshop and then work on the techniques covered and produce some work for the next meeting. Di travels from Paris either by car or train, Annie, Gloria and myself all live in the Vendee so travelling is no problem for us. We formed the group as a result of all following the web textile classes - Workshop on the Web. The meeting this time was held a Gloria's house and we looked at Transfoiling and producing a piece of fabric that could be used for making a shrine, box or bag. Great fun was had by us all and we had a thoroughly enjoyable day. The previous meeting had been based on the Maggie Grey free classes on line and we brought the finished products of our experimentation using gesso, shrink plastic etc. As a fun piece for the meeting we all worked on a small blank canvas and as you will see by the photo posted all the pieces were different. (The reason there are 5 pieces, not 4 as there are 4 of us, is Di could not work singly she had to have a pair).

I am having difficulty posting the photos of my altered book as it insists on positioning them the wrong way round. I will have to keep working on them and try to post them the right way round.

Back from Norway

I have just returned from a weeks' stay in Norway with my husband. We had a wonderful time relaxing in the beautiful scenery and surviving the city life of Oslo.
The weather was glorious and the effect of the sun shining on the deep virgin snow in the fields was magical. Even the astronmical costs of food and alcohol could not dampen the visit.

Spring has certainly come to the Vendee with cowslips, primroses and peach blossoms all in abundance. I spent part of the afternoon watching a pair of Green Woodpeckers carry out a courtship dance in the garden - retirement is wonderful.

I have now finished my altered book based on the poem Warning by Jenny Joseph and I have really enjoyed playing with the different techniques and effects to interpret the poem in stitch for me. I will post some photos of the finished book with this post.

Thank you Heather and Robin for your lovely comments,it is so rewarding to have positive comments made about your work. Thanks also to Maggie Grey for reading my blog and commenting on it on the Catalogue Killers forum. I am certainly enjoying the blogging and the opportunity to record my work as I am working on it.

I will try again.....

I am trying again to put up the log that should have gone up on Wednesday instead of the blank space. I had typed in all my log and when I went to display it, it dissapeared - oh well that is technology I suppose.

Yesterday I decided to continue with my 2nd altered book. After completing the cover and spraying it with spray dyes and Axminster inks in various shades of blue and red it had a distinctive purple effect. This gave me the inspiration I needed to develop it and I decided to depict the poem Warning by Jenny Joseph ...When I am an old woman I shall wear purple..... This poem has always been a favourite with me.

I decided to split the poem into a number of sections and give each section a page. I embroidered the words onto dyed lutradur which I then distressed with the heat gun.
I completed the first page yesterday.

A dull miserable day which did not encourage one to go out of doors, so there was no excuses to be made for working on textiles. I worked on my second altered book as part of the Maggie Grey classes, concentrating on the cover. I had already glued crumpled tissue paper to the cover of the book and allowed it to dry. I continued to use spray dyes and stains to cover the tissue paper and then allowed them to dry.

I also photographed the mini book I had made for Alex and Kelly's engagement which I have included with this post.

A slow start this morning as we had to go to order the cheminee pieces for the new fire in what is to become the lounge. I had to pick myself off the floor as we received the quote for the order, our first house in 1969 did not cost very much more!!!! What with the miserable weather, drizzly rain and the shock of the cost for the cheminee I was glad to come back home and commence work on my small book for Alex and Kelly.

I worked on the inside pages using hand made paper inserts inside gold coloured paper. I used quotations from the passage from the Corinthians, Love is kind, etc.. and pieced together the shrink plastic covers with the pages using split jump rings.
I made a box cover to fit the book, covered it with tissue paper and spray painted it. Finally I made some shrink plastic hearts which I put on the box cover and on some of the inside pages.

By the time I had finished the natural light had gone and so I was unable to photograph the book and box, but hopefully I will tomorrow, and post it on the blog.

No time for any work again today as went on a mercy mission for Jo and Gareth, two of our daughter's friends who have an appartment in La Faute. They had received an e-mail to say the roof of their appartment had been damaged in the recent 'tempette', so we went to assess the damage for them. Fortunately all the damage was over the appartment next door, and the tiles that had been dislodged were positioned at the edge of the roof so they should have had no leaks as a result of the damage.

As the day was wall to wall sunshine and we walked down to the beach to see the sea whilst we were there. A welcome break, by the time we returned home there was not much time to start work on the little book I am supposed to be making. Never mind there is always tomorrow.

A definite change in the weather from the Spring like days we have been experiencing without any rain. Heavy rain and strong winds started the day but the blue sky prevailed at the end. The garden certainly will have benefitted from the water. Not a lot of work produced today as I was scheduled for a short back and sides with a colour make over on the grey peeping through. We made an unscheduled stop via the supermarket to purchase plants for the garden, this week's special offer, and then on returning home I was required to be 'gofer' for my husband as he continued with the renovation work. Never mind there is always tomorrow!!!!

After visiting a local DIY store during the morning in order to purchase essential items for the restoration work going on at home I returned to continue with my work. I have been making some small books from shrink plastic and hand made paper with a matching box to keep it in. This again was inspiration from the Maggie Grey Free Classes related to her book Textile Translations. I have made a number of different books which I have given to friends and relatives for presents. I have posted a photo of some of the books. I am currently working on one to celebrate a friend's son becoming engaged I will personalise the information inside to include aspects about them.

First day of the rest of my life

Well, thanks to Gloria, I have actually set up a blog of my own instead of spending hours reading other peoples.

I hope through my blog I am able to keep a diary of events and record my creative work. I have been following the free classes run by Maggie Grey in conjunction with her book Textile Translations and have thoroughly enjoyed the work and being part of the forum that have contributed to the classes.

One of the first projects I worked on was a wigwam book using Pelmet Vilene and Gesso. I have posted a photograph underneath of one of the books I made, the others were given as Christmas presents.