gretchinmist GIVEAWAY

Golly gosh - I do love brooches and I do love giveaways and I am very excited about this one as you  will be too if you follow this link!!

Gretchenmist creates the most beautiful hand painted, wooden brooches and pendants. Her use of colour is gorgeous and who wouldn't love to be in the chance to have their very own wearable piece of art. You can visit her blog and fall in love with her designs here. Good luck!! 

digital pattern

Playing around with different placement and colours. Will be mixing my colours hopefully next week so I can do some sample prints. Can't wait.

littlechrissy GIVEAWAY

If you like the look of these GORGEOUS brooches as much as I do, then head over to the the blog of the very crafty and talented littlechrissy. These are part of her very new Woodland series, and to celebrate her 100th post she is giving her lucky readers a chance to win not one, but two of these babies...plus some other tasty treats!! You can find out more here. Fingers crossed!!

bentwood obession

Ooo-la-la!! Found these babies for an absolute BARGAIN at my local trash and treasure. Having done some research on Bentwood's, I can really appreciate what a score this find is.

They are in questionable condition, however a special fixer man who has taken an enthusiastic interest in these, believes they can be restored back to their original glory. He was a little broken when I mentioned that they may be spray painted bright colours to complement my fabric designs though!!

Will update their progress.

colourway

jelly mould drawings

ceramic transfer samples

It has been a while between posts so I thought i'd share a few things I have been up to lately.

Am now in the second half of my honours year which leaves very little time for experimentation and I have had to begin making final decisions towards finished works.

I was busy over the break doing some more sketches of my Jelly Moulds and have done a few mock ups in Photoshop of how I am hoping them to look on ceramics. Using ceramic tranfers was a way I was hoping to push my technical skills and show my pattern design on a different surface and complement my fabric designs.

Am really excited about these and just hope that the real ones turn out as pretty as the samples!

placement printing

Step 1: Clean white fabric stapled to the table. Such a contrast to the busy backing cloth!!


Step 2: Large paper cut-out brown dots. Texture created using crayon wax resit from a rubbing off my wallpaper.

Step 3: Grey Shapes, randomly placed.


Step 4: Green shapes, randomly placed by eye.


Step 5, 6 and 7: Grey transparent paper cut-out, Red dots and Grey opaque circle shape.


Step 8: Opaque white paper cut-out circles.


Step 9: Orange flowery shape.


Step 10: Setting up paper cut-out shape for the next shape.


Step 11: Charcoal shape.


Detail shot of charcoal shape.

Step 12: Grey spiky shapes.


Step 13: Green circle shape. The fabric is beginning to get lost in the backing cloth.


Step 14: Transparent brown dots. Paper cut-out.


Step 15: Charcoal flower shape.


Step 16: Transparent grey, textured paper cut-out circle.


Step 17: Green dots.


Step 18: Grey opaque small, scalloped shaped dots.


Step 19: Pink dots!!! Was working very intuitively with colour choices and was very excited about the pink. I think it made all the difference. I decided that now that the cloth had pretty much merged into the backing cloth, that it was time to finish.


Step 20: Final layer of opaque white, flowery shapes and it's ready to pull off.


Finished...YAY!!

Detail photo. This is my favourite part, observing the interesting patterns that are happening in cropped areas of the over all print.