Ouch!

I stand before you a disappointed woman. Actually I am lying before you, with the laptop balanced on my tum and, as I am not built for such manoeuvres, it’s quite difficult to see the screen. I have a BAD BACK. This used to happen quite often but it has been so long that I thought it was cured. It will only last a few days (I hope) but is very painful right now.

The worse thing is having to cancel a proposed London trip to see Prism, the RA’s Russia thing and the Blake at Tate Britain. We were going to treat ourselves to a hotel and have a really good time. Boo Hoo. We can catch the painty shows but Prism is a great loss. I think we all want to show support for Julia at this time. Has anyone got any photos?

Clive is very sympathetic and is cooking and waiting on me. Bless. He has also dangled before me the prospect of a couple of days in Dublin to make up for it. We live near Bounemouth airport and the fares with Ryanair are very reasonable. Something to look forward to..

Comments on Comments
Thanks for all the comments about the earth piece and Cyber Fyber. Now that Susan has told me how to get comments on email I could reply individually but I like our communal chats so will continue, if that’s OK.

Paddy’s Daughter - don’t really have a book on the current work - that’s a bit of an experiment. Stitch, Dissolve Distort does have some stuff on zapping and lots on the water soluble paper shown further down the blog. Raising the Surface is useful for backgrounds in general and a bit of 3D stuff.

Aussie Jo - yes, that piece of work been growing through the last few blogs.

Those ATCs were great Julie - still on the mantlepiece.

Arlee - yes, it’s good that we will be able to 'hang together' at Cyber Fyber. Will you be able to go to see it? I am very seriously considering going over. It sounds so exciting and it is ages since I visited.

I was determined to stagger down to the Beyond Stitch group as we are having a ‘challenge’ day. We each have to take an A4 design and swap them, so that we get one by someone else. The designs must be mono photocopies and can be anything from a well known painting to a texture study. We then have to use L shapes to select an area to turn into a finished piece. This is the design I was given - it's a good one.

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I shall try to somehow fit it into the Earth theme. I think it is probably a shield and the motifs look faintly lotus-like. Time for reflection. I’ll show you how the others in the group fare after next month’s meeting.


Due to the back I haven’t managed to do much work but I did mush up some water soluble paper over a fossil. Here it is on the fossil mould.

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Here’s the result: the fossil is convex so the resulting cast is concave - not so fossil like. I made a mould by pressing warm Softsculpt onto a fossil and using that for the paper. It doesn’t give such a clear cast as the original but will probably look OK. There was some paint residue on the mould which is why it looks a bit grubby. It will cover up Ok.

I shall use both. Now they need painting with acrylics (watery paint would dissolve them). Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. I loathe inactivity.