Not Quite the Next Catalogue

A longer break than I had expected but it’s been a very busy week. Had a great time at Bromley branch of the Guild – lovely people and good to get back into meeting people again. We stopped off at Chartwell for lunch, back in the old routine of finding a National Trust House for a quick visit and a bite to eat.
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I took the icon catalogue along and, believe it or not, there were some people who hadn’t heard about the art and science of catalogue killing! I don’t think they could quite believe it had started out as a Dwell catalogue. Which brings me to the comments:

Genie’s catalogue looks great. I would so love to see it in the flesh.

Hope the wabbit weathering works OK. Let me know if you change your mind.

Will look forward to seeing the face develop, Heather.

Sojourner - thank you so much for the honour. Can’t guarantee to comply with the conditions, as I find it hard to narrow down my favourite blogs. Lovely to receive it, though.

I bet your catalogue will look super Mags.

Jackie – you know what they say about great minds!


I am getting ready to work on the next catalogue – one with bendy pages. I am determined that this one will have some texture on it so I’ve had a dig in the failed experiments box and come up with a couple of interesting surfaces.

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The piece below was made by stitching together patterned cellophane and heavy metallic organza and then using the heat tool. Kim Thittichai wrote us a great article for Workshop on the Web on using this for vessels – she sells patterned cellophane at

www.nid-noi.com

Sam Packer has taken this a stage further and written an intriguing article about trapping with cellophane - that will be in the June issue. So I won’t tell you too much about how this was made – you’ll find it there.

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So search out some textured bits and bobs for the next catalogue bash next week.

I am working all weekend, getting the next two books ready to go to the designer. Did sneak a little time off for a big family gathering at Pizza Express. JS is not going to let an excess of vegetation interfere with his pudding.

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Back at the coalface - we've begun the update of the d4daisy site - should load next week. We'll have details and pics from the new books and you will be able to go on the ‘tell-me-when’ list. I am so excited about Lynda and Carol’s book. It opens up all sorts of possibilities and I am going to put everything on hold as soon as I can to try out their ideas.

I received my copy of Design-IT, the magazine of the Computer Textile Design Group. It’s a very good group and you should check their web-site
www.ctdg.org.uk
Look at the Gallery – there is some great art there. In the mag there was an article on using channels by Marlene Allinson. The channels option is under the Image Menu in PSP and it separates the colours, RGB (red, green, blue) is the most usual separation. You get a greyscale image for each colour and they can be recombined when you’ve played with them. I won’t give away her secrets but here are some of my results.
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This Alium had lots of different colours.

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Which look good like this.

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This photo from the Chartwell visit is of some huge dead leaves on a compost heap.



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There wasn't really enough contrast for the channels and it needed more work afterwards, but I finally produced a good image.



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Back soon with the next step in the catalogue series.