The Winners and Materials (Various)

I feel that this blog should have an index as it seems to be composed of fairly random topics. But they mostly seem to fit in the materials category, so bear with me.

First of all the lucky winners of the book give-away.

Erin Fish
Ann Swanwick
Gill Watson
Ann Sparkes
Pamela Wardell
Maureen Thompson
Emma Siedle-Collins
Anna Nowicki
Chris Angiel
Sylviane Caradec
Margaret Vincent
Christine Young

You should all be hearing from Fiona shortly. Thank you so much to all those who added messages about how much you enjoy the d4d books and Workshop on the Web. You can't imagine how encouraged I feel when I read those - especially when it has been a bad day!

We've just put up the second instalment of Lynda Monk's free classes for buyers of her Fabulous Surfaces book. The first one was based on tissue and rust and the current one shows a lovely folded book with step by step instructions. I must say that I'd never thought of rusting tissue but it works well. My biggest adventure with tissue was this embellished piece - here is a detail.
.



.
It was made from felt, Bondawebbed and lightly foiled with painted abaca tissue applied with the embellisher. If you work from the back, the felt is pushed through the tissue. Here's a closer detail.
.



.
When complete, the top surface is given a coat of acrylic wax. Then I zapped it with a heat gun and painted parts with acrylic paint - that is the cracked, distresed bit.
.
It became much more distressed when Smudge took an interest. See below.
I tell people who don't have an embellisher machine to get a cat (or a personal rodent operative as the Sunday paper called it).
.


.
Talking of the embellisher, I love the way that the velvet ribbons from Mulberry Silks behave when used with the embellisher www.mulberrysilks-patriciawood.com

.

.
Patricia was having a delay with her ribbon supplier recently. When I ordered more, she sent me this heavenly silk velvet (below) on a CYO (cut your own) basis. Made me smile. She is so good with her colours and her silk thread packs are so hard to disturb that Jean Littlejohn used to offer counselling to those who couldn't bear to open them. I based a whole piece of work on the colours in one of her packs. She has a sale at the moment so I have been stocking up.
.


.

Had a giggle last night - found myself watching a rerun of Day of the Triffids while making these plant based forms for a vessel I'm working on.




.
Not too sure now about those tentacles!



.
Back soon. Have to get on with dissolvable book this week.