Creative Tuesday

I did this during my Studio Stitches course in 2007. We were being given a very quick introduction to printing. This involved coating leaves with paint and using them for a monoprint onto fabric, then using some simple stitching and applying to paper and doing a bit more monoprinting on top. The fabric is something synthetic, I can't remember precisely but it was a remnant of something medium to heavy weight, possibly furnishing fabric, sewn onto thick handmade paper (not handmade by me!). Being me of course I could not resist embellishing it with a tiny number of sequins! Although I have never really pursued this style of work I am currently wondering if I might give it another go, it was easy and required very little in the way of materials (in this case, other than the fabric/paper/thread/sequins, all of which I already had, I used acrylic paints, which I also already had, and a rubber brayer. At the time I think I used the studio brayer but have subsequently bought a couple for myself. Oh, and leaves).

I'm not sure whether it matters that it is not square. I cannot decide if that makes it more organic or simply sloppy. I think I will say 'organic' rather than 'sloppy'!

Monday Quote

Merry Are The Bells

Nursery Song

Merry are the bells, and merry would they ring;

Merry was myself, and merry could I sing;

With a merry ding-dong, happy, gay, and free,

And a merry sing-song, happy let us be!

Waddle goes your gait, and hollow are your hose;

Noddle goes your pate, and purple is your nose;

Merry is your sing-song, happy, gay, and free,

With a merry ding-dong, happy let us be!

Merry have we met, and merry have we been;

Merry let us part, and merry meet again;

With our merry sing-song, happy, gay, and free,

And a merry ding-dong, happy let us be!

This song and illustration can be found in The Nursery Rhyme Book,

edited by Andrew Lang and illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke (1897).

This charming little nursery rhyme was used to great effect by

Baby Bear in her VCE drama presentation for Semester One.

They had to work in groups of four and produce something about

alienation and isolation. At two points during the

30 minute performance the four of them said one line each of the

last verse, in deadpan voices with deadpan faces.

It was her idea and it worked brilliantly.

There was nothing jolly or merry about it at all!

Creative Tuesday

A pair of seed bead (Japanese and Czech) and freshwater pearl earrings made for a commission in 2008. They are a fairly simple coralling stitch attached to sterling silver earring findings. I have made these in many different colours; they are fun to make and look quite spectacular though they are too long for anyone with a short neck - I can still make effective coralling earrings that are shorter, it just so happens that these ones are long. When I properly open my online shops again I will have a selection of them for sale.

Wordless Wednesday

Monday Quote

"Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement." - Snoopy

Friday Update

Mutter mutter mutter AARRGGHHH!!!!! swear !@#$%^&&*()

I spent hours on those papers I posted about last week. Hours painting them in multiple layers. Tearing them up and collaging them, double sided onto card, sealing each side with three coats of Mod Podge. Then trying to cut them out with paper punches - too hard, on the whole - cutting them into shapes - they feel tacky to the touch despite much drying time and I hate them. Pity, I rather liked the original papers! I am keeping them in case of something original springing to mind some time in the future, but for the moment that idea has been shoved to the back of the queue.

On the good side - I rediscovered the joys of painting and colouring and I personally think they were quite attractive. I will do more papers. Painted, inked, collaged, whatever. But I will not treat them the same way.

My scatterbrained approach to creating is not working! I think it is time I set myself a proper task (the book idea was a good one but I got bored too quickly) and actually apply some of the discipline of design and experimentation that I spent three years studying. At the Australian Quilt Convention last week there were some 'art quilts' that really caught my eye. The inverted commas are used there because I am not sure how small something can be before it is no longer an art quilt, and some of these were small! I also really want to do some bead embroidery again. I wonder how much bead embroidery can be on an art quilt?

After no craft shows in Melbourne all year, fate (I won't use the word 'organisation') has decreed that there will be three in May. Last week, the Australian Quilt Convention. This week, the Stitches and Craft Show. At the end of the month, a bead show. I 'need' to attend all three. I actually thought Stitches and Craft was next weekend until I picked up the brochure last night for a leisurely look through and realised that it was on now. So I am off to that today.

Cookbook evaluation - had big plans for this week. I had chosen two chicken dishes from various places and I was going to cook both of them. They both needed chicken breast fillets (or at least I had decided to cook them with chicken fillets), oh which I thought I had plenty in the freezer. I didn't. We will eat chicken next week. I didn't feel like baking, either.

Nothing more to show for this week. Other than a reassessment of thoughts and some new ideas. No pictures though.

Some hours later - Stitches and Craft was weird. Not at all like it used to be. Much fewer exhibitors but some really exciting small independent craft labels. Also, however, some huckster stuff that made me feel like I was in a bazaar. A very strange confection altogether. But I LOVED IT. It made me feel good. It was also not very busy, which is probably bad for them, but relaxing for me. I bought some stamps and another book. I did some more serious thinking. I feel happy.

8 Things Thursday

8 Books I Have Read Recently

1. The Percy Jackson series, by Rick Riordan (OK, that's 5 books, but I didn't want to single any one of them out, they were all such fun!)

2. Go! Melbourne in the Sixties, edited by Seamus O'Hanlon and Tanja Luckins

3. Making Money, by Terry Pratchett

4. The Valley of the Assassins, by Freya Stark

5. Tied Up In Tinsel, by Ngaio Marsh

6.Collage Sourcebook: Exploring the Art and Technique of Collage, by Holly Harrison, Jennifer Atkinson and Paula Grasdal

7. The Status Seekers, by Vance Packard

8. The Sorrows of an American, by Siri Hustvedt

Wordless Wednesday

Creative Tuesday

Ah, scrumbling, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Thy wondrous colours and textures, thy randomness (or not), thy portability (until the whole sewing it together bit), thy ability to look great in photos .. what's not to love?

A cape I made several years ago when I discovered the frabjous Prudence Mapstone and got all excited about stuff. It is far too hot and heavy to wear in a place like Melbourne, except once or twice a year, but I still love it. I haven't scrumbled in a while but I always keep coming back to it.

Monday Quote

" . . . Waiter! raw beef-steak for the gentleman's eye,--nothing like raw beef-steak for a bruise, sir; cold lamp-post very good, but lamp-post inconvenient--damned odd standing in the open street half-an-hour, with your eye against a lamp . . ."

The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens

Friday Update - the Sequel

I had fun at the Australian Quilt Convention! See the goodies I bought.

There was interesting quilts there, too. As usual, I liked the smaller art quilts the best, but could appreciate (and like) a lot of the more traditional quilting as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. But I came away feeling perturbed about something. The three years I spent studying textile art was supposed to enable me to discover my 'voice' and come away with a defined body of work which I would build upon for ever afterwards. In one way I did discover my 'voice', the very detailed bead embroidery that I love the best of everything. But nobody is ever likely to pay the price for that sort of work that I would like to sell it for, so I am unlikely to make money out of it. Maybe I could write and (probably) self-publish books on it, which is a possibility but would still not make money in any serious way. I am a lousy teacher - too impatient. There are other things I love to do too. Nothing I bought today had anything to do with bead embroidery (I already own the books I like the best on that subject, though there may be some new ones that I don't know about yet!) but with other things that I have already experimented with but want more inspiration and technique to encourage me. I have had a couple of forays into selling on Etsy, or rather NOT selling on Etsy, though I am planning to start again. There is also an Australian equivalent that I am building a shop for ... From the market research I have done, for things to succeed in these online marketplaces they need to be reasonably inexpensive and postable (obviously), and preferably have a unique selling point. I am working on things like this.

Anyway, that isn't meant to be a rant or suggest that I have not enjoyed my day nor that I am not feeling creative. But I wonder if I suffer from some art-related form of ADD - can't I stick to any one thing but have to keep experimenting and trying to find new things to try? All of which require new supplies and books. If only I could add the hyperactivity part to it - I am so slow to get anything off the ground.

And now I will indulge in the wonderful procrastination of doing nothing about any of it, but drinking tea and knitting a sock instead. Oh, and I might start to flick through those new books!

Friday Update

Painted papers. I will be tearing and collaging these to make two-sided ... bookmarks, maybe, depending on how I feel about them at the time when I have done collaging and whatever. I was really pleased with these papers until the final layer. I just didn't know when to stop, did I! I had never used iridescence medium before and thought I would be clever and water it down and sponge it all over the papers. Well, it doesn't look very iridescent, more spotty. But the collages are going to be sealed with Mod Podge and glitter and hopefully that will be less noticeable by then.

These were great fun to make, just adding layers of shapes and squiggles with drying periods in between, using ordinary acrylic paints. I would like to do similar things with inks and watercolours too. Watch this space.

It was a short week, being away over the long weekend, and I am very pleased to have achieved anything creative.

I have also been working my way through some more cookbooks. This time, a handful of the vast number of tiny ones I have - you know the A5 format that you either buy for a few dollars or are given away with magazines. I have picked some recipes and will blog about them as I do them.

I hope to spend next week collaging.

8 Things Thursday

8 features I want in the new house that we might build sometime this decade.

1. Energy efficient everythings

2. Polished concrete floor

3. Hydronic heating

4. Masses and masses of storage space

5. A studio

6. A practical, big cook-top and oven

7. Lots of wall space for bookshelves and art

8. Eaves

8 Things Thursday

8 photos taken on our summer holiday in January, in and around Golden Beach on the Ninety Mile Beach in Victoria. It was pleasantly warm then, not too hot but lovely, quite a contrast to this week which has been wet and cold!

Creative Tuesday

This is a selection of works I made for the first semester of my first year of studying for the Diploma of Studio Stitch Textiles in 2006. Each week we had a different task. It was very challenging, especially for someone like me who could not draw (it was not listed as a prerequisite but this particular tutor assumed that everyone there could draw. I eventually picked up some skills but I was really floundering at this point).

From top left clockwise: Sweet potatoes. Organza, hand stitching, and paint applied around and on top of the fabric after stitching.

Self Portrait. Hand stitching on black felt with perle cottons based (loosely) on the (really bad) self portrait we were (cruelly!) forced to draw.

Abstract. WE spent an hour sketching still lives of objects using a variety of methods, then chose a small section of a sketch to turn into an abstract colour sketch with oil pastels, then an embroidery. Again, hand stitching, this time heavily massed together.

Apples. Similar techniques to the sweet potatoes using organza/chiffon, hand stitching and paint.

Out of these pieces I enjoyed the techniques of the abstract best although I was pleased with all of them. The stitching onto black felt with bright colours was great fun. I love hand stitching - I did have a decent go at free machine embroidery but never really took to in a big way, though may post some pictures of my efforts in the future. My sewing machine doesn't seem to like free machine embroidery - I had my biggest success with a borrowed machine that ended up being donated to a Black Saturday victim whose machine was lost in last year's fires.

Wordless Wednesday

Monday Quote

Ode to a pair of socks

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
that she knit with her
shepherd's hands.
Two socks as soft
as rabbit fur.
I thrust my feet
inside them
as if they were
two
little boxes
knit
from threads
of sunset
and sheepskin.

My feet were
two woolen
fish
in those outrageous socks,
two gangly,
navy-blue sharks
impaled
on a golden thread,
two giant blackbirds,
two cannons:
thus
were my feet
honored
by
those
heavenly
socks.
They were
so beautiful
I found my feet
unlovable
for the very first time,
like two crusty old
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that embroidered
fire,
those incandescent
socks.

Nevertheless
I fought
the sharp temptation
to put them away
the way schoolboys
put
fireflies in a bottle,
the way scholars
hoard
holy writ.
I fought
the mad urge
to lock them
in a golden
cage
and feed them birdseed
and morsels of pink melon
every day.
Like jungle
explorers
who deliver a young deer
of the rarest species
to the roasting spit
then wolf it down
in shame,
I stretched
my feet forward
and pulled on
those
gorgeous
socks,
and over them
my shoes.

So this is
the moral of my ode:
beauty is beauty
twice over
and good things are doubly
good
when you're talking about a pair of wool
socks
in the dead of winter.

Pablo Neruda

Friday Update

There was going to be a Friday Update last week but it never quite happened. There wasn't really anything to say. I have completely abandoned the plan of working through a specific project a month and I've gone back to flitting around trying out different ideas all the time. The original plan helped to focus me at an unfocused time but has served its purpose, at least for the time being. Now there are other things I am more excited about, though the general flitting approach is not proving very productive as yet!

There are no photos this time as most ideas remain that, ideas. I was going to paint papers today and photograph them but motherhood as intervened and I have more important things to do. The (long) weekend is also going to be spent being a wife, a mother and a daughter-in-law (with, hopefully, a quick gallery visit in the middle!) and although there will be talking and eating and sock knitting and reading, there won't be paper painting. At least one craft book will make it through the weekend though so that I can continue to think inspirationally.

The cookbook thing (as a friend called it, an 'anti-Julia' approach) started off well and will continue. The Margaret Fulton Cookbook is a 2006 fully revised edition of a classic Australian cookbook, bought for Baby Bear to encourage her to cook (with some success) and therefore it was never going to be discarded from the cookbook collection. The problem with it from my point of view was that most of the recipes that would appeal to the family are ones that I already cook by heart or else have many versions of. I ended up cooking Cardamom Cookies to go with coffee at the end of an extravagant Good Friday lunch with friends. They were hugely successful, very easy, and would have earned the book its place on the shelf even if it wasn't exempt in the first place! Subsequently many books have been scoured through but no new recipes cooked, though that will resume soon (not in the next few days, unless it is baking again, as there will be a lack of opportunities for family meals at home for most of the next week owing to visiting over the long weekend and then George being on a business trip).

Next week there might even be photos. And more regular blogging. Honest!

8 Things Thursday

8 Authors I Loved When I was a Child

Tove Jansson

Arthur Ransome

Rosemary Sutcliffe

Henry Treece

Geoffrey Trease

C.S. Lewis

Sundry adapters of Greek/Roman/Norse/Irish myths and legends (there were several I really liked)

Ivan Southall

Wordless Wednesday

Creative Tuesday

This scrumbled hat dates from the days when I was trying to create and sell patterns as PDF files. It failed largely because most of the people who bought the patterns off Etsy.com seemed to be completely ignorant about the nature of PDF files and tended to berate and abuse me for notposting them a paper pattern. (Yes, I did make it crystal clear what they were to expect). I did however sell some hard copies at the now defunct Yarn Fest that used to be held at The Highway Gallery in Mt Waverley (now, apparently, also defunct).

Being scrumbled, this one did not have a 'pattern' as such, more a recipe with lots of pictures. It was great fun to make. I also consider the beautiful model to be one of my favorite creations, though she is a lot older and taller and more grown up now than five years ago!

Monday Quote

'I didn't do it'. Bart Simpson

Regular blogging is recommencing. Serious computer problems put a bit of an obstacle in the way for a while!

Friday Update

Just when I thought the week had been wasted, I got some time and mind-space yesterday to experiment with fabric paper. This idea came from Beryl Taylor's Mixed Media Explorations book. This is not one of the books in my self-appointed challenge. I am getting frustrated with the format of my challenges as my attention keeps getting caught by other books and ideas! May not carry on with it the same way of before, maybe concentrating more on doing something interesting and creative every week out of any book of magazine I feel like at the time!

It was fun to make. I am not sure if I got her definition of 'muslin' right though, for the fabric base. Did she mean what I would call muslin, which is a fairly delicate cotton fabric, or what I would call calico, which is sturdier? I used muslin, and the result is very fragile. Fabric paper is supposed to be sewable through and I think mine would not go well with stitching. However I am pleased with it, I have learned what to do (or not do) next time, and I am going to use it as the basis for some things. I am considering making my first ever ATCs though not sure what to do with them. There is a swap on a group I have just joined but I don't know that my first efforts will be worth swapping. Maybe I will just have fun and see where it takes me.

I used white muslin, slopped lots of gel medium mixed about 2:1 with water all over it, added little cut-outs of vintage papers that I had copied and sealed to make them waterproof, plus glitter; then put white tissue paper on top of it and added lots more of the glue mixture. (Rereading Beryl Taylor's instructions, she actually said to put more glue on the FABRIC and then put the paper on top of it. Oh well, I don't see that it made much difference!) Then I dabbed on some watered down acrylic paint in two colours with a sea sponge, and left if all to dry. While it was still quite wet I decided to spray some iridescent ink on it too - this looks lovely and subtle and shiny in bright sunlight but is hard to see under any other circumstances. When it was properly dry I stamped in various parts using an ordinary black ink pad. Now I am considering what to add to sections of it to make ATCs or whatever. Anyway, it was fun!!

Never got to the cooking thing this week. Wombat has had a delicate stomach so no fancy recipes got tried out. Maybe next week, though George will be away so maybe it will be biscuits rather than the red cabbage dish I had planned.

I suspect the choosing a book a month thing (or other project) may be going by the board. Doing something creative every week, definitely!

To answer catdownunder's comment - yes, it was messy, but not quite as bad as wet felting (which I have only tried a couple of times, I loved it but my wrists are too weak to really do it justice, I am an RSI survivor). I kept plenty of paper towel and a bowl of water to hand and kept it under control. It was fun!!

8 Things Thursday

8 Things I really Dislike

Spiders

Tinned beetroot

Sinus headaches

Bureaucracy

Cruelty to animals, children, anyone or anything really

Incompetence (see bureaucracy!)

Bitter tastes

'Reality' TV like Big Brother and The Biggest Loser

Wordless Wednesday

Creative Tuesday - Socks, Ponchos and Shrugs

A selection of socks, ponchos and shrugs that I have knitted over the past few years. The ponchos and shrugs are to my own designs. The socks were adapted from a long-ago toe-up pattern found somewhere on the internet, now memorised in two versions of my own, one for George and one for me and Baby Bear (the only difference being size). The socks are all knitted in a variety of brightly coloured sock wools, and near the top there are a couple of pairs knitted from scraps. The red poncho is knitted from Noro silk garden, the pink one from Heirloom Harmony, I think it is called, not sure if that still exists. The pale pink shrug is knitted from a Colinette ribbon yarn, the blue one from something that Lincraft put out several years ago.

Monday Quote

.He danced with a young woman with no hair, but who wore a wig of shining beetles that swarmed and seethed on her head. His third partner complained bitterly whenever Stephen's hand happened to brush her gown; she said it put her gown of its singing; and, when Stephen looked down, he saw that her gown was indeed covered with tiny mouths which opened and sang a little tune in a series of high, eerie notes."
— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Friday Update

It's been a bit of an unproductive week, really. A child with gastro and unpleasantly hot and steamy weather has left me feeling limp and uninspired. But not totally.

I enjoyed embellishing the denim shirt so much that I decided to do another repurposed and embellished item, even though I had completed the two that fulfilled my personal challenge terms for the month. I cheated slightly by buying a new top, which isn't really what repurposing is meant to be about, but it was 20% off in a sale, so I hope that counts!

First of all, though, I spent several satisfying hours organising my button collection into colour groups. This was largely inspired by seeing my MIL's collection at the weekend, neatly organised into old Twinings Tea tins and carefully labelled. Then I sewed blue buttons to this white top.

Over time I have bought a few packets of themed buttons in patchwork shops, and most of the buttons for this top came from one of them. The heart-shaped button in the point of the V, however, came from old stash and I think was left over from some top I made in the past.

I have added to my personal challenges for the year, too, though this one is not time critical. The other day George pointed out that I might have to cull the cookbooks in order to fit in the newer ones. He is probably right, but I decided that before I cull anything, I will cook a recipe from it. Not necessarily once a day or once a week or anything like that, and I am not aiming to do a Julia Child here! But before I get rid of a book I want to see if there is anything in it that at least three out of the four of us will eat. I will post something about any such recipes/books each Friday here. I have chosen a recipe for next week, though admittedly it is from a book I bought Baby Bear so it won't be thrown out anyway.

8 Things Thursday

8 Things I Cannot Resist Spending Money On

Beads

Books

DVDs

Fabric

Sock wool

Shoes

Craft magazines

Cooking magazines

Wordless Wednesday

Creative Tuesday

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
Glass Japanese and Czech seed beads, nylon beading thread, polymer clay faces, Lacey’s Stiff Stuff, ultrasuede, metal findings
A box framed beaded picture inspired by the 1920s German film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
Created 2008

This was one of the pieces I made for my Graduate exhibition in November 2008 when I finished my Diploma of Textile Art. I have always loved the early German film that this was inspired by, and I had ordered these faces off Etsy or Ebay at some point not knowing exactly what I was going to do with them. The two ideas came together wonderfully. The shapes in the background beading are all based on the look of the film, which is very angular in places and also has some amazing windy paths in other places.

The actual materials are given above. I did the beading onto Lacey's Stiff Stuff (which is tediously difficult to get in Australia, so you have to plan ahead - I need to restock), with the outline drawn onto the A4 size sheet. Then I glued the faces on and drew the rough shapes of the areas I wanted to bead. Then just went for it! Originally this was going to be a necklace. I finished it then glued it onto a sheet of Ultrasuede (for supplies of that in Oz, see comment on LSS!) with the intention of cutting the two out and beading the edges and attaching findings. But it looked rather wonderful just on the Ultrasuede and I thought it looked like an ancient artefact sitting in a museum case. So I got it framed in the box frame so that it looked something like that.

It didn't sell at the exhibition, hardly surprising given that I was shoved in a poorly lit corner that no-one could even get into properly. (Not impressed with Box Hill TAFE's exhibition space that year, that we were allowed no opinion on). It hangs on my wall and I love it dearly though I would also love it dearly if I could sell things like this and make some sort of living out of them!

I haven't done any big pieces like this since then but I must do some more, they are what I like doing best in the whole world. Trouble is, they are expensive in terms of both materials and time and if I cannot sell something along the way it is hard to justify them. Yes, they are beautiful, they are art, but I have to earn some money somewhere! And issues with Wombat make it very hard for me to earn money outside the home. Enough grumpiness, I am starting to plan my next extravagant bead embroidery piece.

Monday Quote

A time capsule buried at Jersey Zoo in 1988 contains the following popular quote by Gerald Durrell, often used in conservation awareness campaigns:

We hope that there will be fireflies and glow-worms at night to guide you and butterflies in hedges and forests to greet you.

We hope that your dawns will have an orchestra of bird song and that the sound of their wings and the opalescence of their colouring will dazzle you.

We hope that there will still be the extraordinary varieties of creatures sharing the land of the planet with you to enchant you and enrich your lives as they have done for us.

We hope that you will be grateful for having been born into such a magical world.

Friday Update

It's been a bit of a manic week. We had a long weekend so I am still feeling a day behind. And then there was THE STORM. Supposedly the worst in 100 years, or forever, or something. Hail the size of .. take your pick of a large spherical object. We personally were lucky, no damage apart from another fallen limb from the eucalyptus that isn't (lemon scented gum - apparently now no longer a eucalypt in scientific terms), but George has been phenomenally busy since. Which, given that he was already doing too much work, has been a bit of an issue.

I have been repurposing a shirt. But decided yesterday that it was just not working, and ditched it. No pics of the failure, I am too annoyed with myself for not putting more thought into it. Last week's worked so well that I think I am suffering from hubris right now!

So last night I sat down with a denim shirt that I had also intended to chop up and be clever with. Feeling crestfallen after the failure, I stuck to embellishment instead, and I'm delighted with the results! I will probably wear it open over a white singlet.

This means that I have finished my craft challenge for March! As half of April will be taken up with school holidays I thought I might make an early start on something for the last two weeks of March. I;m not sure what yet but will blog about something next Friday.

And no real progress on the visual journal, though I have printed out two images to use as backdrops which will need sealing before I do anything on top of them.

8 Things Thursday

8 countries I want to visit but have not been to yet:

Italy

Denmark

Norway

Finland

Sweden

Iceland

Russia

Israel

Wordless Wednesday

Creative Tuesday

A collage of sundry beaded brooches I have made over the past three years or so. Some have been sold, some have been given away as presents, some are still urking around somewhere. This one of my favorite things to do, ever. I haven't done any for ages because I have been trying to find other things which sell, so far not with a huge degree of success. But I do love doing these and will do more.

Monday Quote

'Inside the room, the Skinless Boy grinned and let the illusory flesh that covered half his body slide away to reveal the red ochre bones of the skeleton beneath.'

Drowned Wednesday, Garth Nix

Friday Update

I exercised my prerogative to change my mind and substituted an activity not on my original list of challenges for the year. I decided to spend March attempting to alter at least two op shop (charity/thrift shop) finds into more interesting/better fitting clothes that I would actually wear, hopefully only using things from my stash.

I have made excellent progress! In fact today I am wearing the first item. I bought a skirt that I really liked, that already looked like altered art but was a bit too snug around the tummy/hip area for me to wear.

So I cut it down one side seam and chose something to insert there. I had originally planned to place insertions on both sides until I realised it was asymmetrical, so decided to make the long side longer. I did stash dive and almost settled on some fabric but it was the wrong colour, weight and too frayable, so did another op shop trawl and came up with a pair of jeans with side decoration that looked very 80s as jeans, but would work with this skirt and leave me plenty of denim left over to do other things with.

Half an hour on the sewing machine, et voila!

I tried to get a picture of it hanging off the hanger but the denim bit doesn't drape nicely that way. It looks nice on but I am not prepared to do model shots!

The original skirt cost AU$7 and the jeans cost the same. So for AU$14 I have a skirt and left over denim for other projects.

So I am very happy with my progress this month. I haven't started the latest two page spread of my visual journal but have settled on the images for it, which are an important part of it.

And as Tuesday Artist is proving to be a bit time-consuming, I will be substituting it with Creative Tuesday in future, where I show a picture of something that I have made, at some stage, either brand-new or in the dim distant past.

8 Things Thursday

8 photos from my 1989 honeymoon in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. All taken on actual film and scanned into the computer - the colours suggest 20 year old film, don't they!!

Wordless Wednesday

Monday Quote

'Well he would, wouldn't he?"

Mandy Rice-Davies, on being asked in court if she was aware that Lord Astor denied sleeping with her.

Quoted in 'The Trial of Stephen Ward' by Ludovic Kennedy, 1964.