A busy week with Rellies & A GIVEAWAY

I've done nothing creative this week but I've had a fabulous time with the DH's sister & uncle up for their annual visit. On Monday we went off to the Isle of Eigg for the day.

 Loch Nevis from the Armadale on Skye to mainland Mallaig

 It was the only day in the week that the ferry called twice at Eigg, once to drop us & once to collect, of course.

The Sgurr on Eigg on arrival from Mallaig

We were starving after all that bouncing around & had the most amazing hamburgers & coffee & cake in the Eigg cafe.

 Tilt left, sorry, I'll have to try & sort this out! By the cafe, a lovely rusty red ;)

tilt left, walking thru the woods

& back to the shore by the ferry terminal

I've obviously got to keep our new point & shoot camera, a Lumix with a Leica lens no less, on the level when I take a pic. It doesn't seem to cope with turning sideways. Having said that it's a lovely little lightweight thing!

We went for a couple of other walks & got completely sodden near Portree but nevertheless went for coffee &  cake in The Bakery under my favorite Skyeworks Gallery  The photographic exhibition was fabulous (as was the cake!) My favorite pic was the one used in the promotion leaflet, you'll see when you click the link. A daisy in the garden of local photographer Donnie Mackay - must ask him how he got that moody effect ;)

Thursday we went to Plockton (in MY exhibition space ;)to see the work of my textile friend Polly Bryan - I'm so glad she did this!

 oh. she's spinning!

 The middle piece is Mulberry bark, torn, pulled & beautifully beaded

 Lovely organic shape there

 Sea colors

Autumn colors

 My favorite, hopefully she'll send me a pic of the one similar that was sold from above!

 Lots of goodies

 Pastels, a woman of many talents

 Needle 

felting, mainly

 another favotite landscape, tilt left

& last tilt left - colors you could eat!

A quick walk up to a viewpoint I've always been meaning to go to in Plockton

 Across to Skye

over to Loch Carron towards Kishorn where they held the record for building the world's heaviest moveable object, an oil rig - probably still do ;)

We were taken for a wonderful meal  by DH's uncle to the Plockton Shores great food & friendly service. A great week altogether!

MY GIVEWAY!

Celebrating over 200 posts; some would call that a lot of rabbiting - nobody here of course & I was delighted when someone local described what he was hearing from me when chatting to a friend as a "stream of consciousness". Much kinder ;) So, I'd like to offer a little giveaway of some scrappy fabrics in juicy colors, a bit of tissue & music paper, a copy of one of my painted papers (left) a little foil, rusty ring, bullet & shell & a spare tube of clear silk gutta - I got it to use as a resist. Just leave me a comment telling me how you might use this collection! I'll let you know who's won as soon as!

Giveaway next week

Sorry! Completely forgot about the giveaway I promised, so sorry, I'll give it a go for next week! The usual work load & all I managed this week was to make 6 little earrings.

I'm still, very slowly, sorting out the studio & I haven't come across the one packet of earring findings that I have. It's in there somewhere. Meanwhile the above won't be going into my Etsy shop just yet ;) I'm working towards stock for the craft fairs & i came across some pieces of made up fabric scraps & turned some of it into the earrings. I'll make up some more fabric for more stock, but that's the bit I love, it could turn into a purse, an earring a brooch a cuff, one day i'll do enough for a bag! I have been given a little commission for a coffee percolator warmer..... that'll be a nice change ;)

Just a really quick one tonight - we've got the Rellies up this week, staying in the local self catering cottage  & just spent a lovely first evening catching up with them. Must take the camera on the walk tomorrow, I'm on holiday!

The week that was.

I've been sorting boxes, moving them from one place to another, as you do. When the Middlest went off to college I thought, great, I can use the underneath of his bed to store the see thru plastic boxes that are full of my fabrics, only a couple of colors in each & one just for organzas & silks. When he came back from sea for a few weeks summer holiday he decided to buy a double bed & to avoid too many costs he'd use plastic fish boxes as the base, just as his brother did when the neighbours came round & said 'do you want a free double matress, we ordered the wrong size?' Well, you'd say yes, wouldn't you? (he does mow the lawn occaisonally while they're away as a thank you, in between his split shifts up at the hotel) Anyway, I had a few in the greenhouse which, a couple of years ago were growing tomatoes. There aren't many left now, perhaps if I'd looked after the tomatoes earlier this year they wouldn't have taken them?

Anyway, I've lost the 'under the bed' storage - I can't keep fabric in the studio over the winter, it gets decidedly foosty, bad enough in the summer months. He's gone back to college & I've lined them up against the walls where I can actually see the contents better. Hopefully he won't notice when he's back for a visit.....

How do you store your fabric?

In between B&B's & the day job I've managed to reawaken my Etsy shop it's been on my list to do long enough. In honor of it's awakening I finished making this purse.

A few items of clothing (I loved that dress!) stripped  & stiched with a little touch of lime green chiffony something.

I would have used the 2 small triangles cut off the top for the toggle button, if I could have found the piece I cut the purse from.

But no mind, I pulled some tiny pieces together & made one up & while I was there I made an earring to go along with it.

I just read that last week I hit 200 posts so I thought next week I'd have a giveaway. It'll probably be along the lines of an experimental pack with some recycled fabrics, book pages possibly a printed sheet of my painted papers & then maybe a card or 2. It might encourage me to carry on with the sort out ;) Then tomorrow i've got to persuade the DH to help me cut back at least 100 heavily gone to seed Alchemilla Mollis plants. I really must prevent having 150 next year but i fear it may be too late!

A restful week

So I've had a restful week, one less shift in the 'proper job' a couple of nights no B&B - things are naturally quieting down & on this September 1st no sign of the Blue Moon as winter has closed in! The moon was fabulous on Thursday evening tho, coming back from yoga I had a stunning view - we'd just done Salute to the Moon, of course. Can't complain we've had a fabulous summer, the best up here in 13 years. Even the midges only came out early August instead of May.


A couple of months ago I bought 2 single bed covers at the local Blythswood charity shop for £3 each. I had the idea to make them into one double cover & dye them forest green - good old Dylon.

The above was cream the other an interesting pink.
The label said dry clean only & I had a feeling it wouldn't really work...

Only the nice gold bits went green the rest is a rather lovely silver color ;)  If you can imaging a single cover in the middle of the bed, hanging over the sides a bit, I just cut the two sides off the other cover & added them to the sides of the one on the bed.... The top green line above is the whole cover then the added bit resting on the back of the dyed cover, a lovely smokey green. Of course the flash has turned it monochrome but you get the idea. I had no idea til I took this pic that the trimmings were different, call me a soft furnishings expert!

I had a cushion pad laying around the studio - different to the clean new ones I was using before - so I made one cushion. I'll look out for a couple of ready made second hand small forest green ones to sit either side. It'll be enjoyed by the next B&B guest & will make the  room more finished looking to finally have a cover.

So nothing creative in the studio this week, not even a card, which has been refreshing, relaxing & what I needed, no pressure. We did have a guest who wanted to visit the studio 'after breakfast the next day' so I spent a happy time sorting out the piles of work we'd just unloaded from the car & dumped. The 'gallery' end is looking lovely now but my working bit of the studio will take more than a happy time!

I've been very slowly getting back to my buddies & catching up on their blogs. I enjoyed Jill at Third Age Musings post on the Festival of Quilts &  I've seen there are more people's posts on the FoQ to go & visit. I really appreciate you all giving those of us up here a looksee ;) I was interested in her link to Stephanie Redfern's work  & was blown away by her work on her blog. I'd come across her before but obviously hadn't had much time to trawl thu all her wonderful detailed pieces - she also has a different, to me, clean simple way of working but give me messy detail any time! It reminded me of a visitor to the exhibition saying, when looking thru my workbooks on the table 'you must have a lot going on in your head'  I told her it helped to get some of it out onto paper.

 The printmaking course that I thought was returning is a 34 week Art & Design course - I want 10 week just printmaking - I can't commit to a college year at the moment. Maybe I'll buy a printmaking book or do an online w/s! A less frenetic autumn/wintertime is coming, more for my time.

Our guest just came back, 10.30pm & said the moon is out.  It's been raging all day! Standing with the dog seeing the brightness of the moon, the stars & the silver lining of the remaining clouds gives  a lovely hopeful feeling, I'd rather watch that than listen to the news.

A very good week

I had a wonderful exhibition week with generous comments like ' is this the local art groups work?' ' lovely use of color' & 'inspiring' What more could a girl want? Financially it was pretty good, too, encouraging us to think about doing it again next year......!

 My rout to the exhibition - this is one mile from home

(click to see the lighthouse)

We still have work left of course but inspired by a chat about integrity with my photographer friend, who told me he'd have all new work next time, it ocurred to me that I couldn't possibly drag all this lot out.....again.

arriving in Plockton

So I've started to plan a new body of work - daunting but exciting

 the inlet next to the Hall

And quite a focus!

Driving home (yes I did stop safely to take the pic, many don't!) I'm on the mainland so that's Skye over there in the delicious clouds

I think I'd have come to that conclusion on my own, eventually, about new work as I did think a couple of times 'if so & so comes all the way over here specially,  they've seen it all before'

a tiny detour to the car park so I could get a pic of the bridge over to Skye

It gave me a small feeling in the pit of the stomach but I can now say all that work was for the 12 months of '11/'12 all new for 2013 - wow, what a sense of purpose I have now!

So I finally got one of 3 cushions finished! One visitor said how awful for me to just have to sit there all day & I told her it was bliss as I could get some work done ;)

A too bright pic of the 'piping' - my version of piping anyway - I think I stitched it in a conventional way, no cord,  but the strip of fabric was made up of lots of different colors & pieces of fabric....as you can see. Very time consuming but the pieces are generally the size they are, leftover size.

I couldn't leave the back out, I love a bit of detail. So using my rotary cutter ( yes I actually own one!) I sliced the 'piping' strip & zigzaged it down, quite sweet I thought.

I put all the really tiny bits of fabric, dust some of it, onto a square of denim. As time passed I fiddled it (?) into 4 smaller squares - they did get knocked about a bit before I got to them, then I laid a piece of organza over it all stitched merrily & cut into 4. I intended to make cards with them until a visitor bought a brooch & I thought, Brooches! I did cut one in half & made 2 cards, above, along with a few simple shell stamp cards & assembled some Acer leaf prints I'd done before into cards.

I put together a few of these cards too - I keep my card designs in A5 envelopes & each envelope should have all the necessary component parts (they don't always!)  so that I can grab my 'kit' & a glue stick & make them up 'on location'. The star is a commercial stamp & the hearts is made from cutting card shapes & gluing them down into a 'stamp'. The cards are sitting on a painted background, 6 A4 sheets in various stages - I took over a mini studio so I could dash off some card/collage papers. I seem to be very disciplined when I know I'm going to be 'stuck' somewhere for a length of time - I usually take too much stuff tho but I can't bear the idea of not having anything to do, a sort of fear of boredom I think  (I never get bored!). With a note book always with me & calming Yogic breathing & relaxation, it's not such a worry any more.

 

Lastly, I made these earings. I had my very good customer come by & she bought the 3 I had - I'd hoped to have given her a better selection but she inspired me to make more, anyway ;)

The pics are the right way thank goodness - you did make me laugh with your ricked neck comments! I think as I'd forgotten to resize the last post pics & loaded them in a one-er blogger couldn't cope, not surprisingly. So now I have a little free time before the Xmas craft fairs production kicks in to come by all of yours & visit!

I'm Hung!

Consider yourself virtually invited to my third exhibition in 12 months!

We had a good day hanging our paintings & small hangings & I look forward to being in the same place for 6 days! Who know what fortunes I will receive this week but I know I've done my bit, I've enjoyed it & I'll enjoy sitting amongst  all our hard work. Thank you for all your kind wishes. My blog break was giving up something I really enjoy - isn't that always the way? -so that I could continue running around like a blue arsed fly chasing my life & finishing off things for the exhibition - I can hear the violins playing in sympathy! So, yes, one day I will have  quiet time, put my feet up, recharge, see my work flow naturally, enjoying the process & become refreshed...one day!

Meanwhile, look what I won! I got 2nd prize in Bois Fleurie's giveaway, look at the sweet face on the card & that hair, wonderful! The ribbons & wool on the left was a lovely extra, my colors exactly, too - so generous ;) thank you. Like her ? I love her! 

Above are 2 new pieces of work for the show, it's the first time blogger has laid my work down on their side! Tilt your head to the left, if you will ;) They are inspired by samples in my workbook, the top one  foxgloves & forgetmenots. I stitched my first bee, can you see her? She even has a little gold pollen stitched to her back legs. The bottom one is a loose interpretation of Clematis & Linarea. Good getting back to these.

the above 6 squares are the CD pieces from a while ago finally mounted up, pleased with them.

Below are (just) a few images from the Lochalsh Art Fair, I put one piece in this year, my large hanging at the end of this group.

Circles, another one on it's side - tilt right.

Encaustic wax, not sure if you can see the tiny strips of text

Lovely pieces, specially the carved seahorse

Oh dear, tilt left, lovely photo by Ken from my last post & some amazing carved cardboard crustations.

Circles in squares

& a lovely stitched fuchsia - I think she & I & the blue one at the bottom were the only stitchers.

A pretty watercolor with ink, tilt left

The one I chse for my best in show, top left if you tilt left!

Above, tilt right & that's mine bottom left. Some beautifully wrapped driftwood above mine.

Sorry for all the tilting!

We had a wonderful request to be witnesses to a German couple coming over here to get married - they stayed with us last year & lovely of them to want to come back. They wanted to marry on their own & hadn't realised they'd need witnesses & asked us to do them that favour. We said we'd be honored. She was very excited, as when her fiance suggested he hire a kilt but she had no dress she was recommended a charity shop down the road from where they were trying on their beautifully made wedding rings & she found one for ........I don't think she'd mind me telling you....£50

Look at it!

What  a backdrop, the Cuillin hills - they won't believe it was real - I was more worried about midgies than rain, it was so nice.

 There were 3 beads just hanging by a thread, I sweated & toiled (only coz I was nervous) & stitched them back in - so hard to see white on white!

 We were invited to lunch at Kinloch Lodge, fabulous, a perfect setting ( we could hardly go to the bar down the road!) Below, the view from the hotel.

 Oh, how frustrating! tilt left for his buttonhole

& tilt right for the blushing bride & her bouquet. I couldn't resist making it for her, from 'just witnesses' we became  friends, I was practically her bridesmaid! Truly, a fabulous day.

Wish me luck for next week!



Here's some info from Etsy, below that I was asked to share with you all. Hopefully it will inspire me to fill my Etsy shop , empty till after the exhibition ;)
edit, sorry, forgot this info!
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