Blimey - I'm SEWING - like a GIRL!

Working with textiles is something I have wanted to do for a very long time - but simply didn't have the cojones to give it a try.

But, spurred on by some of the lovely fabric pieces arriving for the raffle, I rather impulsively signed up for a pure fabric CJ on UKS a couple of weeks ago, when I noticed that one of their members had dropped out and they needed to fill her space.

There are 12 of us taking part, and so, rather than making a traditional book, I am simply asking each participant to make a 6" x 6" quilted square, and I will assemble them into a patchwork type wall hanging (4 squares by 3) when they come home.

Boy oh boy, though, did I ever feel out of my depth during the making of this piece!

The design was simple (in fact too simple - I wish I had done something a little more adventurous as it feels almost like a Flo-by-numbers composition) - I decided to do something "typically me" - in the hope that the other players will also do something very true to their own styles. So I used my current top colour palette of red, blue and purple - and my favourite Green Pepper Press tree rubber stamp.

But it proved so difficult.

First of all - HOW do you cut fabric straight???? I kept going off course and ruined loads of pieces of material.

Then why doesn't stamping with black neopaque paint work? And, talking of paint, you have to use so much because it absorbs.

And colour wash comes out so much darker than on paper.

Anyway - it's done now, and I am pleased to have overcome my mental blocks about textile arts and given it a go.

A quick how-to. I dyed all the fabrics for the piece (except the brown velour) using Ranger colourwash sprays in denim, cranberry and eggplant. All I did was spray, and let the colour pool and drip in places.

You can see it closer on the back:



Like I said, everything came out a little too dark so I lightened up the fabric used for the centre panel with pearlescent pink and lavender inks sponged through sequin waste, and a bit of silver ink stippled here and there, and I also gave it a good spray with irridescent gold Glimmer Mists, which has given it a lovely sparkle.

Then I attempted to stamp the tree, but it came out really patchy, so I freehanded most of it in with black acrylic paint.

Rusty tin stars were sewn on to the front panel, and little seed beads also. And then I sewed it onto the full front panel and some quilters' wadding.

The chocolate coloured velour fabric at the bottom was cut with a heat tool (the one I use for cutting stencils - it went through the velour like butter), and applied with fabric glue.

Faric certainly is a challenging medium for me to work in - especially as I don't own a sewing machine :) - but I am really looking forward to the next 12 months and making pages / quilts for all the other players. I hope I will have come a long way past this very basic effort by the end of the year.

Up and down

Yes, sorry, more Wildcats talk. Arty farty stuff will be back soon, straight after this post in fact. But I need to get my thoughts about the weekend's hockey out of my head first.

First of all, Saturday - what a GREAT day. The weather was amazing, and there was a funfair in the rink carpark - I love it when the fair comes to town :)

Connor and I got up to the Link about an hour before the game (first "proper" match of the season, vs Sheffield Scims) and went on the rides for a bit. We had particular fun with the hall of mirrors, as you can see :) And the pic of Cons on the little roller coaster models his new gap perfectly - he lost his first milk tooth the day before.



We played until the last possible second and got to our seats within seconds of the puck drop. The first period was worrying - we seemed to be almost permanently down a man with powerplay after powerplay for Sheffield. I started muttering about lack of discipline. With good reason, it turns out, but let's stay on Saturday for the moment. Thanks mainly to Kudrna, we got to the end of the period with no score, and Connor and I headed back to the fair for the break, collecting Ben and Michelle along the way.

Michelle then proceeded to make my day BIG time. You remember the BBQ? And Jon Sitko's fetching pinny? Well - Connor and I had to leave said BBQ early, but Michelle and Ben had stuck around to the end - when the Wildcats pinnies that had been in active service were auctioned off. You know where this is going :) She only went and outbid all comers and won the pinny as a pressie for me! :D :D :D

Sits had already signed it, but he added a little dedication for me too, it's very cool indeed :) Totally unexpected - I was, and am still, so chuffed!!!



Anyway - back to the game - we finished the second period a goal down, but I actually think we played better in that period than the first. There were plenty of chances we just didn't get lucky on any of them. I know I'm biased but Sitko had an amazing game, doing everything he should do, using his size, lining up a few great slaps from the blue line, and generally making his presence felt. Lee Richardson was on fire too.

The one decidedly dodgy piece of the puzzle was still Racek. When is this guy going to wake up and start delivering on all the promises? The easy answer to that one is "about 8 mins before the final horn" as he does seem to have an uncanny knack of getting his act together in the final minutes of the game - and indeed he did it again in this game - Ivan the Equaliser evened it up for us in the last half of the last period - and set us up nicely to clinch the game with a second goal from Watt the Elder shortly after. But for the first 50 minutes he is all over the place. I know it's early days but he really needs to start playing a full 60 minutes, because underperforming imports don't stick around for long in this league.

But - yes - the gist is - thorouhgly enjoyable game - our goalie is like a less good looking Luongo and will be saving much Swindon bacon this year - everyone made a lot of noise - everyone looked good out there except Racek - and, most importantly WE WON!!!!!!

oh - and Ryan Watt and Jon Sitko were on autograph duty after the game - and Michelle was kind enough to tell Sits that I was the crazy-fangirl-lady she had bought the pinny for - at which point I blushed beetroot. So there you go - it took Janak almost the whole season to realise he had a stalker - #24 has got it sussed one game in :)



So there I was last night - celebrating, buzzing with the victory.

Tonight? Whole different story.

We lost away 4-0 to the Telford Tigers - and by all acounts it was a sorry old state of a game. A ref who wouldn't put a single decision our way. A ten minute misconduct for our goalie for pointing out that fact. A HUGE brawl that got FIVE of our boys removed from the game. And allegations of Crawford/Bertuzzi proportions against our Pete.

We can't afford this lads. There is a line between being hot headed and being stupid. If the ref is already against us, don't wind him up even more, ffs!!!
And how exactly does a player help his team by leaving the bench to fight and getting sent on the long walk?

Pah.

Sore losers? you bet. Well, so am I. Nothing can build up my mood and then batter it back down to earth like this beautiful game.

A 4-0 shut out is hard to take.

Early days, early days.

Whoaaaaa!!!!

Nothing like starting the season with a nailbiter!

I think I experienced every emotion known to mankind during tonight's hockey game :)

I went from excited to wary to fed up to hopeful through excited again and thoroughly entertained to absolutely ELATED when we equalised with 39 seconds on the clock.

I'm hoarse from shouting and so, so hyped for the new season :)

Laaaadiiiisssllllaaaaavvvvv made some brilliant judgement calls and made up for a couple of dodgy loking rebounds early in the first period to completely win me over.

Sitko is a beast.

Racek? hmmmm, not convinced yet. He seemed uneasy out there. Until he got that last minute goal in, anyway :) But then again Janak started off dodgy as hell and ended up pretty solid. Must be a Slovakian thing.

Wheats looked like he was having fun out there and had some great chances.

The Watts bros are very entertaining indeed.

Matty had some chances too.

And bad boy Fiddes took the first penalty of the season :) Tsk! hee hee

(vid courtesy of Rick - who by complete coincidence also shot the vid of the Kings/Ducks at the O2 last year with me in it :))

and another video just added from the game - fiesty Sitko having a little tussle - this was actually quite a sweet little fight, if a fight can be sweet :) At least the aftermath was, they were both chatting away in the sin bin and having a good giggle :)

I've got my hockey back!!!!!

Wildcats party time :)

Our new team for 08/09 was launched today, and I have to say the 'cats ain't looking too shabby this season!

Smart new kit, interesting new players, and a really positive vibe in the air.

I couldn't get down to rinkside to take any extreme closeups, but here are some pics from today's photoshoot and scrimmage.

(Sorry the action shots look a bit garish, I had to tweak the curves a fair bit to correct the Link's nasty yellow cast)

Willie's got his new kit:

Euan Forsyth, one of our new Scots - looks ready for a fight and there isn't even an opposing team in the building yet...
It's hockey, not golf dear:

Nelly the younger - who I think will be a hit with the younger puck bunnies:

Lee "Two Sticks" Richardson:

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeats:

Mikey Farn:

Shane (it's cool we have a Shane and a Wayne :) now we just need a Blaine):

Talk of the devil - this one's for Tracey - Wayne does the striptease - ba da da daaaa, ba da da daaaa....

and here's our fab captain again:

Oli takes a break:

Wheats scores on Oli (that'll teach him for relaxing :)):

Our last signing of the summer, from Kitchener Ontario, home of Mr Toddney Bertuzzi, looking like a cuter version of Russell Crowe, my new crush, Mr Jon Sitko:

Now you know my usual preference would be for defensively minded forwards (ya can't spell Kesler without Selke!), but I might have to make an exception for an offensively minded D-man who can pull a mean spinorama:

And doesn't he have a cute smile:

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww:


And here's me thinking I'd have nobody to crush on now that Tomas has gone - the hockey gods have smiled upon me :)

After the scrimmage we all retired to the local pub for a BBQ - luckily it was nice and sunny - first sunshine we've seen around these parts in a while (hockey gods working overtime....)

Connor was reunited with his hero of heroes, young Mr Richardson - look how happy Connor looks, I think he has missed the 'cats as much as I have:












And I got served some surprisingly tasty Quorn burgers by our Kitchener boy, in a very fetching pinny. I think that really did happen. Or maybe it was just one of those happy daydreams that starts off with Brad Pitt calling by for a cup of sugar :)

All in all, a good day, and I can't wait till Wednesday to see a proper game. The summer has been too long.

LET'S GO WILDCATS LET'S GO

In honour of the Large Hadron Collider ....

... something a bit science-ey today

Some background first - you remember the circle journal I took part in earlier this year with a bunch of online buddies from the UKStampers forum? Well, one of the ladies taking part unfortunately never got her book back - it got lost in the post about half way through the process. It's always upsetting when that happens.

Well, the rest of us - ably led by Hazel - have finally got our butts in gear and arranged to replace the lost book. The brief: make a 3" x 5" tag, and a 3.25" x 5.75" envelope to keep the tag in, with a subject of "headwear / hats" - and send on to Hazel by the end of this month, who will bind all the envies into a book for Petra.

All well and good.

Tag cut - check. Envelope made - check. Hats.... hats???? I don't know where to start with "hats"!

I was really stumped. Until I started thinking about the LHC. And black holes (a re-watching of the Improssible Planet / Satan Pit Dr Who episodes last night all snuggled up with my lovely boyfriend might have helped....). And how Albert Einstein was often pictured with a fedora style hat.

So - I went searching for a quote.

and I found a perfect one :)


.... as one's hat keeps blowing off!"

It's actually a Woody Allen quote, but I reckon it could pass for Einstein's words of wisdom easily enough, don't you? :)

I found the classic photo of Albert on his bicycle (and imagined him furiously pedalling to try to reach the speed of light :) ) and cut him a little hat out of black felt.



I had much fun making the backgrounds for the tag and envelope.

Firstly I stamped my over-used Third Coast celestial swirls and stars using Ranger paint dabbers. Usually when I do this "starry sky" type effect I use just silver and pearl dabbers - but Petra loves colour so I used some colourful pastel paints aswell - aqua, pink sherbert and cool peri. Gorgeous colours.

Once the paint was all dry I sprayed all of the card with glimmer mists in blue, purple, patina and walnut gold. As the glimmer mists dry, the paint on the stamped images resists the colour.

I then overstamped with cool scientific stamps (from Above the Mark and Club Stamp) in bright pink and purple Stazon inks - and finally sponged purple distress ink through stencil waste in selected areas.

You can see the sparkle of the glimmer mists a little better in this close up:

Once the tag had been collaged with the image of Einstein, and his felt hat, I added "wind" swirls with white pigment ink using a Fantastix applicator. The ribbons threaded through eyelets to the left of the tag are to be used to extract the tag from its envelope, but they also carry on the whole "blowing in the wind" feel. I don't tend to add ribbons to a project just for the sake of it - so I like it if they support the narrative in some way.

Oh - and the envelope was finished off with a little wheel thing from Tim Holtz's Idea-ology range of embellishments. It is held on with a brad but the brad back is covered with a small flat magnet, which is what keeps the envelope closed.

This was fun - and I've just realised that it fits this week's Wednesday stamper theme too - which is a bonus :)

I know the new book won't be quite the same as if Petra had got her own circle journal back - but hopefully it will go some way to making up for the unfortunate disappearance of the original journal.

Needle felting is the shizz!!!

I've admired the look of needle felted bits and bobs for a while, but being a pure textile-phobe, I really didn't think it was "for me".

But in true "you have to face your fear to conquer it" style, I signed up for a fabric circle journal this week (eeeeeeeeeeeeeekk!!!) - and so I duly trotted off to Hobbycraft to buy quilting wadding and material and needles and cotton and all that alien stuff :)

While I was looking at said alien stuff, I caught sight of needle felting equipment, and I thought, "I am fearless, you don't scare me" and popped it in my basket.

And you know what? It's FAB! And not difficult at ALL!

Admittedly, my very first experiment was random, and rubbish. See circular blob:

But at that point I was really just experimenting with the mechanics of the felting needle and how the wool sticks together, etc.

The next thing I made was the heart on the canvas up there ^. It was really just another experiment - and if I made another I would use more wool, as it's rather flat - but I was pleased enough with it to want to do something with it. So I plopped it on a quick canvas with some grungeboard wings.

(standard disclaimer goes here - the flash has nobbled the colours - they go together better IRL honestly - the lines on the wings don't show up that much really - blah blah)

Then tonight I thought I would be really brave and try something 3D. The reason bravery is required is that this involves a much higher likelihood of stabbing yourself in the finger. and I did indeed do so. 4 times. ouch. ouch. ouch. ouch.

But it was worth it - because I made a little bead and I really like it.

It took a while, though, so at this rate I'll have a whole necklace by Christmas. 2010. :)

All you have to do is form some fairly rough wool woving (I used Corriedale) into a loose ball shape roughly twice the size of the required bead. And then poke it all over with a barbed felting needle until it shrinks and firms up. You can leave it at that or add more roving to make patterns, as I did with this one. (The dark green was the base bead - the light green and orange are Merino roving felted onto the surface)

I'm looking forward to making more felted pieces to use in my fabric journal.

A girl can't have too many hobbies, eh? :)

Cousin Swap

No - it's not like Wife Swap :)

I have a good online buddy in the not so united states of America called Paula who I met via the Green Pepper Press crusades. We have a ton in common, even down to grand-daddies from the same little bit of British coastline, so we decided a while ago that we are obviously long lost cousins :)

When I launched the UK Art Raffle at the beginning of August, my cousin there was a bit fed up that she was ruled out from joining in on the grounds of, well, not being anywhere near the UK basically - so we decided to do a 1 on 1 special cousin swap.

Fast forward to today, and Paula has now received her surprise parcel, so I can finally blog what I made for her :)



I had a lot of fun making this book - Paula's just like me, a teenage goth/punk/metal girl who has cruelly been trapped inside the body of a not-quite-so-teenage-any-more mum of many :) So I basically made something that I would like, and figured cousin-o-mine would therefore like it too. And my logic worked a treat.

The book was made from scratch using my Bind It All machine. I made the covers from plain chipboard - hand cut into a gothic arch shape. They were covered in black tissue paper, crumpled then roughly flattened back out and stuck down with PVA glue. Once the glue was totally dry I sponged interference paints in red and purple over the top to accentuate the texture of the wrinkled issue paper.



The end papers inside the covers were made with glimmer mists in reds and purples to complement the interference paints used on the outside of the book. They are nice and sparkly.

The gargoyle embellishments on the front and back of the book were made using Stampbord squares. This stuff is possibly the best stamping surface ever. I coloured the squares first using distress inks and glimmer mists, and then stamped the gargoyles (Third Coast) using black permanent ink. The great thing about Stampbord is how you can etch back into the clay surface - so that's what I did next, adding white highlights and some cross hatching around the gargoyles.


The pages inside the book alternate in direction, and are all cut from different papers, some handmade, some glittery, some textured - I wanted it to be really interesting, even empty.



The final touches were the words "cuz to cuz" embossed on purple metallic tape on the inside back cover, black shrink plastic embellishments stuck to the back cover (made using a sun punch), and a corset style fastening for the front of the book made by threading a purple satin ribbon through black eyelets.

I'm glad that Paula likes the book as much as I did :)

Playing with some new stamps

I got a new plate of Cherry Pie Halloween themed stamps this week, and wanted to have a quick play with them this afternoon, in between washing Bestival mud out of clothes and children.

Everyone is going crazy for the "Bandana" technique at the moment - and I think this is the closest I'll get to it, as I'm not really crazy about the all out doodles and dots thang.

I wasn't at all sure about the white pen - I thought I'd ruin the image, which looked just fine in plain black against the blended pigment ink background - but I have to admit it does work. I think the in thing to say is that it "makes the image pop" :)

The photos aren't great as I have just taken them after dark under my kitchen lights with no flash, but you get the general idea.

This really was a quick necklace to make from start to finish - maybe an hour's work in all - but I like it. I'm sure I'll be wearing it at Halloween.

The background is sunset orange, terracotta, cranberry and eggplant pigment inks (Ranger), blended with cut and dry foam onto plain white card. The owl, tree and bats were stamped with black pigment ink over the top. and then I added highlights with a white gel pen to make it look like strong moonlight was shining from the top right.

I cut the piece of card into two 1" x 3" sections (the size of a tall piece of Ranger memory glass - like a microscope slide) - the piece with the owl on became the front of the necklace, and the tree branches that extended out to the right of the owl became the back.

Then I sandwiched the stamped pieces between memory glass - clear for the front and frosted for the back - put them into a Ranger memory frame in black patina finish.

Finally I needed something to hang it from. I tried it with various silver and pewter chains, but nothing seemed quite right. So instead I got out my beading board and laid out a pattern of very dark blue seed beads and rectangular black matt glass beads, which seemed to work. A couple of dalmatian jasper beads at the center of the necklace either side of the pendant, and a nice patina'd clasp that mached the frame well, finished it all off nicely.



I am looking forward to making more necklaces with the Ranger memory frames - they are so easy to use but look so professionally finished. Maybe a square one next time....

Well, that didn't quite go to plan!

We're home early from Bestival :(

I don't like to be a quitter, but the weather made it unworkable really :(

A month's worth of rain on the first day of the festival turned the place into a total mudbath. These pics were taken in the campsite, which was one of the LEAST muddy bits!

I think we made the right decision to leave on Saturday, as I have since read that since we left the BBC Introducing stage has been closed down (and most of the bands I wanted to see - Cage The Elephant - Noah and the Whale - Pete and the Pirates etc - were on that stage). So has the Comedy Tent, and various others.

None of the children's activities were up and running - as they were all outdoors - a couple of the camping fields have had to be evacuated because of floods - all a HUGE pity as it would have been a brilliant festival if the weather had played fair.

But that's the risk you take with the British summer I guess.

My particular low point was slipping and falling face first into the mud on my way to see Pendulum on Friday night - thus ruining my last change of clean clothes on the first day! By the time I had got back to the tent and cleaned the mud out of my hair, eyelashes, nostrils and mouth (it was sooooooo naaaasty!!!!) the band were near enough finished :(

So I didn't get to see a single band that I liked, and all I have to show for a fairly huge monetary outlay is a pile of muddy washing.

Gotta see the funny side, ain't ya :)

To be fair - there were some ok bits - we all enjoyed playing in the miniature village :) Darbs proved he is king of the mazes. We caught a tiny bit of one band on the BBC stage before it was shut down who were very good and they gave Darbs an airhorn. No idea who they were though! (I had to leave after a couple of songs because it was raining so heavily poor Connor couldn't see a thing as his glasses were getting constantly rained up - need to get him some little windscreen wipers :) )

And the tent was very cozy and we were warm and dry while hiding in there. Kudos to the Tangerine Fields people for doing a great job.


Oh - and the wristbands were nice and comfy :)

I'm off to Bestival....

... to swim in the mud!

see you on Monday :)

REALLY looking forward to seeing these guys:



and these guys:



and the almighty George:



and who knows, Amy might even turn up!