Dear Blog,
I am sorry I have neglected you. We have been busy, in a lazy stay at home, do things that you love, kind of way. It gets to this stage of the holidays and I feel like I am really on top of everything – house is tidy, bills are paid, meals are planned, exercise done, artwork is in full swing. Unfortunately I know from experience that it all ends next week when school goes back, and we go back to juggling schooly stuff, and homeschool groups and after school activities, so I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.
Here are some things that we have been doing in our house…
I have been doing lots of fabric dying experiments. I am going to use these pieces to make a birthday present for my son’s girlfriend. I have just tried a technique using flour paste from Jane Dunnewold’s book Art Cloth, and I loved the results.
This is one of my favourite pieces. It was tie dyed and then I added a mono print using dye paste.
I am planning to do some more work on these pieces using discharge paste today and then maybe some printing.
The other thing I have been experimenting with is encaustic work. I borrowed Encaustic Workshop by Patricia Baldwin Seggebruch from the local library and was so inspired by it that I rushed out and bought some basic encaustic supplies. Encaustic is painting with wax, and all you really need to get started is a bag of wax and a heat gun, so it’s fairly cheap. I really enjoyed the technique and I can see lots of potential for using this technique in some of my artist’s books, especially the Specimens series that I am working on at the moment.
My boys have been creative too. Axel raided my box of sculpture goodies and came up with a beetle and a dog – gorgeous!
And Zac made this cool bug, notice he has a tiny antenna so he can be remote controlled.
And while they had the gear out I made another crab and added some updates to some of the older ones.
Not to be left out, my teenage daughter made a doorstop and this gorgeous bunting using vintage fabrics.
Gotta love creative days of summer. I hope your summer is creative too.
All the best,
Sharee
of life and art 