My post-box over floweth!

First, a disclaimer. My spacebar is broken - it fails every third or fourth time, so I'm having to go back and put the missed spaces in manually. Apologies for any words I've run together.

All the following art I've received recently in the mail for various swaps.

Here's the collection of pages for my chunky angel book. I've yet to make a cover for, but I love looking at them en masse like this. What a mountain of inspiration!



In Stamphappy's 1-4-1 ATC raklist:
Vicki Whittington - thank you! It did make me smile.


Carolyn Weiss (the foil background is actually royal purple - the camera sees it as blue, which is very mysterious.)


Lynn Gosney - the beautiful pearlescent finish on this card is also not showing up too well. It's very pretty, though.


Linda Aldred - lovely background made with beadz.


Janet Gardner - a lovely, sparkly flapper.


Melanie Smith - this sweet little girl is called Denice, apparently.


Barb Conroy - I love this gang of cowboys, they look like such rascals.


Look! My mum (Loretta) sent me an ATC, too. It's made with some kind of new magic film stuff that I've never used, but find very fascinating; it has all the colours of an oil slick.


Quilty Conscience postcard from last month's challenge which was painted fabric:

Karin Hutchinson - love those lush, red flowers.


Stephanie's sandy beachscape


Coralee's postcard, which reminds me of a lavish corset. (I'm seeing corsets everywhere, probably because I'm very into this month's theme, which is drawn from the movie Marie Antoinette.)


Debbi Baker's lovely stencilled bird. Another one where I wish the sparkle came through on screen. It shimmers.


Debbi also sent this gorgeous fabric ATC with our postcards. I feel very lucky!


The best thing about being in all these swaps is the gorgeous, gorgeous stuff that appears in my mail box. Yay!

Inbox and Outbox

Point the first: Quilty Conscience postcards are done and posted. The challenge was to use painted fabric. I used vilene that I had dyed and over-painted with acrylic, then stamped, then stenciled with xpandaprint and then embroidered. *falls over exhausted*



Point the second: I've been very lucky, with many gorgeous 1-4-1 ATC swaps arriving in the mail. It's so much fun, and I'm getting to swap with a lot of new people.

From Left to right: Diane Whatford, Roz Veevers and Jude Wagner


Lisa Manyweathers and Janet Hamblin


Roslyn McGechan and Ann Lawton


Point the third: I've made a couple more of my own to send out, using quotes from Peter Pan:


All business now attended to! Now, to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics!

Back from a whirlwind tour

I'm back from my weekend in Melbourne, and thoroughly recovered. It was great to do a class, let alone one with the amazing Nina Bagley. My hands were very sore after crimping and twisting wire all afternoon, but it was worth it to learn how to drill through those treasure I've been hoarding for years, and how to go about turning them into beautiful jewellry.

It was also great for me and Stephanie to catch up with our tiny quilting group, Quilty Conscience: Debbi Baker, Coralee Barker, Karin Hutchinson and Ruth Kelly (plus assorted friends and family!). We had a great meal, a bit too much wine, and lots of conversation. It was so amazing.

We also swapped postcards, for the last theme, which was "Home".

Here's mine:

It's a fabric paper collage background, with a tiny house made from painted black paper, and itsy little sequins which are imported by , judging from the address on their label, but looking at their site, they appear to be wholesale only. I'm finally getting the hang of the zig-zag edge; this is the first time I've actually been proud of it.

Debbi's


Coralee:


And Karin's, which is just so lovely, I keep stroking the satin slippers. Oh, there's no place like home!


I made a fabric book to keep my postcards in. I really like having them accessible. We don't have much wall space in our livingroom studio, so I worry about keeping them on the table where paint is splashed around. They're nice and safe in this little booklet, and I can keep adding pages at the back as my collection grows.


Here's the inside, with one of Debbi Baker's beautiful postcards.

Fabric Postcard

The theme this time was "Veil". I chose it, and then was spectacularly stumped by what I should make. I fooled around with some chiffon, and made some burnt, embellished sandwiches, and came up with this:



I don't know about it. It's kind of gone beyond my comfort zone. And velvet? Why did I work with velvet? It shrinks and shreds and changes size and it leaves black fluff everywhere and it is completely evil. On the other hand, the postcard is kind of eyecatching. I think I like it. *is confused*

Fabric Postcard

I'm a part of a artist's exchange that swaps fabric postcards - each exchange is based on a chosen technique, and this round was using Beryl Taylor's method for creating a stitchable fabric from collaged papers. It's been a while since I tinkered with a new technique, and I really enjoyed watching my stash of fabric paper build up, then taking to it with scissors and knife.



I used my machine set on a wide zig-zag to edge the postcards - it's the first time I've done that, and I quite like the effect of the brown and tan variegated thread. My machine doesn't sound too good - it's well and truly ready to retire.

And then I posted them to the wrong address. *headdesk*

Oh - and another thing:


I won the battle, but not the war; I've still got half a chapter and an epilogue to wrap up the story. But I'm proud of myself - I wrote 60,000 words in thirty days.