A Piece of Broken Glass.

 This piece of broken glass obviously came from a vehicle and had been lying here in the bush for quite some time. I just liked the way that it was broken, but had also remained somewhat intact.

 Of course I just had to play around with the image in Photoshop! An interesting effect, but no one that appears to have immediate use.

                                        Another piece of glass further on along the track.

   This reminds me of some item embedded in ice, an artefact from a past civilization perhaps.

Fantasy Birds from Far Away Lands.

Regular reader of this blog might recognise the background art work for these pieces.  Printed for an exhibition called 'Fantasy Birds from Far Away Lands', this is my 'Crane-Crane from Marskapane'.
The background is watercolour, the 'city' is a hand carved stamp and the crane-crane is a screen print.

New Pages.

           Again I have used bits and pieces left over from other projects.....it's very satisfying!

 Unfortunately I miscalculated the width of the fabric cover for this signature, and it's little bit wider than the paper pages.  Oh well, it's all hand made after all.

                                  More gelatine prints and a large hand carved flower rubber stamp.

 These butterflies are my own carved stamps which I have printed on to painted Vliesofix paper and coloured in.

                                     I'm not sure about the bee, I just loved the bright yellow.

More Dragonflies.

 The front page of a fabric only signature, with a commercial print background, appliqued machine stitched and digitized butterfly and an appliqued dragonfly from another commercial fabric. The lupin picture is silk and has reacted to the glue in the Vliesofix on the back , darkening the print unfortunately.

 The centre spread on my hand dyed fabric. The large dragonfly is from a commercial print, as is the butterfly, with appliqued digitized and machine stitched plants. The commercial plant print is in the middle where the fold is, as the stitched ones would have been too bulky to fold. The band along the lower edge is because I cut the fabric just a little too small!

                             The back with a large print of a fern frond printed on fabric

The Next Signature.

 In my quest to use only the supplies that I already have, this page for the front (and back) of the new signature is some fabric that I've had for ages, but don't really like.  The green isn't to my taste, but it does have dragonflies and butterflies in the print. The darker band is a digitally altered gelatine print of a fern frond.

 These pages ended up with an Egyptian theme, an appliqued  machine embroidered motif, a strip of commercial themed fabric, some commercial rubber stamps and my own hand carved butterfly stamp on a background of painted blue & gold Vliesofix. Oh, and another strip of commercial fabric that suggested pyramids to me.

 More gelatine prints,  several of my own stamps and a couple of commercial stamps for good measure. I'm still using the hand made paper with the vegetation embedded in it, but I'm getting to the end of my supply. For this reason I've limited this signature to just one page of the paper rather than the 2 that I've used previously.

 Some more gelatine printed dragonflies from my stamps, plus an appliqued gold sweep of dragonflies (?) This was a design that I digitized many years ago, and this test strip didn't make the grade. Look closely and you can see the 3rd set of wings from the top on the right didn't sew out properly. The dark green fabric was printed with another of my designs, this time screen printed.

The back cover. I thought that the gentleman looked as if he might have a butterfly net over his shoulder, though I suspect that it's just a walking stick. He's got plenty to catch here, but it looks as if he only has eyes for the lady! I'm really starting to make an impression on my huge stack of failed experimental pieces, test embroideries and saved scraps thank goodness.

Super Duck!

What an amazing hot air balloon! It flew over a couple of days ago to the sounds of all the neighbourhood dogs barking. The basket below the balloon looks tiny in comparison with the balloon itself. I think NBN stands for National Broadband Network.

New Stamps.

I decided that I needed more than one hand carved stamp for the paper pages of the book, so I carved 3 new ones, which, while they still need a bit of refining , look quite O.K when coloured in.

New Pages.

                             Using a commercial dragonfly print again, with fused on extras.

        Central panel with left over digitized plants and another commercial print lower border.

                         The back, with an appliqued screen print of a poppy fused on

Second Signature.

 Using the same hand made paper with it's vegetation embedded I've added the embellishments and assembled the next signature.

 The partially successful gelatine prints are proving to be excellent for these pages, as I can just cut out the good bits to use.

 I have reprinted my hand carved stamps with silver which adds a bit of shine to the various wings.

 The beetles are hand carved stamps which are actually on fabric not paper, but I have Vliesofixed them successfully onto the paper anyway.

The back inside cover.  I have machine sewed the pages together with a long stitch which I can remove easily when I come to bind the book properly.

At Last!

 At last I have managed to get some good photos of our resident Orb Weaving spider. This is her daytime retreat, between the uprights of the wooden pergola. It's very clever the way that she folds her legs up into such a small space.

Although she is obviously hanging in her web, the use of a black cloth behind it has eliminated the web strands from the photo. I love the pattern on her back, rather like a Christmas tree!

The Next Few Pages.

 Once upon a time I did a lot of digitizing with my Bernina sewing computer and was left with a bag of trial runs and 'not quite right' samples. What an opportunity to use some of them in this book! The 4 stitched flowers are all free standing motifs that I've sewn to the book pages, which are a double page spread, hence the appliqued plant right in the middle.

                This is the back of the pages above which doesn't need to be a full page spread.

 This is another couple of back pages, a very busy commercial print that didn't need much at all to add to it. I had a couple of hand made silk butterflies in a good bright blue that fitted in quite well.

Inside the cover above, another couple of samples of my digitizing that weren't quite right. They are actually mayflies, but as close relations to dragonflies I though that I'd use them anyway. The large butterfly is also a digitized sample, one of 4, so I have another 3 to find spots for further into the book. Hand dyed fabric of course!

First Signature.

 This is the first day of working on the book and I was very happy to have finished the first signature.
Here is the combined back and front of the signature, but unfortunately I made a silly mistake, a change of mind that I didn't make allowances for. I decided to 'bag out' the double book pages and forgot to add extra for the seam allowances.  The proto type book has zigzag stitches joining the 2 edges, so each page is an A5 size, mine of course are smaller and as a consequence I have had to cut the paper pages smaller.

 When agreeing to make the book I took the decision to only use what is in my stash, both the dyed and commercial fabrics, but also the ready Vliesofixed (Bondaweb) motifs and anything else that was left over from previous projects, eg the lily flower and pad.

 This is the inside with pages on the left and right, hand dyed fabric with iron on motifs left over from other projects and some stamping along the bottom edge.

 I found that I had some beautiful hand made paper with embedded foliage in it, something that I had been hording for decades, so I decided that the time had come to use it. Unfortunately I had to trim the edges, but did tear them rather than cutting, to preserve the hand made look.

           The fabric page facing the paper page, which I have temporarily sewn together.

 The grasses on the right are a sun print on silk which is very delicate and allows the vegetation in the paper to show through. On the left is a gelatine print and fabric butterfly.

 The image on the left is fabric which I had adhered to the paper, on a page that had no obvious foliage in it, the image on the left is a gelatine print.

             More paper pages with gelatine prints, a home made stamp and a fabric butterfly.

                         Another silk sun print and more left overs ironed onto the hand dyed fabric.

The back of the signature with the commercial dragonfly fabric, screen printed nasturtiums and left over butterfly and beetle. More pages tomorrow I hope.

At the Start.

 You may have been wondering about my preoccupation with dragonfly images of late, well a group of us decided to make a cloth and paper book, and in preparation we all chose themes.  Mine was dragonflies. This above is my collection of commercial dragonfly printed fabrics.

 Part of the aim of the project was to use up some of our stash of not only commercial fabrics but hand dyed ones too, as well as anything else that fits in with the them and will embellish the pages of the book. Here are some of my hand dyed fabrics that I will use for the cloth book pages.

Here are the fabrics and paper prints of the dragonflies that I will start out with, adding other bits and pieces as I go along.

More of Mrs. Spider.

 Apparently these orb Weaver spiders can live for a year or thereabouts, so the fact that we have seen this particular spider spin her web every night for 10 nights or so is not unusual. Sometimes the time that she starts varies a lot, from when it gets dark at 9 pm, or much later.

 She gathers up the web every morning at about 6 am and takes the bundle into a gap in the pergola roof to consume, ready for the next night. I do wish that she would stay still for a photo!

This is the web from the same species of spider, but there is no sign of her. It looked so pretty with all the rain drops that I thought it worth taking a photo. This was a few days ago, and there has been so rain since unfortunately.