Excitement Returns...

I've got to confess, it's been a long time since I've been excited about a piece of fibre art. I seem to have been in some sort of a slump and I just couldn't seem to find motivation or excitement to produce.

Yesterday I showed you the beginnings of this challenge piece and I was initially pleased with how the brick wall was progressing. However, on further reflection I wasn't happy with how flat it looked. Out came the Inktense pencils and my water brush, as well as some music to listen too...I literally spent hours doodling and shading and I am so excited about how this is working out that I just had to pop in and show you the wall I've 'built'.

I started out with a lot of thread sketching/doodling, using a variegated gray/brown thread.











Using Derwent Inktense pencils* I began to add some shading to give my bricks more dimension.

*If you don't have these in your art supplies, you really must get some!







All that remains is a crazy amount of hand stitching...I can't wait to show you the finished piece after our group reveal on June 10th!

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DLP Week 14: It's Water Under the Bridge...

This week's DLP challenge was to explore watercolours and the challenge quote was 'It's water under the bridge.' I decided to stay away from anything too literal but still wanted to keep to the theme of the challenge.  

As I do each week, I used washi tape and some collage components to create my calendar/journalling area. This way, even if I don't get to the art on the rest of the page right away, I can still record my daily entries at the end of each day.

I used additional washi tape to create a border around the remaining part of the page spread.

Searching the Internet, I found this wonderful butterfly that I was able to resize and print in a variety of sizes. I used Tombow markers and my waterbrush to colour them. I then layered the larger ones with a piece of old sheet music and a map page from an old atlas so that when I cut them out I'd have three layers.

 I had a lovely piece of tissue paper with script on it, so I stabilized it with some fusible interfacing, misted it with a spray bottle and then painted it with a variety of Winsor & Newton watercolour paints to create a beautiful, watery wash.


Once the background had dried, I took my layered butterflies and the background sheet over to the sewing machine-this is why I had to stabilize the tissue paper.
I machine stitched the butterflies to the background sheet by sewing over the body of the butterfly, leaving the wings free.

This was then glued into my journal, leaving the border to show around the edges of the 'water'.










I think this is a beautiful quote.

"Perhaps the butterfly is proof that you can go through a lot of darkness and yet become something beautiful."

To me it ties in to the idea of the past being water under the bridge...it doesn't have to undermine the beauty that we can still have within us.