Violet Earth Design

Hand Dyed Silk Ribbon, Feathers and Cotton Wool

2015-08-26T16:48:00.000-05:00

Hand dyed pure silk ribbons, raw edges slightly frayed in gorgeous blue and purple shades perfect for making jewellery, sewing, art, crafts and gifts

Hand dyed marabu feathers for crafts

hand dyed cotton wool? Might sound crazy but its only like felt fibres, pull them apart and use in textile art projects and they come out really bright

Collected Driftwood and Beach shells

2015-08-25T14:06:00.000-05:00

I collected all these shells and driftwood pieces from a lovely beach in Greece, a beach combers paradise not very comfy to sit on but these are so interesting to use for making things with. Just not sure what to do with them yet.

Some More Handmade Clay Beads - Rustic - Industrial - Fun - colourful - Fossil

2015-08-21T18:22:00.002-05:00

Hand made Beads from Clay, My first time go at this Loved it!

2015-08-19T16:55:00.000-05:00

Observed!

2015-02-24T13:19:00.002-06:00

New project! I'm calling it observed.

Vine like plants engulf weathered and worn architecture structures. Textures impressed, encapsulated and transferred. Experiential design brings us closer to nature. Natural materials are distorted.

Embroidered Inspiring Words

2015-02-24T13:16:00.001-06:00

Using my Brother embroidery machine I made these words, inspiring words what shal I use them for???

Vintage style Spring Greeting Card Collection

2015-02-24T13:15:00.001-06:00

Using distressing tool for the paper edges, stitching on my sewing machine and stamps, cutting out shapes and letters with my die cutting machine I made this card collection.

Alcohol Ink

2015-02-24T12:58:00.002-06:00

Alcohol inks, blending solution on clear plastic, the colours are stunning

Amazonite, Sea Opal and Tibetan Silver Tribal Jewellery Collection

2015-02-02T16:22:00.004-06:00

Using my favorite tribal geometric shape - upside down elongated triangle I made this collection with semi-precious stones.

I took my inspiration for these silver earrings from my research on the spine whilst doing my "Olmec Queen" project.

This set was also inspired by my tribal research however I was asked by a very good friend to make this for a birthday present.

Red Coral Tribal Jewellery

2015-02-02T16:19:00.001-06:00

Following the month of Tribal theme within my Art and Surface Design work I just had to make some jewellery with stone and silver beads too. This collection is made using Tibetan silver and Red Coral beads.

Tribal and Geometric Sketchbook Pages

2015-02-02T15:30:00.004-06:00

This is part of my "Inspire" Project which I entitled "The Olmec Queen"

Key Words:

Fused, Distorted, Bold, Skeletal Structure, Tribal, Colourful, Chunky, Beads.

The aim of this project was material research and exploration. These are my sketchbook pages. There is another post called "Tribal Inspired Jewellery Bead Design" which is also part of this project.

I have had a fascination with beads for 10 years now and they often feature in my work in some form or another. I used some of my many photographs of my collections in this project to generate pattern form and shape. I made lots of stencils and moved from rounded shapes to geometric shapes then combined the 2.

Reactive Dye Colour Bleeding

2015-02-02T15:08:00.006-06:00

Creating a colour bleed pattern with reactive dyes is easy and fun by randomly splatter the reactive dye on the reverse side of a silk screen in different colours. You can then make the colours bleed by either using a pipette and water to make the colours run into each other or use clear plastic shrink wrap like I did here.

Once they are fully dry the Manutex paste needs rinsing off in cold water then they need to be steamed, here is me using the steamer.

Removing the pins....

Tie Dye to CAD Digital Textile Print

2015-02-02T13:33:00.001-06:00

I love tie dyeing. I always feel so excited when I open them up to see what unique pattern will be on the fabric. I wanted to use my Photoshop skills to create a repeated pattern for textiles.

This is a cropped scanned image of a section of the red and blue one.

I then began to break it down using mask tools, fill in the spaces with other sections then repeat these are the four steps.

I used the colour alteration functions and inverse to get these variations

In these two examples I used the fx to create fuzzy shadows around the outlines and inverse to give them a neon glow

This last example is my favorite, I used a smudge art filter to make it fuzzy

Tribal Inspired Jewellery Bead Design

2015-02-02T12:25:00.000-06:00

This is part of a project I did in my final year of uni called "Inspire" The aim was to research materials. I chose a tribal theme and bead making for my final pieces.

Trend research for Tribal Jewellery

The CAD generated theme board I did for my final project.

These beads were all made by wrapping fabric, melting iridescent film, metallic threads and plastics around a metal skewer then blasting with the heat gun. I then threaded them onto pins with metal beads and attached them to some fabric I had dyed to create a "body necklace"

These beads I made using polymorph plastic which was really fun. I meted the pellets in some warm water then molded them into these shapes using a thick pin to make the holes. I painted them using acrylics and gave them a metallic shimmer using gilders paste.

I love making beads!

Making chunky beads from scratch

2015-02-02T09:03:00.001-06:00

Collection of beads made from clay, crepe paper, Angelina film and shrink magic set in UTEE (ultra thick embossing enamel)

I used various stamps to emboss a pattern into the clay and cutters to make shapes and also some free hand molding to make shapes. Using a 70mm head pin to make the holes before baking the clay.

My concentrating face :-)

I painted them using acrylic paint then added some metallic leaf and varnished them.

While the varnish was drying on my clay beads I prepared the paper and shrink magic (plastic) shapes to harden in the enamel. Cutting strips of metallic crepe paper and winding it round lolly pop sticks then gluing the end down.

I coloured some of the clear shrink plastic with alcohol inks before cutting the shapes out and the holes with a hole punch, because they shrink you need to remember to make them about 3 times bigger than the size of pendant/charm you want. I then used my heat gun to shrink them down and set them hard.

These paper beads were made by wrapping Angelina film over the top and melting it on with my heat gun.

To set them all hard I melted some UTEE in my Ranger meltpot and dipped them in, it dried pretty fast so you only need to hold them for about 30 seconds before moving onto the next. This enamel melts at high temp so the beads are sure to stay solid.

Large Moody Canvas

2014-03-13T11:10:00.000-05:00

A large moody floral/leafy abstract canvas I was asked to do for a friend.
I make my own stencils and draw directly onto the canvas adding 1 layer at a time. This painting is called "Midnight Vine" and I used spray paints and acrylic paints, brushes and sponges. It took me 6 days to get to the final point because there was drying times in-between layers.

I love to layer I think the more layers the better!

Multi Beaded Tribal Sets Jan 2014

2014-01-20T12:14:00.001-06:00

I used all sorts of beads and buttons to make these sets, plastic, wood, gemstone, glass, ceramic etc

The main techniques are wire wrapping and knotting....I like the textures of the thick threads sticking out all over it gives the pieces a easy going beach day feel to them perfect for summer.

Here are some more sets in different colours.....

My favorite set below...the photos don't show how truly gorgeous the colours are.... like the large copper nugget beads which are so rich and vibrant copper precious metal.

Merry Christmas Buntin

2013-12-10T12:50:00.001-06:00

I followed a YouTube demonstration just to get the general gist of how to make these as not really tried it before but it is surprisingly simple but slightly fiddly. I used a sizzix die for the letters which were backed onto stiff backing however the die did not cut through properly but made a score easy enough for me to snip them out. I used 5 different fabrics and made 3 flags of each, 16cm long by 11cm wide with a 0.5cm seam.

I found it easier to iron the binding tape in half before pinning in the flags it just made the last bit easier and neater. The whole thing took me about 2 hours. Now, where to put it!

Christmas Card Time!

2013-12-10T12:39:00.003-06:00

I made some vintage style Christmas cards using a snowflake background stamp and a text stamp. I coloured and blended the edges using the Tim Holtz distress ink pads and blending tool by Ranger, scuffing the edges of the paper with a Stanley. The little robins I drew myself with pens and shaded in with a cotton bud and ink pads. This card is for my boyfriends mum hope she likes it the colours match her living room.

Dyeing plastics

2012-10-05T17:19:00.001-05:00

Today I learn't how to dye plastics in a hot water dye bath. It was really easy, quick, effective and fun. I put colour onto every day plastics such as packaging, frosted acetate, white PVC, acrylic tubing etc.

I mixed a liter of water with 20ml of carrier and 1 gram of disperse dye pigment powder. I then boiled them to 80 degrees, let the pot simmer and added my substrates. The items can be left in from 1 minute to 10 minutes or even longer but need to be rinsed with cold water after. This is a good method to do dip dye. Just hold one side in with tongs in one colour then the reverse in another colour. Quite effective.

Kunin Felt techniques

2012-10-05T17:09:00.002-05:00

Kunin felt is really exciting to work with because of the shape it forms from heat application. I like to layer this over other fabric or prints because the holes allow sections to be seen through. It can be stitched together or stuck with double sided tape. It can be coloured any way you like or it comes in single colours.

I began by painting an A4 size cream piece of Kunin felt with Remazol reactive inks from Uni. These don't stay fixed the way I did it but I like the bright colours of the inks. I used a pipette to drop colour in sections putting colours that mix well next to each other like blue next to yellow and red next to blue etc.

I then used just water in my pipette to make the inks bleed. I found that if you angle the pipette in the direction you want the inks to bleed the pressure from the water being pumped out makes them do so. It can be so strong that it can push all the ink out in places. I found that in some places the colours had no mixed as well as I wanted to I dropped a little yellow on to blue for example and worked back into it with water. The felt is quite thick and holds all the water you put on it. I couldn't squeeze it out because the inks would have ran out. I left it to stand on a few layers of newsprint and let gravity get rid of some of the water but got impatient after a while so I just got on with the heat gun part.

Noticing that lots of the colour had sunk to the back and the back was actually brighter than the front so I decided to swap them. The heat gun firstly dries it then melts a small layer at the top. I had to hold it in one place for about 45 seconds before it started to distort in shape. It sort of separates itself creating a hole which just gets bigger until you take away the heat. It does not give off much of a smell it is quite a clean fume free process.

The final result is very eye catching, packed with texture and still a fabric so flexible.

Reverse Applique for a Patchwork Quilt

2012-06-11T12:13:00.001-05:00

I wanted to make my mum something nice to take with her when she moves abroad and thought a quilt would do the trick. I did not use a pattern for this I just kind of made it up as I went along. It turned out really neat for a first attempt too. Something like this can be made with any fabric pieces or from unwanted clothes I just spent money on nice fabric because I wanted to treat my mum.

Firstly I purchased my fabric in fat quarter's from eBay or otherwise known as FQ. A fat quarter is a quarter of a yard or meter depending on weather the retailer uses imperial or metric measurements (just encase you did not know). I wanted the quilt to be 50x66 inches approx so I needed around 13 FQ for the top side and one single piece of fabric for the reverse side. The fabrics I bought are below ( I also used some of my own stock)

For my project I used:

A sewing machine with a free hand embroidery foot and an ordinary presser foot

Threads

Fabric for the patches and coordinating fabric for the reverse side

Fabric scissors

Small scissors for trimming threads

Your patch template (I used a 10x10 inch square of thick card)

6.5 inch embroidery hoop

Lots of pins

Ruler

Fabric chalk

Pencil

Ruler

Paper

Iron

Enough wadding to fill the quilt

Lots of floor space!

Firstly I used the patch template to draw and cut all the patches out from the fabric pieces, making sure they are all exactly the same size. I cut 35 in total and then ironed all of them flat.

Simple reverse applique technique

I wanted to add some detail to some of the squares of plain fabric by using the reverse applique technique. Simple circles are good because they fit inside the embroidery hoop easily and everyone always has the perfect circle stencil...a roll of tape! So I drew a square on a piece of paper which fit my roll of tape onto it with approx 1cm gap all the way around. This square is the reverse applique template. I used this to draw more squares on the left over plain fabric (I had some left from my FQ's) and cut out approx 12 smaller squares. It is important that these squares are ironed flat.

Next I positioned one of the small squares in the center of a large square and pinned each corner as far to the edge as possible with the pin heads on the reverse side. This is so that when I came to put them in the embroidery hoop I could fit it in with the pins still in tact. Once they are all pinned I turned them over and positioned the tape in the middle using the pins as a guide. I then drew round the edge of the tape with fabric chalk.

Now I positioned the square in the embroidery hoop with the chalk circle in the center. Using a straight stitch and the free hand embroidery foot I sewed over the chalk circle once. Using some sharp pointy scissors I poked into the top layer carefully and cut away the inner circle as close to the stitching as possible. Try not to cut into the bottom layer of fabric or into the stitches or you may need to start again. Repeat this on all of them.

Using zig zag stitch sew around where the 2 fabrics meet to create a neat line and hide the edge of the top fabric. Once it looks neat take the fabric out of the embroidery hoop and trim the excess fabric on the reverse side this is mostly important for lighter colours because the smaller square attached underneath can show through. Iron out any creases made by the embroidery hoop.

Now all the squares are ready to be laid out, lots of floor space is needed for this. I did no particular patter for the patches I just laid them out trying not to let the same ones sit next to each other.

Once I was happy with the order of the patches I began to pin them together in rows. I started with the bottom left hand corner, laying the adjacent patch over the top right sides together and repeated this across each row.

Then I sewed them together using the ordinary presser foot and straight stitch with a 1cm seam. So I ended up with 7 rows of 5 patches sewed together. It is important to iron the seams flat before moving onto the next stage or there will be lumps and bumps at the seams underneath the top layer of the quilt. Do the same process for the 7 rows, pin them right sides together, sew a 1cm seam then iron the seams flat.

Once I had all the squares sewn together I was ready to make the bottom part of the quilt cover. I laid a large piece of purple cotton fabric on the floor and pinned my patchwork piece to the top. I then cut round the edges to make them both the same size. Then right sides together I used my machine to attach them with a 1cm seam along the 2 long sides and one of the shorter side.

Then I turned the quilt cover inside out so the right sides are on the outside and laid my wadding over the top. Pinning it to the open side to keep it still I then trimmed it down to the same size as the quilt cover. The quilt cover needs to be the right way around with the wadding inside pinned at the edges of the sewn seams with the pins on the outside so they can be removed once the quilt is sewn up.

Now I had the wadding positioned inside and held by pins I was ready to sew the open side together. The way I did it was to fold the raw edges inwards about a cm or a bit more and pin them together all the way down to the end as shown below. I then sewed them together about 5mm away from the edge.

The final step was to make sure the wadding does not move around inside the quilt which can be annoying trying to shake it back into place when there is no opening. So I sewed along the line where 2 patched meet in each corner of the quilt. The second pic below shows the reverse side of the quilt where I stitched the wadding in place.

How I designed my Blog backgound from Visual Studies

2011-09-17T20:48:00.000-05:00

Using a OHP and a few objects I drew BIG on paper tacked to the wall.....

Gets messy with runny inks....

With this technique you get an enlarged chunky bold shape of the object....

One of the many photographs of my own that I worked with.....

The bits and bobs I put on the OHP to draw....you really should try this at home its is tonnes of fun and gets you some really interesting shapes and patterns...

My CAD design

The softened version edited with a reflecting pattern to run the length of my blog.

Smart Materials Project......The Cyber Survivor Generation

2011-09-17T20:24:00.000-05:00

This is my theme board for this project below is my self written brief which was for a smart materials project in my second year of uni.

Brief

The future, 2029 – the world has changed, shifted into another age for mankind. Earth and its inhabitants have gone through a chain of major events which all began with a mega event.

This event was out of man’s control. It began with the shifting magnetic poles of the Earth’s interior; which just so happened to occur around the Sun’s most aggressive solar maximum. This lasts approximately six months and occurs every 12-13 years periodically. It means the side of the sun facing earth has increased sunspots and regularly burst out solar storms also known as coronal mass ejections, thus sending incalculable amounts of charged particles right towards Earth.

This occurred in the years 2012 to 2013, at this time Earth’s magnetic field which normally forms a protective barrier against the constant bombardment of solar storms was only at 50%, which meant everything that was could not be. The storms destroyed 2800 of the orbiting satellites leaving just under 200 untouched, all belonging to lesser powerful nations. Electronic equipment everywhere was rendered powerless. Within day’s mass panic, riots and looting broke out. Governments could not control the surge of people, desperate, unable to cope.

Eventually disease and famine took over. Human activity began to cease, day by day people were dying due to their inability to take care of themselves in a world which had no civil order. By 2016 80% of the world’s population had diminished and 60% of land animal species were wiped out. The few remaining survivors were strong and independent; it was their odyssey which began the rebuild of a new and profound society - the world we live in today.

Our society has taken on a new and enlightening form. With the stronghold of previous governments nothing more than a memory, the suppressed conformist remaining cultures came into their own; they were free to build their own world piece by piece, place by place. Creativity as mankind’s destiny, the separating characteristic of humans to animals.

At that point resources were no longer in supply and technology was left to those with a will to survive and an industrious mind. Man began to rummage through the wastelands, salvage the remaining pieces and artifacts from the previous world which was 99% man-made materials. Between the few groups of people left, man swore never to exploit and take for granted our Earth again and to recycle everything that was once a commodity waiting to be thrown away.

Some smart people found a way of turning the scrap heap into clever, sophisticated body wear to protect themselves and others from the danger and darkness.

This new found freedom meant the individual could flourish…..subcultures suppressed were now free to live in peace and prosper.

Some predicted the shift as an apocalypse; others who were more aware and prepared embraced the shift and evolved with the passage of the events.

And………..That is what my project is about!!!!

Research on other designers is always a good place to begin....

Lets play with some materials......

Lets find a trend.....

Gather ideas...thoughts...summarize...

Design.....

Muraspec....Digital Wall Covering Design

2011-09-17T18:42:00.000-05:00

So the task was to design a digital wall covering for an educational public space...I thought a Zumba/Salsa studio would be original and fun. My inspiration came from the dancing and how it is a platform for communication between people. Alot of focus was around the hot exciting feelings generated by such dancing.

I really love Georgia O'Keefee and had a go at copying one of her paintings (left) purely for the colour scheme of my Hot Dance inspired project.

This was actually a project from my first year of my degree, below are pics of my sketch book pages (some of). Starting with a few drawings and then a few mixed media and embroidery collages.