Friday, May 17, 2013

Aloha! HAWAII


 Take a piece of driftwood and with some damp wavewashed beach sand as your canvas, write
ALOHA!

Once again, my ambitions exceeded my capabilities, but it was fun trying!

At this stage I don't have any alphabet software for my embroidery machine, so I wrote "Aloha" with a marking pencil then satin stitched the outline.
I struck a problem when it came to adding the shading caused by the stick digging into the damp sand...., so I attempted to remedy this by hand stitching small straight  stitches around the letters.
In the first card I laid down a couple of silk petals from a broken lei, then added some metallic flower sequins.
The brightly striped fabric represents a beach towel and I made a pair of thongs (flip-flops  I think my American friends call them??)
Some small beads from an old necklace, and a couple of charms completed the beach atmosphere.

The second and third cards also shared the beige batik for a sandy beach.

Unfortunately, I got the" bright" idea of grating some Inktense sticks onto the fabric and moistening the result.
I should have stuck to my original thought of gluing beach sand to the surface, but I was worried about how Customs would react to that, so gave it a miss.

On the second and third cards I couched down some shaggy knitting yarn to represent seaweed on the beach, and if  you look closely you will find shells, the odd fish or dolphin
and even a turtle.
I have represented the beaches in a creamy beige shade, hopefully like the sands of Waikiki, but thinking back to a very short visit in 1979, I remember walking on a beach with nearly black sand and sloping very steeply from the beach to the water.....
Is my memory playing tricks, or have I remembered correctly?

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Monday, May 13, 2013

Butterflies are free


 It's a mad dash to complete my current postcard swaps before Thursday, when I'm scheduled for cataract surgery.


Sure, there's no real need to work so quickly, but I prefer to have the cards ready before time, just in case there are post-op problems.

I had already planned HOW I was going to work the cards, until...........!
I visited my local quilt supply shop for some overlocker needles, and there on the counter was this dusky pink fabric featuring butterflies and stamps!

What else could I do, but purchase a 15 centimetre strip and change my plans!

On cards number ONE and Three, I appliqued a digitised embroidered butterfly, whilst Card #2 had a dragonfly appliqued to it.
Card #1 also had a butterfly constracted of faux cabochon gem stones, whilst cards #2 and 3 had gemstone butteflies laid under tulle as there were no holes they could be stitched through to the background.

These will be sent to PostCard Mail Art members.

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