Balloons and colours

It was my daughter's birthday last week (on Mother's Day actually - we had a joint celebration). Some of her friends sent her a bunch of balloons. I was idly looking at them the other day and realised they formed a sort of colour wheel. There was some brightly coloured cellophane with them, which is the type that melts well. I cut a piece and folded it over on itself then ironed it between parchment. It melted up nicely. I put a piece of dark fabric behind it for the scan to show up the holes. The balloons have taken on the look of melted crayons. Not sure what I will do with this - maybe an ATC or postcard, with some stitching?

Alcohol inks on plastic

I had a go at painting some of the gutter guard mentioned in the last post. I used Pinata alcohol inks.

I couldn't find any 'metallics', so had a go at laying down a base coat of white, topped with a golden yellow. The result is not bad - although in close up (not to mention daylight!) I see that there are little bits of white on the edges. I could always go over them again. I might have a go at weaving some threads and torn strips through this stuff and see what I get.

I got Tracy Bautista's book, Collage Unleashed yesterday. Only had a chance to flick through so far - too many ideas to absorb at once, and the whole effect is slightly overwhelming, almost chaotic - I think I will have to take time to really study each page and really LOOK, so as not to be overwhelmed by the visual impact of the whole thing.

Bad blogger!

Well I have been most remiss - five weeks since I have posted - it really isn't good enough - what on earth have I been doing with my time? Not enough creative stuff, for sure. I will try and do better in future. I haven't been completely idle, however. On Anzac Day I felt the urge to pull out my wool and knitting needles and get back to some of the freeform knitting and crochet I started in a class with the delightful Prudence Mapstone - oh dear - that was three years ago now! Here are the scrumbles I made in the class. Well, I didn't get them all done in a day's class, but got started, and added more later.

And here are the ones I started on Anzac day and have been working on since. They are pinned out onto a bag frame. The arrangement isn't right yet, I don't like that white blob on the round piece in the centre - will have to move that, or else embroider, crochet over the white bit to tone it down and make it blend in better.

The bag frames are very useful (although not cheap). I got mine from Threads and More when they were at the craft show in Canberra last time.

In her book, Never too Many Handbags Prudence gives lots of ideas for making bags out of scrumbles. She also mentions using gutter guard as a substitute for the pre-made frames. This is neat stuff. I got a roll at the hardware the other day.

It wasn't very expensive and there is miles of it on the roll. It is quite sturdy and firm, but still flexible. As well as being a good base for a bag, I could see it would be great for 3-D things, like boxes. Apparently you can colour this stuff with alcohol inks - not sure that normal paints would do it. Given that it is an unpreprosessing brown, I could probably only make it black, or maybe a bronze, coppery colour. Don't know if alcohol inks come in metallic colours? You could also weave things through the mesh, I suppose?

There, I have broken the drought and blogged again!

Happy Mother's Day to all.