New Year Blues

Every year about this time, I have a gentle attack of new year blues ... the weather is generally dismal and often cold with little inducement to be outside (this year certainly), there's the anti-climax after the end of the Christmas festivities with family all gone home, and then there's the general malaise following a prolonged time off from creative activities which keep me mentally alive and busy during the rest of the year.

This year, things seem to be worse than usual as I have no unfinished stitch or weaving pieces to fall back on while I decide on the next steps. All were completed either before the exhibition at the beginning of November or while I was making Christmas cards.

Those cards, although a pleasure to do, have a different feel altogether from my usual work as I'm tightly constrained by size (whatever cards are available from the local Hobbycraft store as other suppliers seem too time-consuming to source), the requirement to work to a tight time-scale, and also the need to repeat the same design over and over again with very little change. After the initial design decisions, it's onto a production line, usually with little time to evaluate and think again.

All this means I'm at a bit of a loss and I've almost forgotten what it feels like to create 'one off' pieces with time for reflection. So now, I'm asking myself, 'Where on earth do I go next?'

I have some general thoughts about developing further the black and white work from photographs begun at the beginning of last year and I want to continue to develop my weaving skills to incorporate more sophisticated techniques into my tapestry pieces. This all sounds very purposeful, but for some reason I still feel unable to begin.

I think then, it's time to get out my sketch books and interrogate my photographs and then play and see where this leads me. Maybe some of these little morsels from my digital store will inspire me?

Thoughts of pattern to be taken in little snippets (though something in the detail has been lost here in reproduction) ...

As a contrast, solid shapes randomly broken up by time (and some colour!) ...

Interesting contrasts in structure and line ...

And perhaps a look back to last year ...

This short session playing with random images has fired a few thoughts so, perhaps all is not lost after all!

Who else has the same new year feeling? I'd be fascinated to know ... and to hear how you get yourself back on the rails again.

Trees, Frosts, sunsets ... and no snow!

We have no snow, in fact we’ve had none this winter so far except for a few wet flakes on the Marlborough Downs on Sunday afternoon as we returned home from New Year celebrations with friends near Salisbury. In the main, here in the south of the UK, we have to make do for our winter pleasures with a dusting of hoar frost night and morning.

Today was a beautiful, clear winter's day. It began with a hard frost and a gently misty sky – gratifying for those of us who enjoy such a hint of real winter, and lovely for photos, no doubt, but we were too preoccupied with the post-Christmas and post-moth tidy up to go out. That had to wait until this afternoon when we ventured out for shopping.

The drive home in early evening brought a wonderful red sunset with streaks of cloud and carefully placed tree silhouettes. We stopped several times so I could take photos with my iPhone (I’d gone out unprepared for such a lovely sunset - so, no proper camera).

And there's more hard frost and clear skies promised. Maybe I'll have time for early morning photos tomorrow ...

Cards and Tags

To go with the printing I showed in a previous post, here are some of the cards which resulted and the tags which used left-over paint and paper ends for labelling family presents. I had intended that these would appear on my blog before Christmas but preparations for the arrival of the family took over and there was no time for blogging in any form.

I now look forward to catching up with all those of you I visit regularly and whose blogs I enjoy so much. Now New Year is past, tomorrow it will be back to looking ... and designing and making. I can feel ideas stirring.

It's not a bad life!

PS (an update!) for some of the cards and for the tags, I printed the block randomly all over large A2 sized 300 gsm cartridge paper and then cropped out sections that appealed to me with a a shaped window / view finder. It's a technique I use a great deal as I like the unplanned, slightly 'accidental' nature of the resulting prints - and also the way the images extend off the page.

Making useful things

I often say that I never make anything useful and, in the main, that is true. However, before Christmas, I added a fourth stocking to the family collection for the youngest member of the family. He is in fact almost three but for various reasons I'd failed to complete his stocking in time for last Christmas and, as is the way of things, once Christmas was over, I hadn't given stocking-making a thought. Fortunately, my conscience nagged at me this time and I got down to making his version of the family pattern quite early this year.

They are easy to make and for obvious reasons, all slightly different. Each has the child's initial sewn on in felt to ease identification in the ceremonial hanging up ready for Father Christmas' arrival on Christmas Eve and in the frantic rush of excitement on Christmas morning. 

It is a lovely time which is photographed each year to record the children's growing up. This year, the occasion was not in the slightest bit diminished by the fact that the oldest grandchild had (no surprise) worked out the prosaic truth. She, fortunately, did not spill the beans and the younger ones were able to enjoy the myth in all its glory!

A print and good wishes!

This print (completed during the last session of the course I've followed last term at theYard: Artspace) comes to thank you all for visiting my blog in such amazing numbers over the past year. I feel enormous surprise each time I realise how far away so many of you are as you read what I've written. Your comments, encouragement and, especially, your hints and advice are always valued and they enrich and bring context to what I do.

Thank you and good wishes and a Happy New Year to you all. May 2017 be peaceful and gentle wherever you are and may you find your lives deepened by your making and your art.

Printing Cards together

We've been hand making our Christmas cards in one way or another for almost twenty years and it's a task I really enjoy. Generally I've made them mostly without my husband's help because I was using textiles and he doesn't stitch. However, from time to time printing on paper has been the medium of choice and we've worked together. One year early on, we screen printed which was very successful and on a couple of other occasions we hand printed from a simple wood cut which also worked well. I've been wondering this year why we hadn't repeated the fun as it's a lovely thing to do together. This year seemed a good moment.

However, because of still on-going moth treatment, access to my workroom (and indeed much of the rest of the house) has been limited so we had to think of a simple printing method that could be done at the kitchen table without many resources. We decided on relief prints to be printed in only one colour for ease and speed of production.

I drew up a couple of designs, dug in the resources I could reach for appropriate printing medium and card stock (A5 folded) and cut up the paper to take the print. Meanwhile, my husband made up two print blocks to give a choice. For this, he used Fab Foam (which cuts with scissors and prints really easily) and MDF which he cut to size, and a register plate jig the same size as the paper. This was well worth doing even though we were only using one colour as it ensured that the images were always correctly placed on the paper and margins were the right size. To keep mess to a minimum, we avoided oil based printing ink and printed using silver or gold acrylic paint which is water-based and washes off easily.

The acrylic paint seemed to work surprisingly well despite its rapid drying qualities which meant that we had to get organised before we began printing, work quickly with short print runs and clean off all equipment straight after each print run. We found that the Galeria range by Windsor and Newton worked best, even though it was slightly transparent especially in the silver. This suited the images we were printing. It may well be that their Extender Medium would have improved this if it had troubled us as it claims to increase the volume of the paint and to maintain opacity.

Some useful tips on all types of print making can be found here and here and on a wealth of other websites!