Tidying and Experimenting

First the tidying. Andy is in the process of putting all his Cd's on his ipod. I am in the process of putting all his Cd's in a big box and somehow fitting it in the under stairs cupboard. The cupboard has been sorted as much as possible and the big box is full. He still has more-going in another box-that I took my tools out of-they are now in a 50p vintage suitcase from eBay-99p for two, they are both lovely-lucky score! Anyway, the Cd's have vacated shelf space, so all the stuff on the shelves here-which was on them before but in a very squashed manner, is now displayed. I have managed to fit one of the dolls houses(remember those?-another project uncompleted!) which was taking up a lot of space somewhere else, up there, and the DVDs are alphabetised. This represents Sunday! To be honest, I am not sure how I feel about the newly arranged shelves-I feel a bit like I am living in one of the junk shops I like to visit. If you enlarge the photos you can see some of the things I have accumulated. The oldest thing on there is the little china house up on the right hand side. It is actually a lamp-with an old fashioned plug-from when I was a child. It has a yellow bulb and is a bunny hospital. I love it! To the left of that is our growing collection of OS maps.

First experiment-Making patterns in photoshop-using seaweed from the beach the other day.

Second experiment-Making a lithograph at home. I used the video in this post from Carole's blog. A most interesting process that I don't really understand. I know that the etching process has to do with the alkali soap and the acid coke but apart from that it is a mystery. This was my third attempt and only came out like this, after which I gave up-I am not sure which part of the process was going wrong for me but something was! The biggest mystery is how the parts on the tinfoil plate that look black-and therefore seem to have retained the ink, are not the parts that came out black in the print-the other parts did and the black parts are white. How? Why? !! That, at least, is the same as the video, in that her soap painting was what was printed-and so was mine. Fun process though, despite the faded result. My favourite part was pouring the coke over the soap-it all fizzes up-and then having a quick swig of the coke-art and drinking combined!

After giving up I at least used my black ink by doing a few prints using the glass plate and quick drawings using a glue spreader.

Final experiment-another photoshop one-trying to get a pretty effect with layering. I got an effect but not sure what it is! I used the tinfoil photo, the seaweed and a picture of a lovely morning glory against a blue sky.

Sorting and Star Wars

Sorting cupboards for stuff to get rid of is quite a rewarding thing for a hoarder like me. There is always forgotten treasure to be unearthed, such as these Star Wars characters from my bag of plastic children's toys-action figures and others. I thought I might sell them all, but when I looked through there were only five I wanted to part from. Most are back in the (now tidy) cupboard, but these stayed out and went in a long redundant box frame. I made the background with ink pads and splattered white ink, then stuck the characters down. I then took five of them off again as they were stuck beyond the edge of where the frame goes. Whoops. I am not even a big Star Wars fan, I just like these little figures. I do want to know who some of them are though, as I only know the obvious ones. That, wrapping Ebay parcels to go, having a haircut, and tidying my fibre collection is how today has been spent. Not the most exciting day, but satisfying. The last of the scaffolding has now gone from the school, so my garden is my own again. I am looking forward to doing some work in it without feeling overlooked.

So many colours-I laid it all out on the table and it looked luscious. I have had a bit of a splurge recently and bought even more-from ebay and on holiday. Hence all the felting recently and I have more planned. I need to use some of this up!

See the curly grey one? It is from a Gotland sheep from Sweden. I just love that name and it will make perfect witch hair.

The sugar pink one is so silky and soft. I bought that on Skye, from a great shop which was really close to where we were staying, called 'The Handspinner Having Fun'. It had curly wool tops, handspun yarns, a man spinning quietly in the corner, in a world of his own, and a grey haired pretty lady, knitting behind the counter. It also had an amazing amount of beautiful hand knitted things. I bought some blue, grey and white socks, knitted by a lady called Katy.

It is all now put away, sorted into colours, apart from the box of Jacob's sheep fleece which is exactly where it was. There is no space for that at the moment.