Journals - Birthstones

Last year, we had a lot of fun (and some challenges) working to a theme in our journals. This year, some of us thought we'd like to continue, and Yvonne suggested we work on the theme of birthstones.

Birthstones are quite challenging as themes! First of all, there are so many lists, as stones have fallen in and out of fashion or become more or less precious. We decided embrace the variation and compile  a list for ourselves that reflected all the others, rather than limit ourselves to a single arbitrary list. Here's our list, laid out nicely in Nola's sketchbook:

We can approach the task in any way we choose, even work outside our sketchbooks, if we like. We can focus on any aspect of the birthstone that attracts us. The idea is to build up a resource of things that interest us, that we can use later in our work.

First, garnets.  Many of us were away in January, which is summer holiday season in Australia. Only Helen and Nola found time to work on the garden theme, though the others may come back to it later.

Helen initially focused on the stones themselves, raw and worked. The worked stones yield such interesting geometric shapes.

These planes really interested her so she began playing with lines to create geometrical shapes.

Nola was also interested in geometric shapes, but she was fascinated by the natural shape of the garnet, which forms a rhombic dodecahedron, a twelve-sided shape with each side a rhombus or specific proportions. This shape, like a bee's honeycomb fits together in three-dimensional space with no wasted pockets between them. 

This led her into the composition of the stones. She was very interested in the exotic names of different forms of garnet and what these names mean; pyrope meaning "fire-eyed" , grossular, not relating to grains but to gooseberries. The name garnet comes from Latin granatus, "seed" an d may relate to the pomum granatum or pomegranate.

Archaeology is a lifelong interest for Nola so she researched cultures where garnets were widely used. There are lots of Roman artefacts with garnets.

Stay tuned for February... amethyst!

March already!

Sorry, everyone. This year seems to have started at a gallop, leaving our blogger gasping to catch up! As usual, we have been busy making things for the last two months.

First of all, our postcard swap continues. In January, Yvonne made this postcard using angelina and silk fibres and hand embroidery. The edge was created with a line of whip stitch.

Maz painted fusible web (vliesofix)  for the background of her postcard, stamped with a hand carved stamp and machine stitched. The edges were turned under and slip-stitched.

Nola painted and hand-coloured her postcard, which she called The Bonny Road, a reference to the road to faerie. The edges were finished with a hand-stitched picot in embroidery thread.

Carol's postcard combined felt, fibres and an embellishment. The felt edges were stitched together with a running stitch.

This postcard from Jan was made from embossed and natural-dyed paper on fabric. The edges were turned under and slip-stitched.

This one from Maz was made with a painted background, embellished with straight stitches. It has a machine satin stitch edge.

Yvonne made this one with mulberry and rice paper on Lutradur, embellished with fibre and stitch.

This is another of Jan's postcards made with natural dyeing. She dyed paper with plant materials, stitched it and mounted it on rust dyed fabric.

Helen has become interested in owls lately, so she made this postcard in her trademark canvas work.

There'll be more postcards towards the end of the month.

December: Journals

We had our last meeting of the year today. Yes, we managed to eat a delightful lunch and chat about all sorts of things.

We also shared our finished journals. Most of us have been too busy to work on the last  few themes, but Nola and Helen had explored the idea of Under the Sea.

Helen's first idea was coral reefs.

She made this image with acrylic paint and a sponge.

These pages are about Neptune (and his girlfriends).

She found this photo of a yellow submarine. It was called "A Yellow Submarine with the Nose Cut Off", as indeed it does! It must be going so fast, it jumped right out of the picture.

She added the surfboard because she liked it.



These images and drawings are of shells that her father brought back from his travels around the world as a sailor.

Nola began by drawing a concept map of what might be under the sea,

Then she chose some of them to focus on. She got very interested in seahorses, when she realised that the males carry the young in a pouch, and that mating pairs hold tails, like holding hands.

She also got interested in shipwrecks, especially the Vasa, a Swedish ship that sank in 1628 and was raised in the 1960s, in remarkably good condition.

Last of all, she investigated the amazing animals found in the deepest part of the sea, the Marianas Trench. Here is one of the animals..

This is the last of our journal themes, though there may be a few late ones coming in. Next year, we plan to do something different. We'll be back in the New Year with lots of new ideas. In the meantime, a very happy Christmas to everyone and we wish you all the best year in 2014.

November: postcards

Here are our last postcards for the year. Doesn't time fly?

Remember this embroidery? Helen made it into a postcard. The background was a fabric she dyed a while back.

Jan made her postcard from layers of silk that she dyed herself too.

Maz hand-stitched over layers fabric strips to make her postcard.

Tricia's postcard was made on a dyed background, with added tassels and couched yarn.

All three postcards had folded and slip-stitched edges.

Nola's postcard was made with machine embroidery on organza and painted fusible web. The organza was frayed back to look like grass. It's one of the last of her Heartlands series and has a double satin stitch edge.

We'll be swapping again next year, so there'll be more postcards to see soon!

November: Other things we're doing

Helen was working on this embroidery this month. Gorgeous!

 

Carol was making temari balls. Incredibly intricate...

Jan's skirt front

Jan was wearing the skirt she made from dyed samples from her indigo dyeing adventures at Haystack in Maine.

Jan's skirt back

Here's a beautiful bag that Helen made for a friend. Lucky friend!

Helen's  bag front

Helen's bag back

Helen's bag open

And last of all, Helen bought this bag  at a recent exhibition at Woy Woy. It was made for a challenge called Present for a Spanish Princess.

 



November: Houses

The theme for our journals in October was Houses but out first meeting in November was very small so only a couple of us shared our results. It's strange but, although we work on these alone, we often find we've taken the same approach to a theme and that was true this time as well.

Helen's first page was a pop-out page of a streetscape. She drew it with felt-tip markers.

She added some pages with images she likes. The first one is a postcard, from a gallery. The second is a design she made for a Christmas card, a few years ago.

Then she looked for some unusual houses - a house built around a tree, some wild furnishing and a collage of different houses.

Her last image was a photo she took of the Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna. He was ahead of histime, because, as well as the obvious bright colours, he was very interested in what he called "high rise meadows" - plants growing on the walls of the house. You can't see it in Helen's winter picture but, if you look at summer photos of the house, the top half is covered in plants. This must surely have influenced the rise of "vertical gardens" on apartment blocks in recent times!

On her first page, Nola was experimenting with how much you can distort the child's image of a house, door, two windows, roof and chimney, before it stops looking like a house. The answer is - quite far!

 She was also interested in the contrast between the houses in western countries and those in less well-developed countries. Houses in Australia, especially older ones, can be very decorative, which means money has been spent in making them look good.

She added that the Samoan fale shown behind the terrace house is actually way better housing than many people live in. It's large, quite elaborate, built on a very good stone platform has a well-kept roof and suits the climate, even though it may not be considered comfortable housing by many non-islanders.

In this one, she was jus playing with the house shape.

 These houses are word art - made up of the letters of words relating to houses; house, castle, chalet, villa, tenement, terrace, igloo, abode.

 She called this page A Short History in Houses.  It shows several of the houses she has lived in, in different places and different phases of her life, as a pop-up. (Sorry - very  hard to photograph!)

Maz made this house collage from scraps from a postcard she's making. It was done with vilene, painted with gesso, with tissue and paints added.