Bucks Open Studios Fanfare Exhibition - Submission Day

It's only one day until the deadline for the Fanfare Exhibition so I've been completing my submission and have posted it off in the nick of time!

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be working on my painting of 'Exotic Echo', a piece inspired by the colourful wild birds of Costa Rica. Once complete, the painting will be displayed at the Fanfare Exhibition at Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury from 23rd May until 4th July.

www.buckscc.gov.uk/leisure-and-culture/county-museum/exhibitions

In the meantime, here's a sneaky peek of work in progress...

Exotic Echo - acrylic on canvas - work in progress

Felt Making from scratch

Felt making has been something I have wanted to learn for many years.

After visiting the Best Made Local craft fair in Stony Stratford, I discovered the beautiful crafted landscape work of Myra Hutton and jumped at the chance to attend on of her fabulous workshops.

The first stage was to create a sample of a felt background using white wool and selected colours, to learn the felt making process step-by-step.

Before: Layers of fluffy wool

Building up the layers

After: Rolled, rinsed and dried

Once we had gained confidence with making the felted background, we allowed the piece to dry and moved on to producing our main piece of work for the day.

For my main piece, I used inspiration from the beautiful Scottish landscape. I used photographs of the hills, lochs and flora all taken during my last trip to Inverness.

Layers of merino wool indicating the colours of the landcsape

Wetting and rolling the layers to bind into a felt fabric

Once the rolling had been done, the piece was rinsed and dried out ready for the second stage - embellishment.

Coloured threads, fabric scraps, wiry wools, nibs and silks were all gathered and arranged onto the surface of the felt. These were then sewn onto the surface using free machine embroidery to give texture and depth to the work. This was my first taster of machine embroidery, so guiding the felt to give the desired effect took some getting used to. I really enjoyed the freedom of expression that this technique allows.

Clouds defined using machine embroidery

The third stage is to add some delicate finishing touches such as hand embroidery and bead work. 

Work in progress

As you can see it's really coming along. I'll post my finished piece here soon!

Beaded Embellishment

After starting a range of my 'Fuzzy Florals' needle felted flowers, I felt that a brush-up on my beading  skills would help to give the flowers an extra sparkle using bead work that would be just the delicate enhancement that they needed. 

I attended a local beading group at Arts Central, lead by self-confessed bead addict, Sylvia Fairhurst. 

There were a huge variety of beading projects in progress, some following very detailed patterns and needing much concentration. I learnt that it's much easier to have one's beads arranged by colour - quite a contrast to my multicolour bead box! 

Sylvia offered guidance on how to enhance my needle felting.

Taking one of my 'fuzzy florals', I used ivory beads in the centre followed by pink beading to emphasise the creases of the petals.

 I then moved on to following a floral beading pattern. 

The beaded centrepiece was perfect for my needle felted brooch

Felt-tastic Fun with Fuzzy Florals

After seeing Kirstie Allsop make a needle felt robin during her Christmas craft programmes, I felt (!) that I needed to give the popular craft of needle felting a go and purchased a basic felting kit with 20 colours, which was plenty to get me started.

Starting with basic flower petal and leaf shapes cut from felt sheets, I used the wool to build up layers. After rolling a fluffy centre out of the white wool, I then attached the leaves behind the petals to give the flower it's three dimensions. 

These Fuzzy Florals look especially fabulous mounted into a box frame and are ideal as a gift. 

The frame provides space for the flower to almost 'jump out' at the viewer.