Author: Mixy

artist, thing maker & idea magpie. I am making it all up, one bit at a time.

now…. where was I ?

All that giddy excitement from last weekend (or some such excuse) meant I’ve not kept you updated on the page a day project – but I’ve not been so remiss as to let it slide!

Ready for a 10 day/page binge? Ok, here they come!

Day 29 (chronologically this day fell between Contrast (with buttons) and Quality Time)

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Although there are parts of this page I like – the colors and some parts of the composition, it has an overall feel of hurried chaos. Something too bitty and scrappy, but isn’t that the way of some days?!

Onward and upward to day 30!

Seeing through new eyes

Over the last couple of years, my perspective has shifted. Like after an epiphany, I began to see differently. Expectations and assumptions either altered or vanished.

I’ve always enjoyed the process, creating, painting, etc-ing…. but inevitably it would go wrong and be set aside (that paper/fabric/material etc was expensive/so nice before I ruined it… for these reasons I can’t through it away. Haunted by a residual value… It must remain as a warning not to repeat this mistake. It must fester. It can sit there stewing in guilt, shame, regret). Weeks, months, years would pass. These ghosts of ideas would move house with me. Boxed up past failures.

Art school taught me to question these feelings, the judgemnents I made. Finally I found out why I’d kept so many of these past attempts: they weren’t wrong, they just weren’t finished!. They took a detour from the path I’d imagined for them, but that didn’t mean their journey was over.

Through these ‘new eyes’, I see possibility in so many places. This week I’ve been playing with water – as bits of dyed paper lie about my work space, often splashed and used to dry wet brushes, I came to notice how the dried watermarks disrupted the pigments of the dye/ink. This had to be investigated further…..!

Water brushes are the perfect tool for this!


The moral to this story? Keep playing! Keep on swimming! 😀

Quilt update

Although I’m still painting and all – this quilt is obsession de jour. There’s a real autumnal feel in the air the last couple of days – so stitching away!

Having trimmed, washed, de-fluffed and thoroughly considered my stacks of velvet patches I deceid the best way forward would be to take the smallest length and cut all the other patches to this size.

(First use of the rotary cutter – it you use fabric a lot and don’t have one I highly recommend trying it out.) I’ve now got a good size pile of offcuts which I can see are just waiting for a project of their own…!

Experimental layouts, fluff induced sneezing. You’ll see there’s quite a bit of fluff and threads on the fabric – I battled with it a while, but it keeps coming back while there are unfinished edges!

The patches are 9cm (3 and a bit inches) square, in 5 x 5 squares. Each of these squares takes about 30 mins to machine together (inc time for fiddling about. The pile of 2 velvets together makes the patches ‘walk’ a bit. Some of them take a bit of battling with!)

I’ve machined 8 of these squares now, and begun hand embroidering over the machine stitching in places. Relieved to report the fluff levels are subsiding too!

Quilty Time

See what I did there? *snigger*

September’s just round the corner and me and the Inner Kid are looking forward to some cosiness. We reeeeeally want a velvet quilt in which to snuggle.

Now, something like 15 years ago we made one. It was a patchwork of scavanged velvet from car boot sales and charity shops, excuses, impatience and scant attention to detail. I didn’t have such a balanced relationship with IK back then, so handed over almost all the decision making, which culminated in a lovely colorful quilt, full of hurried inaccuracies, apology and shonky stitching. It began to develop holes almost straight away.

Fast forward another 10 years or so: We decide to re-incarnate/up-cycle said quilt into covers for floor cushions. Some long while after this they ended up in that limbo of ‘waiting for next idea’ space. The ragbag. The months of scavanging fabric, sorting and choosing, cutting into squares, sneezing from the fluff were so long past, but still fresh enough that we couldn’t totally let go.

Fast forward again to yesterday: I left IK sleeping off the excitement of the previous day and snuck upstairs with scissors and freshly washed quilt/cushion cover remnants.

Sssssshhhhh…. don’t tell, but I actually began trimming down the pieces to the same size (yes, measured not guessed)…. layed them out on the (ironed) backing fabric and pinned them. Just like a proper grown up would do!!!

I’ll post up some picks as we go along – meanwhile IK is yelling in the background: I have to paint the dream I just woke from. QUICK before it escapes!

a day in a page, part last.

The disparate parts of today’s page are beginning to merge and sit comforatbly in each other’s company.


The only things we need now are the doodles

Light and Dark – Black and White – We Need To Doodle!!

…………………….and now to bed! G’night all X

a day in a page, part 3b

Sorry folks, unkind to leave you dangling.

Dangling?

Yes! Here – on the brink of painted catastrophe!

….daubing and splashing… still no idea where this is going now…. it’s just so busy, so freeform jazz, so focus-less.

Enough! cries IK. I need new and I need different! I need solid edges and flat color! I need Spots!

If only the page weren’t so darned soaking wet…..

…aided by dabbing with a scrap of dyed paper drying time elapses…. (time to type to you) …we wait

still not what you’d call dry, but enough to stick stickers, and a bit more paint…

Time for the papery things we made earlier. They want some more blending in… but that’ll be after some more drying time. Til then…. 😉

a day in a page, part 3

Here’s kinda where we left off earlier, the coffee has soaked in and the general consistency of the page is still damp and squodgy.


Time for paint! Inner Kid is impatient with all this waiting, drying, waiting, so we press on:

Paint and drippy ink. And more purple again!

More splatter! More messy!

More!!!

In a bid to tame the splattering we meditate a moment on the yellow ink and coffee-ness of tomorrow’s page. I love this a lot. Even if nothing else comes of this weekend, the ink + coffee thing is going to be replayed!

But it doesn’t do the trick, the splattering amps up…

…………………..can this page be saved??? It’s looking kinda out of control to me……………..

A day in a page, part 2 of part 2

Remember the fantastic ink squirting device from earlier today? Well here it returns but with even more ridiculous proportions. We needed red instead of yellow, which meant draining the yellow out of the squirty-bit. Never wanting to waste color, we released the residue onto tomorrow’s page.

Tomorrow’s page was temporary resting place for the palette we had lined up for later – (clear plastic box lid). No other space for it, so plonked back down on the puddle of ink.And wow! Happyaccidental art!

Look! It just happened!!

These pages are now both very soggy.

So it kinda didn’t matter to get a bit more soggier still… cue: coffee dregs. (Such a shame to waste)

Proper drying time now needed. I have to say, at this stage all I know is this is way off finished. It could absolutely go in ANY direction and I wouldn’t be surprised. Check back soon-ish, I’ll show you what comes next 😉

a day in a page, part 2

With a good thick layer of textures heaped onto the page, we really wanted it to look … well… less of a shambles

and splattering, squirting, dripping and flicking color at it seemed the most fun way to proceed.

Much love for the infinite ways that different materials soak, absorb, repel, or seem indifferent towards the colors thrown at them…

merging and reacting…separating and absorbing.

I can suddenly see a composition of sorts, a way forward, a ‘design’ in mind…
But Inner Kid gets twitchy:
Too much the orangey yellow sameness. I need purple! Purple and scissors and curly edges. And I need them now!

More! More curly edges!
Yuh. So looks like we’re headed in a new direction again…. cool….
Mutant Space Geckos!

……………………..to be continued! …………………….. 😉

a day in a page

me and the inner kid had some chores this morning, but we tempered this by including a ‘raid the stationery drawer’ moment in the office (old sticky labels… MINE! semi-dryed up highlighter pens…MINE!. We got nice fresh walnut bread and bananas on the market, we got chocolate…

Back home to play! Now!

Texture demands IK. Any thing – don’t care what – I just need to tear stuff and glue stuff. Now!

Within easy reach of where we’re sat there are stashes of texture. There’s packing paper, cartridge paper (IK had been playing with a compass… so quite a few pages of pencil circles. Had a feeling these would find a use one day)

Strips of off-cut fabric and edges from stuff. A strip of hideous flourescent pink nylon net…

all those little snippings of thread… some, they’re like, less than an inch, little wisps.

We need Color!!!

See the cool ink-squirting device we devised?
(Yes, this is very top heavy and unstable. Yes, it would cause mess and possibly tears and swearing if knocked over. Proceed with caution. Thankfully we managed not to let this happen. The beast is dismantled and disarmed until next he is needed.

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