Monday, March 30, 2009

Having problems trying to post yet again. Sometimes its so easy and at other times it is a pain in the proverbial......
We live rurally which means no broadband, we have satellite internet which is slower than broadband and seems to have a lot of downtimes which makes it very frustrating to use. Anyways, enough moaning.
I recently started a course with Gail of Mind wide open, it is Digital Collage and I absolutely love it. It is so addictive and I have been spending every available moment on the computer. Gail is a great teacher, making it easy for us, especially so for someone who knows absolutely nothing about photoshop and I mean absolutely nothing and whats more I find it very difficult to get around, but here we are. We all have to start somewhere.
The class is a series of vidoes that you download to your computer and so you watch Gail construct the collages. I can't wait to get home from work to get on the computer and play. Oh dear, yet another reason to not do housework.
I can't seem to post the link to Gail's classes and I can't seem to copy and paste, duh!!!
I am doing an online course that I first heard about through Pat's blog, (see side bar). The course is Digital Collage with Gail of Mind wide open . The course is a series of very easy to follow vidoes which you download to your computer. It is so addictive even for someone like me who knows nothing and I mean absolutely nothing about photoshop and whats more I do not find it easy to understand photoshop, but Gail is a wonderful tutor. This is my 3rd of 4th attempt at this one and had to decide to leave it as is. There is still room for improvement but I am reasonably happy with it. Since I started to course I have been spending every available minute playing and trying to digitally collage. I can't wait to get home from work to get the computer on and have a play. Fun fun fun!!!!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Bag version 2 This time I used some pfd fabric which I have dyed, stamped, used gesso as a resit, paintstiks and crayons and some other resists to colour the fabric. Also cut the squares half an inch smaller and thoroughly like the smaller size. I also used two layers of batting which I prefer , just meant it needed a little more tweaking while sewing. With the first bag I was using fat quarters which created a problem as the handles were meant to be long strips plaited together, so for the first bag I had to impovise using thick cord and rouching the strips. I prefer the plaited handles in this bag.
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I have been trying to blog this post for days but Picassa and blogger just would let me do it. Could not figure out what I was doing wrong but Bingo!!! it has worked tonight. This is a bag I made with a pattern I bought a while back. It is made with Lonni Rossi fabrics which I absolutely love. The bag is a bit floppy if yo have too much in it but worked up really nice.
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Thursday, March 19, 2009

It worked, I managed to post to my blog. I can hardly believe it and I am using Picassa which I have never used before. This is a whole new ball game for me. I admit it (blogpost) or rather I am going to need a bit of tweeking but it worked and it was so easy, blog posts here we come.
Well as you can see this is the finished block and for once I am really happy with it. So often (read always) - I can only ever see the things I have not gotten right or am not happy with but this one I am happy with.
The roses are all hand rolled Dior roses mostly with my hand dyed ribbon, a few beads here and there and voila??!! Done.
You must go and see some of the other blocks. Also if you visit Vickies blog
http://www.itsonlyribbon.blogspot.com/
you can see two of the other finished quilts.
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It is the time of the year when a few of us get together (not in person unfortunately) to participate in the Artbra wallhanging. This year's theme is PINK and ROSES, two of my favourite things. Making the block has helped drag me out of a big black hole that I managed to crawl into a year or so ago. I won't bore anyone with the details but at the same time I cannot promise not to fall of the edge of the earth of bloglands in the future.
This is the first stage of the block and as you can see it is not actually a CQ block, I decided to make the hearts and rose the features instead of the block.
To see the other blocks that are completed so far, pop along to Barbara's flickr site:-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/artbraproject/

If I can successfully get this posted on my blog I will post a photo of my finished block but as I am very rusty with blogger, blame it on age, menopause does come in handy for some things, especially when you can't get your brain to work.
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