creative play day

It's been a week of many inspiring moments. On Christmas day I spent part of the day with my mum on her property where she has recently moved a 100+ year old building onto her place to restore back to it's former glory. In the meantime I had a wonderful time taking photos of it's current derelict state. So on Thursday when I had a creative play day with some friends exploring the many possibilities with Lutradur, TAP paper and heat gunning metals, my mind went a racing to using the photos I'd taken of the derelict building. I've printed a few of the photos onto the Lutradur this afternoon and planning to create a collage using the images. So enjoy the creative play days, very inspiring in deed. And today Dad and I went along to the Matisse Exhibition which is currently on at GOMA, it was very popular but still very inspirational and certainly worth a return visit outside of the holiday period.

In time for Santa

I've been enjoying getting back into doing some Christmas nibble cooking this year. Apricot balls, rum balls, white Christmas, chocolate fairy cakes and one of my favorites mocha balls. In keeping with this years theme word which was expand, I've been exploring with taking still life food shots. Thought I'd share the recipe for the mocha balls

1 2/3 cups icing sugar

3/4 cup rolled oats

2 tbspn instant coffee

1 tbspn coffee liquer

3/4 cup coconut

125g butter

300g dark chocolate

Cream butter with icing sugar. Dissolve coffee in liqueur. Add rolled oats, coffee and coconut to mixture and mix well. Refrigerate the mixture for about 20 minutes and then roll into small balls. Dip the balls in melted chocolate and decorate with coffee bean or cherry.

Merry Christmas and best wishes to all

Ginger Ginger

Enjoying the flowers of one of our ornamental gingers at the moment. The turmeric and the edible ginger have also started to shoot new growth.   

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5 Simple ways to enjoy everyday pleasures

Inspired by

Finished putting the final touches onto my little bag tonight. I'm part of a small group and we meet every 6 weeks or so and enjoy sharing ideas and setting ourselves little challenges to expand and grow. On this particular occasion we went along to the Queensland Art Gallery and picked one of the exhibitions that was on at the time which happened to be Paper Skin - Barkcloth from across the Pacific. 

The mission was to draw inspiration from a current exhibition

We made lots of notes and then explored and expanded from there. Initially I explored on paper and into my visual diary. I finally drew a pattern directly onto freezer paper and then cut out sections to create a stencil. Ironed the stencil onto cotton fabric and then using a stencil brush and Artists Paintstiks I stenciled the fabric, repositioning the stencil several times. Once I had finished, I allowed the fabric to rest for 24 hours before heat setting it. The fabric stayed that way for a few months and just recently I finally drafted up the pattern for the bag and assembled it. I've used upholstery fabric for the handles and base and hand dyed cotton fabric for the interior.  

forgotten/overlooked

 Added the above photos to my forgotten/overlooked series. There's 21 photos in the series so far, I envisage to keep adding to the collection. The full collection is on my Facebook fan page (you don't need to be a facebook member to view the collection).

fun with the sun

 Sunday last week was hot, sunny and humid but a great day to have a bit of fun with painting fabric and doing some sun printing. I've used transparent paints by Hi-Strike and Pebeo Setacolor . I've also mixed through a couple of metallic fabric paints. I first learnt how to do this technique in a workshop with quilt artist Gloria Loughman and really enjoy returning to the technique.

The fabric used was white homespun and pre-washed. Damp pieces of the fabric were laid out onto my work surface. I then paint the fabric pieces with paints which I had diluted. Once the pieces were painted I laid the macadamia leaves across the top of the painted pieces. Everything is left in the sun to dry, the leaves act as a resist. It's fun to play around with different shapes laid across the top to get different effects.