Mt Cootha

I attended a little digital camera workshop at Mt Cootha Botanic Gardens yesterday and, of course, took loads of photos.  It is such a beautiful place!  Here is a selection of the photos I took:
Magnolifiscense to begin!.................

And Treasures of the Lotus Pond to finish......

I hope everyone has the Sunday they have dreamed of.

Handmade Journals

I have had such fun making these.  The covers are made from paper and cloth fused together and then painted, printed and/or stitched.  Each journal has a pocket in the front for putting loose stuff.  The pages are torn to size where required so some of the edges are nice and soft.  Some of the pages have been hand printed or painted and some are old building plans, water-colour paper is included, and graph paper and various other papers.  A length of leather thonging with a bead or button is used to keep the whole kit and kaboodle shut.  The journal with the flap and feathers is lined with pages from a vintage children's dictionary.

 I hope to be making more of these this coming week and listing them at my Etsy store, the ones pictured here are now at Reverse Garbage ready for the big fund-raising shindig on the evening of Saturday, December 4.  Click on the Reverse Garbage link, go to What's New and then End of Year Fundraising Party for details of this exciting event.

Raindrops

Lily, Tess, the grand-dog, and I have been walking quite early in the mornings lately, soon after the birds have woken up.  Last night it rained off and on and this morning remnants of rain sat in flowers and dripped off branches.

I spent the last couple of days making journals.  I will try and get photos of them to share tomorrow before I take them to Echoes Gift Shop at Reverse Garbage in West End to be part of the big end of year exhibition/fund-raiser.

To end, here is a photo of the grand-dog:

Alchemy

I am continuing to have fun exploring natural dyeing.  There are still a few flax lily berries around and I dyed some more silk scraps, this time sprinkling the berries onto an offcut of quila and then making a little package with the silk or fine woolen fabric and some twine wrapped around the berries and wood.  A lot of colour came out of the quila, which I wasn't expecting but I really liked results:

and here is the little piece of fine woollen fabric - I love the way the twine acted as a resist:

And then I was inspired by some insect trails on a tree

to try a shibori type technique (I think).  I used silk again and dyed it with hoop pine bark, it turned out slightly warmer and pinker than the quila.

I have some eucalypt bark in a dye bath with some silk scraps at the moment.  I will leave them to sit overnight and see what they look like in the morning.  I have also found tea to be a lovely effective dye.  I have a feeling though that because I haven't used any heavy mordants that these colours may fade if they are subjected to lots of bright light.