Charley Harper and the Exquisite Corpse

Has that title grabbed you?  Have I got you wondering?  Thought I'd share a little bit of book-love with you.  I love a book that inspires and delights and thought you might too.  I've been wanting to share these two books with you for quite some time now, birthday gifts from way back in October.  The first one is "Charley Harper An Illustrated Life".  Charley Harper was an American artist known for his highly stylized wildlife prints, posters and book illustrations.  I love their simplicity and his vibrant use of colour.

Do you remember as a child playing a drawing game where you folded a piece of paper into 3 sections and you would draw a section of a person, say their head, then pass it on to the next person to draw the body and the third person to draw the legs, and you weren't allowed to see what the other people had drawn, so that when it was unfolded you usually fell about giggling because you had ended up with the head of a princess, the body of a circus clown and the hairy legs of Uncle George ... well that is called an Exquisite Corpse.  Did you know that?  I certainly didn't, not until I stumbled across this fabulous book titled "The Exquisite Corpse".

The pages unfold out of the book.  Each artist was only allowed to see the entire page of the one before, and they had to keep the line of the horizon going throughout and take inspiration from the previous work.  Some pages have a natural flow with shape, theme or colour linking them.  Others I've looked and looked and cannot see a connection at all!!

This is a particular favourite link from one artist to the next.  Notice the leopard has lost his spots, and in the next drawing the girl has freckles all over her!!

Hmmm, if anyone has any clues about the connection between these two pages, I'd be happy to hear what your thoughts are!

Enjoy your day!
Trudy

Made in a Day

Do you ever have those days when you want to put aside all your major craft projects to start something brand, spanking new?  You know that you have a gazillion hours left to finish on each and every one, so you want to choose new fabric or wool, or paper and start playing.  You want to sit down and go through the entire process in one day, and at the end have a finished product.  Do you have these days?  It's not just me being fickle, is it?

Sometimes it doesn't matter what it is.  It's simply the newness and the satifsfaction of creating something in a small space of time.  Well that hit me today!  What to make?  I found inspiration on my Pinterest boards from creative people such as Julie Arkell, Cathy Cullis, Jessie Chorley and Rebecca Sower.  Absolutely adore these gorgeous creative women.

I gathered some wrinkly linen, old doileys, buttons and thread and started sewing it all together.  This red button didn't make the distance, although it looks rather pretty here.  Any clues as to what I'm making?

 

 

Blue button instead of the red.  It's so much fun, just doing exactly what I want.  This stitch here, a running thread of red there.  One more photo, then I'll tell you what it is, or have you guessed already?

It's a cuff.  For around a wrist!  Purely decorative and fun.  To make a statement, of the Granny Chic kind.  Bit tricky to photograph without my wrist in it, but you'll just have to visualise how fun it looks!!

 

 

 

Okay, I'm happy now.  I have had a play today and thoroughly enjoyed the process.  I've started something, designed it, tweaked it, finished it ready to wear, and now I'm ready to get back into my long-haul projects.

 

 

Bye for now!

Trudy

Pinterest

I have been a collector of images for as long as I can remember.  Anything that catches my eye or takes my fancy is kept and treasured.  I adore the clever and the beautiful, the sumptious, the quirky, the colourful.  They can be images of fashion, interiors, animals or people that grabs my attention.  No old and outdated magazine is safe from my scissors.
   

Then, with these images in hand I like to paste them into books, in theme order or colour order or whatever-I-please order. I think I have this overwhelming need to be constantly cutting and pasting because I never went to Kindergarten! I didn't learn my cutting and pasting skills then and I've been playing catch-up ever since!!

I have books full of wonderful images that inspire, get my heart jumping and my mind racing.

Images that have me swooning, day-dreaming, planning, wishing and hoping.

Books on fashion that are so dated now they make me squirm, and scrapbooks of interiors and books of images that just make me smile.  So why has it taken me so long to join Pinterest?  Pinterest, this thing I've been doing all my life, but online, and no scissors or glue needed.  Why has it taken me so long?  I have no idea, I'm loving it!!

I can categorise all the images, mine and ones I pin from others, and I can have everything in the one place, and then I can skip and hop over to other people's "boards" and see what they have!!  My oh my, I am totally in my element.

It has been fun setting it all up, thinking of category names "wool + hook", "swoon + yearn", "here + there" etc. etc. and slowly starting to add pictures into each group.

I have three followers already, Pixie Kaye (you are my Style Guru!), Serendipity Patch and Viv @ Hen's Teeth.  Thank you for showing an interest in my images.  Thank you for your inspiration peeps!!  I've already "pinned" from you : -)

If you want to scoot across and have a look just hit the link on my sidebar and you'll go straight to my page.  And with all this time on Pinterest something has to fall by the wayside, I'm thinking it could be the time spent feeding the children, or cleaning the house ...

Are you on Pinterest?
Do you enjoy looking at oodles of different images?
Did you have scrapbooks when you were little?  Or now?

Trudy

Moments

Moments.

A week made up of moments.

Special moments, in amongst all the other moments.

Being inspired by Japanese illustrator, Ryoko Ishii.

Watching my daughter hanging upside-down on the Queen's Birthday Holiday.

Snuggling under blankets watching old episodes of "I Dream of Jeannie".

Feeling the warmth of the sun.

Feeling so cold that a wheat pack is offered.

Summonsing my inner-hairdresser for Girl 1 to turn into Princess Leia at her band concert.

Whisking hubby away from work for a cuppa in the cafe.

Playing with wool and wishing this basketful was mine, not Rowan's.

Playing with fabric.

An extended family meal and the telling of well-known stories.

Sneaking off to the movies in the daytime with a friend.

Catching up on some missed "Offspring" episodes on the computer.

Taking delivery of a New Couch, still in its plastic even now.

It was a week made up of special moments.
What's your favourite moment from your week?
Trudy

Angie Lewin

Angie Lewin is a British printmaker who works in linocut, wood engraving, lithography and screen printing, and she is inspiring the next corner of my dolly quilt.  She has a fabulous book entitled "Plants and Places", which is lovely to look through as it is filled with gorgeous eye-candy.

Love her use of colour, and bold dramatic designs.

And here is my Angie Lewin-inspired applique square, simply stitched without too much regard for perfect lines ... I could almost say it was the look I was after!!

Really enjoying the designing aspect of this mini quilt, and watching it emerge.  Tweaking bits as I go along, still working on other parts of it that I don't feel are working yet, and enjoying the colour choices.

Two weeks of school holidays spread blissfully ahead so hopefully I'll have a chance to do some stitching on this project. Today though I had other priorities with the painting of small fingernails, snuggling up on the couch reading out loud the brilliant "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick and attempting, without any success at all, hand-stands against the fence ... big sigh ...

Enjoy the hols!

Trudy

Charleston Inspired

Charleston was the home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and a meeting place for the writers, painters and intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury group.  It sits in Sussex, England, and I had the joy of visiting there a number of years ago.

Every corner of the house oozes with examples of the decorative art of the Bloomsbury artists.  There are murals on doors and walls, painted furniture, textiles and ceramics.  All of which was fabulous and I was in my element!!

After visiting Charleston, I came home with visions of painting my own walls in some variation of their decorative style, but somewhere along the way I fell in love with China White, and also I completely lost my nerve.

I also came home from Charleston with two treasured pieces, one a beautiful linen top in a soft orange colour (which is currently hanging on the outside of my wardrobe as an incentive to minus out a few nasties from my diet and therefore fit into it again!), the other is a pottery jug.

I adore the colours and patterns on this jug and have been inspired to create a small applique stitchery, which will form part of a dolly-sized quilt.

While I didn't paint my walls, I did find inspiration from the little jug I purchased at Charleston which will always trigger memories of that wonderful day spent mooching through the house.

Have a lovely day.
Trudy