Rain Clouds??

It´s very black over the mountains this morning, and the clouds are moving this way!  After a really hot windy day yesterday it would be lovely if we got some much needed rain here.  Fingers cossed, and of course it will mean I will be confined to my studio!  I´m eager to get going this morning, I have a mixed media piece of work I am keen to continue working on.  In my fruitless search to find lining paper over here, I eventually found a roll of textured wallpaper with lining paper on the reverse.  The textured side is just perfect for mixed media and yesterday I covered it with pastels in greens, blues and yellows, covered this with a coat of wax medium and when dry pasted on some light molding paste through a daisy stencil.  Now I want to paint the daisies then I´ll back the piece with felt and embroider heavily into it with threads of various different weights.

I finished my current lesson in the Ratty Tatty Papers workshop, but changed the end piece from a tiny folding book to a hanging.  My first attempts at silk paper making were mixed, with some pieces having the silk fibres not completely attached.  They stubbornly refused to behave despite being worked over twice with more medium.  Instead of consigning the gorgeuos fibres to the bin, I used them in this exercise, backed with another piece of silk paper making them more stable.  Definitely a process to try again.

The next lesson explores silk rods.  I have split these down and pressed them to a piece of burgundy silk ready to be stitched into.  Another new technique for me!  My thanks to Dale Rollerson of the Thread Studio in Australia for sharing her ideas and running this internet workshop,  showing me how to use all these lovely fibres I´ve been collecting over the years.  Isn´t the internet an amazing tool.... from Australia to Spain without all the travel hassle too!!