state

this blog is a state, a STATE I tells ye!

Muchos clearing up shalt be done asap. But its not like I have more than 3 followers, what does it matter lol? xxx

paper mountains

I read this wonderful post by Handmadelove quite a while ago and am now realising it's been a source of inspiration for my recent project.

Tracey Eastham

Tracey Eastham is an artist who uses found and sourced imagery to produce intricate collages. The focus of her practise is landscape.

Tracey came to give a talk at my uni a few weeks ago, at the time I didn't think her work was really relevant to my research but since I've become interested in making landscape-type imagery recently, I'm glad I made notes at the time haha.

bunting love

Makes things with birds and bunting :] Flickr

Bunting pool on Flickr

From CathyL

Bake-A-Boo

BunBunBoutique
CathyL

Christopher Bettig

his blog

Jacqueline Bos

lovely lovely LOVELY.

'Kids-at-magic-mountain-hires'

[her blog- a post about making the top image, very good]

Small Mountain Owls

I'm quite excited, I've finally found an exciting direction for this project.

After a lot of drawing owls and thinking about them I found myself imagining where owls live.

So today i was doing some repetitive bunting making on the sewing machine (just...really like bunting lolol. well, its owl bunting. it has triangles and owls on it...i'll put a picture up when its done)

and one of the triangles looked like a mountain, and a few of the stitches i have on my sewing machine make really lovely mountain top patterns.

I need this book :] ...

So I'm really, very into owls...mountains, and triangles right now.

hoooooooot

Found this fantastic collection at linoforest.blogspot.com

The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark- yes! :D

I remember this CLASSIC!

owl mythology

I've been looking into owl mythology and finding it craziliy interesting.
In ancient Greece, owls were a symbol of protection and wisdom.
They were found on the reverse side of their coins, see

[I also found out that lots of people in the dark stupid olden days would kill owls and nail them to their front doors to ward away evil. Stupid people!!]

Lizzie Finn

Another lovely embroidery artist to add to my research.

I particularly like her use of typography. The style she has used in the first image is something I think I'll try out for my etsy shop front that I've yet to make.

I also find it interesting how she leaves some of her work looking unfinished in a way, edges are left frayed or with loose cotton.

I found these images on her website here.

not particularly relevant, but interesting none the less. I think!

Just stumbled upon this in blogland, about making your own house into a gallery.

I've always been interested in domestic spaces, it's something I can't get away from really even when I'm supposed to be doing other things.

So i found this pretty interesting.

Artist called Anna Francis who ran this publication about non-traditional spaces for art.

The project examines the impact that art and cultural activity are having on our cities, and the problematic nature of finding adequate and appropriate research methodologies which can measure that impact.

It's something I'm ticking over in the back of my head anyway, I guess maybe for next year when things get serious haha.

stitch stuff

Just looking around Flickr for some fresh ideas about embroidery.

Finding a lot of really fun stuff on this group.

Rich Gemmell

Came across this artist on a blog called Brown Paper Bag.

I just really really like his style. The recent bits of collage I've been doing recently I think have been influenced by looking at these. I like how he uses methods of printmaking and digital rendering. The environments he creates are spiffing.

Craft Night

Was completely awesome

So me and my chums at uni have been planning on having a 'craft night' for some time now, to chatter and get on with some cold hard crafting.
We decided to make a collaborative zine for the book fair in Leeds next week (next week- EEP?!)
We passed around drawings, using collage and doodling, adding what we wanted. 19 of the pages are like that, and 5 are what we made individually. It will be interesting to see if anbody can spot who made what on each page :)

Lou Gardiner talk at the Bluecoat

Is insanely cool. Went to see her talk about her exhibition at the Bluecoat display centre in Liverpool called 'Birds of a Feather'.
The work she's put together is completely fantastic and perfect for my current project, as it combines both free machine stitching and BIRDS !!!
Anyway I made plenty notes about her talk but I shan't bore you with them in this already hefty blog post. Maybe later.

She even brought along what she's been working on most recently, a large embroidered piece she's been commissioned to make for Liberty's shop window in London.
It's crazy beautiful. And the eyes are reflective, lol! But I couldn't get my flash to work to show this off properly.

Donna Wilson

Scottish designer, love her quirky creatures and cushions.
I need to make cushions as cool as this.

http://www.donnawilson.com/

zine

So I've been spending a lot of time drawing owls in as many different ways as I can think of (yes I'm that lame) mainly because I want to find my favourite one...if that makes sense.
Probably not oh well, so some of these have been drawn from life, imagination, and quite a few from owl ornaments I've hunted down. Think I'll put some pictures of those up too.

plush/soft toys

I'm looking for ways to vary the way I make my owls, need to make sure I don't get into a rut making the same kind of thing too many times.

I love the way Ninon uses different patterns and types of material to sew together these humorous characters.

owls owls everywhere

I think it's become a bit of a trend. Will be keeping my eyes peeled for anything else like this I see

drawings from visit

These are the only whole-ish ones anyway,
the owls wouldn't stay very still for me even though I asked them very nicely.