It's never too late for LOVE

I know I'm too late for Valentine's day but in celebration of Love I thought I'd post some more photos of pages in my LOVE altered book.

The colour scheme for this book was inspired by the gorgeous marbled endpapers in this old Danish book that my friend Jo gave me. Deep red, powder blue and ivory.

I tried to make each page a different texture and each heart a different technique.

This first one has vintage velvet flowers on a lace heart. The page is distressed muslin which has been painted.

This is fragile antique silk with hand embroidery, mother of pearl buttons  and painted lace. The page is painted with scraffito techniques; The paint is scratched away to give a frosty foliage effect.

The heart in this photo is textured gesso with lace and a dried daisy on music paper. It has a tiny precious little gold bee on it. Its my bee brave motto!

The last one for today is a heart that is suspended between the pages so that you can see the fabulous textured lace that is sandwiched in silk organza. I'm really pleased with how this turned out. 

I wish you all LOVE in your lives. 

Valentines Day drives a lot of people slightly crazy. 

But love is a wonderful thing to celebrate at any time of the year.

xxx

Rain and Rust

Last Summer and Autumn I had a great time rusting fabric in the garden. I  tried out lots of different fabrics but my favourites were fine silk habotai, and vintage lace and doileys. 

It was always a surprise to see how much the fabric had dyed and the amazing patterns that were produced. Sometimes the rust ate right through the fine silk and made fabulous crusty holes.

In September I used some of the fabrics with handmade silk paper as a base for some of my original illustrations for Open Studios. 

After Open Studios was finished my butterfly of a mind moved onto other things and I completely forgot the last little rusty package... till today!

I went out in the pouring rain to rescue it and here is what I found.

So fabulous! 

The silk especially has amazing patterns. It is Eco dyeing, just using nature to make beauty all by herself. Its just a kind of magic! 

Happy day! :o)