Not so sunny day

Did quite a bit today - firstly, finished off the circles postcards so that they can go in the post tomorrow. I am VERY pleased with them, so if they only survive the post, I'll be thrilled. I have individual photos of all of them, which I am not going to post here, but I will put them up in my flickr album so if you want to see any in detail you can. 8 of them (including one to myself) will go off to participants in the swap, one blue one will go off to Annie in Australia, who is going to send me one of her little birds in exchange (hoorah!). The other two, will go on etsy, so if you really want one, they should be up tonight or tomorrow.

And on the left, is a prototype card for the spring theme I am swapping with two different groups - my original ideas for this proved not to be very practical, so I decided to approach it from a different angle (I really wanted to do something with windows) and came up with this - the idea is looking out the window to a real view of spring - maybe a flowering cherry tree is right outside your window or something. And then there is a vase on the windowsill to add some depth and further interest (I have used beads to hold the sequins down this time. Lesson learned.) There is a thin layer of fused angelina behind the window frame, also to add some depth and soften the outside a little. I'm very happy with this, and will go ahead with this model for the rest of the cards. I've done a number of sheets of angelina today in preparation. Whew.



I also spent some time sunprinting with the kids. Unfortunately, we kind of lost the sun, but we made the best of it. You can see the kids' sunprinting on my main blog. I also wanted to do some sunprinting on a piece for a complex cloth round robin I am doing with my surface embellishment group. In the end, I couldn't get the piece to dry in the lack of sun we had once we started the project, so I stuck it under a lamp for a while, then attacked it with the iron. I think it came out fairly well. It's not what I'd want for a finished piece, but it's not finished - two other people will work on it before it goes back to the owner. That's the piece on the left. The one on the right is from my stack of "must do something else with this" pieces - you know, the ones that aren't very interesting after being dyed - in this instance, the black pattern was fine, but all the background dye washed out (probably too old) so it was boring. I painted the stripes, then added rubber bands and stones for some texture, and now I have a useable piece of fabric. Yippee!