art?

I have not been in my studio for two days however I have been enjoying taking photographs around my home and seeing little pieces of 'art' everywhere I look. 

 To me, art is... something that stirs my soul, be it a colour, an object, a painting or just a certain arrangement of objects I see out the corner of my eye. 

These are some images from around my home.

 

I have also dug up some  photos of me painting as a child.

mim x

printing and tea drinking

Lots of mucking about and printing and tea drinking in my house the last two days.

I attempted to do a photo collage in 'paint'but was very unsuccessful.

Perhaps Jo at Mystory could do a post on how to accomplish this?! :)

I have been enjoying printing in many forms and also a bit of felting...  I am trying to get a lot of little  gift type things into the shop in time for the Christmas rush.

The Little green print you see is my new screen print for kids clothes.

The blue is a monoprint called' little bird,big forest, blue moon.'

I have been using my felt scraps to make into little needle books for xmas presents and also to sell in the shop.

This bottom pic is one of my girls dresses that I printed yesterday, made from vintage fabric.

mim x

post exhibitiion freedom woman

Well, the exhibitiion has been and gone and now i am sooooooooo relieved!!

more time for other arty pursuits and hanging out with my kids. ( more time for blogging!)

here are some photos of my work at the exhibition. Its all screen print (except for one sculptural piece)

and I am satisfied with all the pieces. My favourite is the perspex hanging segments you see, its called 'Bluebird' and consists of five tranparent sections in which I have placed, stitched and layered over a screen printed image of my face. 

looking forward to seeing what everyone else has been up to in the last few weeks!

mim x

Exhibition!!

I have been getting up very early most morning to get these exihibition pieces finished.

This is the fourth one out of five. Its pretty much finished.

My theme for the exhibition is 'birds' , but I guess the birds are symbolic of this artistic journey I have been on in the last few years and the confidence I have gained.

The area shown in the map is a small section of Brunswick and I have indicated the pathway of my life in this area through stitch.

I Lived in union st when I first left home at seventeen and now have ended up back there , at olive grove.

This piece, a section of map, printed onto fabric as the base layer.

Then I have machine embroidered over the top. I have then screen printed flying birds onto very fine silk and machine embroidered many of the birds.

Think its almost finished x

3 years

Lots of printing today, for exhibition pieces.
As I am finishing tafe in 3 weeks I thought I would go through all my work from the last three years and share a few snippets .. xx

broken promises and birthdays

Well, I have broken my pledge of writing a post a day... whoops!

But, I have an excellent excuse.

Twas my 30th birthday yesterday and amongst all the lovely phone calls, pressies and champagne I am afraid I forgot.

I was totally spoiled. Some images of my lovely pressies; a band new and VERY shiny Cannondale mountain bike, some amazing gorgeous vintage sewing books ( a whole set!)

and I just had to throw in a pic of my Ruby who looked so cute on her way to daycare today xx

6 Little things

Thanks to the lovely Hollie for tagging me to join in in '6 little things about me'...
so, here are the rules ..

The rules:

- Link to the person who tagged you.

- Mention the rules.

- Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about yourself.

- Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.

- Go to each person's blog and leave a comment that lets them know they've been tagged.

6 unique things about me:

1. I have 3 tattoos.- one on my hip, which I love. Two on my lower back, one is unfinished and the other i dislike very much. The one i dislike was done at some random tattoo shop in soho in london after a few too many beverages one evening, oh dear.

2. My last name is Patience

3. I am totally IMPATIENT

4. I cannot get enough of op shopping, its like a sickness. My nan is always telling me off because when i go and visit her down in Rye i spend most of the time in all the oppys down there.
They are seriously loaded with gold.

5. When i was 6 I put a seed in my 2 year old brothers ear because I wanted him to 'listen' to it.
He then had to have it surgically removed. I have never lived that one down.

6. I am most of the way to having dreads. Looking forward to having fully matured locks that I can decorate with pretty threads and bells.


So! thats it.. not very exciting hey!
I will tag the following people Jo, Sherrin (when she gets back online) Jason, Ro, sorry, thats it ! dont really have 6 bloggy friends as yet x xx

Home

Busy doing lots of printing today and also busy as a bee with exhibition, finished a piece this morning, so very happy.
Amidst all this business this morning I stopped, and looked around the room and saw lots of things that made me smile, but here are my favourite three.
In my kitchen i saw...
1.The blue eyes of my little boy smiling at me from his highchair.
2. The pink and green of the lovely lillies my man so kindly gave me on thursday.
3. The little fabric scrolls, party invitations I screen printed on vintage and then tied with hot pink wool.
mim x

"I Pledge"

Oh dear once again life has gotten in the way of dear little blog.
Working frantically on my exhibition pieces, not long to go now! The exhibition will be from 12 -20 November but I will post more details closer to the time.
Anyway, I pledge, To: Do a post a day for the next two weeks!
my theme will be 'home' and will focus on all the artwork and lovely bits around my home, aswell as current projects I am working on....
These are some little pants I made for the shop a couple of weeks back. They are made from rescued fabric ( a doona cover) and hand screen printed with my 'spring' design.
The pocket has exposed overlock and is a textured vintage fabric.

Open Studio

Thanks to Jason from artbox diary for sharing his open studio and tagging me to do the same.
I have been neglecting my poor blog for the past week or so.
So here it is, my little studio. Its only small but I feel very fortunate to have a space.
There is a big tree right outside the window which is so lovely.
On sunny days i love sitting in here, creating and looking out at my garden and kiddies playing.
I have my trusty sewing machine and overlocker in here, and my many shelves of vintage fabric.
I have a hanging rack for finished wearable pieces, and more shelves with supplies for printing, painting and sewing.
I often stick little pieces of inspiration on the walls in here, including little artworks from Ruby my daughter. ( green glitter piece in photo)
The large hanging tubes you see are mesh pods from IKEA which are FANTASTIC, for all my scraps that i cannot part with. I store them in order of colours which makes it so easy to locate snippets of similar colours for artworks and wearables.
I am supposed to tag more people for open studio but dont really have all that many blog 'mates' yet :( I think everyone i know has already been tagged.
so, anyone who reads this and would like to share their studio space with me and others please do.

FELT POUCHES

I was fortunate to have saturday off work, and got to go out and play in my garage with wool!
I had a fabulous time creating these little felt purses/pouches and then decoating with stitch and vintage buttons. Thanks to the lovely starashan I am now able to do buttonhole on my machine.
These purses will be in the shop sometime next week :) xx

The end of the rainbow

greetings those on the blogsphere,
still getting used to this whole daily diary thingy! more like a weekly entry at the mo...
Ruby (my lovely little lass) had her friend zoes 4th birthday party today and the theme was rainbow attire.
i made her this cute little number and screen printed my own design over the spotty fabric.
Aslo made a duplicate for her little friend as a birthday pressie.
how cute are these two girlys?!
more dresses in the pipline for the shop... too many ideas, not enough time!
mim x x x

japanese hanging

This piece is one I have been working on VERY slowly all year.
Its a commission for a friends office. He wanted a japanese feel to the piece and a black/white/grey/red colour scheme.
I did several sketches and came up with the layout of stark looking cherry blossom, in front of mountains and eerie tie dyed moon.
Not all of the cherry blossom flowers are on yet but they are all cut from japanese kimono silks and cottons.
The hanging measures about 3mtrs x 2 mtrs! so.... I am having fun trying to get it on the sewing machine!! have to get it finshed soon as I have exhibition pieces to work on also.
Am juggling many balls at the moment with kids, study and work.
will post more photos as the hanging progresses.
I am going to finish it with screen printing over the tree trunk and machine embroidery over highlight sections
:)

the finished painting.... i think

think its finished now , there is always that point when you can do too much, so i think I shall stop!
m x

Painting, just because

Having worked in the shop on sat, I have had my fill of fabric and textiles. I have been desperate to just have a play wiht paint and see what happens.
I only started painting about a year ago and I just love playing with colour and texture.
Layer upon layer I build and it soothes my soul to mix all this fluid lovliness.
I dont really have an image in my mind when I begin, mostly its all abstract.
I start by grabbing the tubes whos colour takes my fancy at that partucular moment.
I often will smear pva as the base coat and let it dry for a day or so, it gives some great textures, similar to Gesso I suppose.
With this piece I have experimented with laying scunched tissue paper and old bits of lace, directly onto the paint for different textural and highlight areas.
At this stage I am only using acrylics but would like to try oils some time too.
I have used a brush and pallete knife for this piece.
The final layer ( with the red flowers) I have used and old table cloth as a stencil and spray painted with red.
Lots of fun !!! now I have got that painting out of my system... its back to my tactile textiles! watch this space ......... mim x