August, fly she must…

Another title taken from a song. This time it’s Simon and Garfunkel – April, Come she will… which was on the Bridge Over Troubled Water album. In 1969, when this was released, you couldn’t walk down the corridor in the College house of residence without hearing a track from it drifting under the doors. We learned all the harmonies and tried to play them on guitars, in my case with very little success.  Or was it “die she must”? It’s not the cheeriest of songs I suppose but a pleasure to sing to myself as I come to the end of my Summer Project. I’m on Day 81 of 92 so the end is almost in sight.

July ended with this page, where the prompts were to use hexagons, the colour yellow, our mac n cheese patterns and to rewind to something I had enjoyed. (WE weren’t asked to do them all on one page, it’s just the way it worked out for me on this one.) Amazingly, Mooka, which I once thought was my nemesis, has become a mac n cheese pattern, usually, as here, with Flux and Tipple. I used Nzepple, another of my favourites, for the rewind, as the rounding exercise had been such a pleasure.

 

And August started a bit dull, at least as far as colour was concerned. The prompts were to use Pokeleaf and Pokeroot together, about which I was a bit unimaginative but had been visiting stately homes, where tapestry and stumpwork abounded, so the rather old fashioned look is what came out.  We were also asked to use the Fragment K15, which I tried three ways, and the pattern Hemp, which is just not my style at all. There was also a prompt using a sort of string that wasn’t a string, which you can see marked Day 66. I like some of the parts of this but it doesn’t make a whole.

The next three prompts I did were to use dots, a circle and do something on “found” paper. I used a dotty background paper from my cardmaking stash and patterned on it with a thick white pen. Unfortunately, the pen couldn’t contain its enthusiasm – or its ink for that matter – and blotted some of the lines. Oh well, it is what it is. I cut the “found” paper from a gift bag and then patterned it with what i think may be a new pattern. Well, not new, but I haven’t seen it before. Anybody recognise it?

Here’s my first version of  it.

Just trying it out on a scrap of paper. The shading makes it.

So I’ve done step outs and given it a neam (Ndulates – my poor attempt at wit.) just in case it does not already exist. Please tell me if I’m wrong. 

So by the middle of August I had to use Fragment E6, which is a fragment of Meer, I think and which I decided to do as simply as possible, just grading up the sizes as I went along. Oh, and turning each fragment 90 degrees to its neighbour.  I then tried a pattern I’m not familiar with -Atorm, so I stuck with the same colour palette and graded sizes idea for that too. The page doesn’t excite me, although I was happy enough with each piece.

I do like the way the Cubine has turned out here.

Another prompt was just to respond to the word Square and I resurrected an idea I did for the Diva Challenge some time ago. I pinched the idea from Mondrian and added just a few square-ish patterns to it. Not original and it didn’t take long, but  I did have fun.

We were then prompted with using sparkles, which I struggle with. It requires a delicacy of touch which I just don’t seem to possess. Anyway, I tried three different ways with sparkles and almost got it right so maybe it just needs more work. Another prompt was to do a tile with as little white space as possible. The diamond shaped one is the result but I decided that the Mooka had a lot of white, so added the bijou tile with something I saw on You Tube as well. The background is my “new” pattern again.

Then I did a ZIA about 6 inches square, using String 89 in the smallest box, although the string has almost disappeared.  The other prompt here was to use tangles Crease and Fedr together. I sort of went for a Rennie Macintosh look and tried very hard to keep that delicate interweaving of lines going. The blue colour is actually sparkiling Gelly Roll but it never shows on camera, does it?

And finally, you will be relieved to see, the prompt was a Splash of colour using black. combined with a random dots “string”. I had a look at a Helen Williams video doing the pattern Well based on a random dot grid. It was a lot of fun, even if it did make my brain hurt at times. I used Gelly Roll Moonlight pens to really contrast with the black and I think it’s fun. Art? No. Fun? Yup, that’ll do for me.

So we come to the Diva Challenge.  This week’s guest blogger is Jeanette Clawson and she asks us to draw a plate or part of a plate.

As I said I love to draw mandalas so when I was in the seminar I was thrilled with the idea of drawing “plates.” Part of my love of mandalas is tied up in my love of china patterns. These plates go beyond just a decorative border and I decorated the whole plate for our challenge today. I drew the strings of all 4 tiles at the same time.

Being me, of course, I did the whole plate on card exactly the size of four tiles. That’s big and took a hell of a lot of filling. I started with a compass and drew in the pencil design, then coloured with Brusho inks. The patterns were shorely, Copada and Purk in the eggy shaped bits. I can never remember the name of the one in the smallest ring. I started off liking it very much, went through a phase of chuck it in the bin, then liked it after all. Oh the emotional roller coaster!

This is rather brighter in real life.

So I’m going to stop there, as I suspect this week may have been a bit of a tangle overdose.  I’ve started writing next week’s post so, until then, world, be good- ish.