TREE FOLLOWING - September 2015

It's time to share this months photos. First,

THE LONDON PLANE....

looking up you can see blue sky and green leaves. 

But look down and there are first signs of autumn....  just one or two brown leaves have fallen and the husk from a shell.  This must be from last year as this years are green and still growing.



 

Also at the bottom are violets.  After a long rest and little change these plants suddenly show sign of growth and freshness.  As much as I am sad to see the season passing the thought of these beautiful purple flowers to come gives me something to look forward to.

The ivy is still winding its way up the trunk.  It's growth was cut back earlier in the year (see my previous post) but it continues to take hold.  I wonder how far it will reach before it is lopped back again?

 
And my final photo shows some interesting lichen and texture. As a mixed media artist I liked this natural effect.

The Oak

Despite it's forlorn state described in my introduction this tree has done well over the year.  It's leaves are still green with no sign of change yet....

 

In fact there are still buds

 and acorns are growing fat. Some show signs of splitting.



On the floor I was pleased to see so many acorns, I hope some survive and grow into trees and I bought some home to plant, to give them a helping hand.  

And like the London Plane, the oak also has lichen, an artist's palette of colour and texture. 

 

Thank you for popping by. I'll be back with more photos next month and you can find out more about tree following here. 

 

I am linking in with Lucy over at Loose and Leafy.  

ALICE FOX - LOST AND FOUND WORKSHOP - TWO

I had so many photos and projects from my recent LOST AND FOUND Summer School that it is hard to chose which ones to share.  But as I showed some of the rust printed fabric and paper in my previous
post today I will show one of my completed projects: a small book that uses an Australian Hidden Piano Hinge.

I have used this binding technique before and love it's versatility. You can use different colours and patterned card to create effects but I won't provide a tutorial on this occasion as I am focusing instead on the materials I used.   

First I liberally painted a sheet of thick cartridge paper with green tea and placed rusty objects onto the surface. I made sure the objects were in as much contact with the paper as possible and covered it with a sheet of tissue paper which had also been painted with green tea.  This meant the rust would transfer onto both sheets of paper (two for the price of one) and that the tissue would help to stop the paper from drying too quickly.  This gives more time for the rust to create its effect and I waited a couple of days.  Luckily I had lots of other things to get on with so I wasn't too impatient!  And this is the result.  Can you see a spanner, and other marks left by the rust?  I discovered that the overall effects can be pleasing.....

 

But when cut up they can be even more so....

Alice uses a lot of stitch in her work and encouraged us to experiment. Here I stitched around a small white area to create texture. 

 

Remember the spanner?  I wanted to make a feature of this. 

 

So I cut the sheet into 2 strips and folded them lengthways. Then I cut 2 sheets of plain paper to fit inside, forming a signature.  

 

I made another 3 signatures using complimentary papers. 



 Then I created them into a book using the rust printed papers as front and back covers.


We added binding and name tags when making some of our other prints
and I loved the way these took on colour. I wanted to include these so I used the thread to stitch around the hinge binding and left the name tag attached. 

And on the back I added more stitching, using thread to match the colour of the rust.

I enjoyed making this book and I will add the Australian Piano hinge design to my list of upcoming workshops.   And there are other books that I made at the Summer School so I will be back with more.  Thanks for looking in!