Overwhelmed with possibilities

There's lots of old sayings like "trying too hard", "can't see the wood for the tree's" and so on, and they all applied to me when I was studying my C&G.  I tried so hard to see things that I often couldn't see what was right in front of me.  When studying one module at a time I concentrated only on the requirements of that particular module, such as "line" - I only looked for line, then in "shape" I only looked for shape - now I can look for anything at any time and its amazing how much is all around me on a daily basis.  We're currently building a new house and the design possibilities that its thrown up are amazing, and I decided to share some of them with you.

Look at the wonderful rust around the holes in this steel.

 Even scaffolding parts offer wonderful pattern and shapes.

Lengths of steel coded by colour give great uniformity and grid ideas 

Stacked steel frames create crazy line patterns

Threaded squares of steel - some in line with each other, others spun to give angles

And this is one of my favourites - like a crazy wire flower - I think its a buffing head for smoothing steel (I've no idea, but I know hubby uses it a lot, lol!)

And who'd think that a welding machine would have such a lovely daisy design on it

Even welding slag dropped onto steel frames, rusted over time gives amazing design possibilities, all crusty and orange - can't wait to have a go to reproduce this one!

If you're working on grid designs - a side view of the steel frames gives a lovely increasing and decreasing zig zag design

And lets not forget the humble safety cone - even this has great shapes and patterns, negative and positive.

All I need now is the time to put these design sources to good use.  Let me know if any of you use these as starting points for your own creativity - I'd love to see what develops from them.

Design progress

A new love of mine is felt work.  I'm not giving up needlework and textile work to become a felter, but I do see so many possibilities of using felt in creative embroidery.It's soft, pliable, forgiving, colourful and wonderfully inspiring.  I have my spurts of enthusiasm when I spend a day or two making felt, then put it aside until inspiration hits me in the face, which it has done recently. 

This aqua/lilac piece is something I did a few years ago, but have only just mounted it.  Its only about 6cm square and mounted on black trigger cloth with some hand stitching and sequins and beads for embellishment.  At first I was going to insert it into a card for a birthday or such but then decided it would be nicer mounted as a small art piece.

These three designs are the beginning of a whole range of idea's I have for new design work which will appear soon on my website, and are an introduction to expanding design ideas.  

Currently we're in the middle of building a house, and my studio is smack bang in the middle of the construction site, so progress in the studio is slow at the moment, but bear with me - I'm working slowly in the background and intend to have new kits and classes ready to go in the new year.