Lopsided Lovelies

It's been a while since I checked out Viv Sliwka's mixed media work over at Hen's Teeth.

Rosy-cheeked Livinia and Lucinda are some of the new characters featuring in her Lopsided Lovelies collection, incorporating machine embroidery with paper ephemera and vintage feedsack cotton.

Quirky, colourful and inspiring - My etsy finds of the day!

(Viv also sells her work via Madebyhandonline)

Colour My Monday #22

Children's collages by Leise Dich Abrahamsen

Bonjour, bonjour !

So? How was your weekend?

Ours involved a trip to the beach, a boat ride to the Albert Dubout museum and an hour in the sun watching a water jousting competition - ouch! bad sunburn today!

I think I'll be staying inside for a while.

Happy Monday!

Shellie Holden

Paper screen - reclaimed books and tracing paper

British artist and maker Shellie Holden produces constructed, stitched, collaged and cut paper textiles using reclaimed materials, such as books, pieces of text and old maps, fabrics, threads and sewing paraphernalia.

Bookworm - hand cut and carved.

The Bookworm riddles its way out of the book, eating away at the paper to disrupt the reading of the text; metamorphosis’s into a bobbin or spool (of thread), stealing matter and meaning from the book.

Shellie's Text Work Series 2 is especially interesting, and very beautiful.

Iitch on a phantom limb
Framed paper textile

Wallpaper, mounted paper textile

In her own words:

Embroidery is traditionally perceived as ‘Woman’s work’ and this work takes reference from formal qualities of historical examples of work. In using a contemporary novel as a back drop for the embroidery, the cut work decoration is used to manipulate this meaning when combined with the written word - in Sadie Smiths White Teeth some of the abrupt, crass language in the book emerges through the printed textual layers of paper, jarring the reading, perhaps forcing to viewer to reconsider the role of embroidery in the 21st Century.

Text Book

Shellie Holden - StudioSpool

Eat, drink and be merry!

Oh dear! Nothing but torrential rain for three days, we're all starting to get cabin fever! Everything's depressingly wet outside, the garden's water-logged and if I eat anymore biscuits I'm going to start looking like an advert for chocolate chip cookies (Amanda has the answer to that problem though!!!). Anyway, thought a few pictures from Georgina Bell's portfolio would cheer me up. If you haven't seen her work before, check out her wonderfully uplifting Flickr stream and website. I love her childhood books, mapped clothing and embroidered felt houses. Enjoy!

Penny Leaver Green

It's been a while since I've found anything as interesting as Penny Leaver Green's embroidery.
This Bristol-based textile artist, with a background in English, drama and theatre design, makes sewn pictures from fabric and thread. Her work is conversational, incorporating language and exploring the relationship between fabrics, design and words. The provenance and type of materials she uses is important, nothing is planned, her pieces stem from an idea and develop as fabric is placed in a certain way and thread is worked.Penny occasionally works on a specific theme or creates a series of pictures, such as her bird series, exploring the place birds have in our consciousness.

Six Eggs
Hand- dyed linen ground with silk and thread from a series of pieces exploring the depleting number of British birds

She is currently working on the place buttons have in our culture in collaboration with a button phobic and a clinical psychologist. Through 15 pictures she will be exploring a particular button phobic's reactions to buttons and also looking at the button phobic presence on the internet. Her work will be exhibited in Harvey Nichols in Bristol in 2010.

Scale of Repulsion IV
Vintage French linen, vintage bakelite buttons, thread

A picture based on the response to 16 similar buttons by a button phobic in order of repulsion

It's very difficult to choose a favourite, but I especially like her "into the woods" series exploring fairytales in the woods

Hansel and Gretel

Silk screen print Liberty fabric vintage cotton and thread on vintage calico
the text reads: 'quite happily they played on the edge of the deep dark wood..'

If you are interested in finding out more about Penny, her work in progress and work for sale, please visit her excellent website, flickr stream (beautiful quilts, wall hangings, children's pictures and children's toys) and new etsy shop.

A joy to explore!

Paint it!

If you don't have any paper, you can always follow Tara Ross's example and paint a brush!
This mixed media artist from the Pacific Northwest is also a dab hand at rug hooking by the looks of things.


Check out her etsy store and flickr stream for more examples of her wonderful creative work, and be inspired!