'If you make happiness your goal, then you're not going to get to it… The goal should be an interesting life."

Dorothy Rowe

Showing posts with label kirigami. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kirigami. Show all posts

Wednesday, 23 February 2011

I’m feeling a little more positive…

image after a bit of playing around, starting with the thing top right in the photo. It is the plasticky cover from a used up WH Smith’s sketchbook – too good to throw away. I knew I'd think of something to do with it eventually.

I cut out the corners – and they looked useful so I rounded their corners, punched a hole in the corner and added a clip. But that wasn’t the main plan.

I sliced the sides up and punched holes in the ends of the slices – those piano-key-like things bottom right.IMG_4552

Can you tell what it is yet?

Then I found some goodies – sari silk goodies. I bought some more recently from Simply Sequins – so much temptation!

 

IMG_4555

And in a departure from my usual round basket – I made a rectangular one.

OK – it’s not flat – but nobody’s perfect!

 

And I’ve got another two sketchbook covers and a whole heap of sari silk.

image

I also had fun with these. 

At Hobbycraft yesterday I bought a tiramisu kirigami calendar in the sale – as you finish with each page, you fold it, cut along the dotted lines and end up with a paper snowflake – or something. I thought it was a bit expensive even at sale price, but I like paper cuts, so I decided 5.99 wasn’t a lot to pay for 365 days of fun. [Turns out there are only 6 designs per week so it’s not quite such a good bargain…]

Of course it started on January 1st and today is February 23rd, so I’ve got a bit of catching up to do.

I had to decide what to do with the paper cuts after I’d cut them– so I stuck them on some paper – along with the negative spaces – which, as you may be able to tell, was a rather more challenging task.image But I do like negative spaces.

And all that despite a bad night – which I turned to some purpose by playing with GIMP, and the graphics pad. I even braved the lasso tool, although I can’t work out why sometimes it did what I wanted it to do – i.e. lasso the internal shapes of my squiggle – and sometimes it just drew triangles.

 

 

Thanks to Karen for pointing me towards this article on Melody Johnson’s blog – I do dip into it regularly because I love her work, and her use of colour – but I hadn’t read that piece. I have printed it off and will refer to it often. I particularly liked this bit ‘Play with your fabric and make what the fabric motivates you to make.’ 

I’ve been feeling that I ought to be ‘doing designing’ before I start making – but I much prefer to play with my fabrics and threads and see what emerges. In theory I know my way is legitimate – but as I used to tell people when I was working, there is a big difference between knowing something with your head and knowing it with your heart. I don’t yet know it with my heart.

I shall continue to draw on the computer every day, even if what I’m drawing [especially if what I’m drawing?] has nothing to do with embroidery! Sumopaint has a fun feature which draws symmetrical patterns – so maybe tonight I'll find time to draw some kirigami …