books....

As promised a few ideas for you as to what you can do with my little books of embroidery. I have enjoyed playing with this one over the past two days, could have gone on forever infact but I had to stop at some point so here goes and be warned, it's a long one!!
This page had the tiny piece of embroidery in the botton left corner and was otherwise empty. Here I have used watercolour paint to try and colour match with the colours in the embroidery and the colours in the printed page on the right. Starting with rows of simple circles
I then moved to a cluster, grouping the colours from both sources, (embroidery and printed page) to see how they worked together.

I then scoured old magazines, catalogues and leaflets, cutting small snippets that closely matched the colours I had used before. A very good thing to use for this is paint charts, freely available at DIY stores, I haven't actually got any at the moment but it's on my to do list!!

The next page was completely blank, no embroidery, no thread card, no trimmings. I don't know about you but I hoard for England, if it was an Olympic sport I would have a gold medal! From my stash I picked two things that really inspire me. One is a card from a cosmetic counter, the other a picture of paper patchwork cut from a magazine. These have been simply attached to the page with a paper clip and I looked at them first as individual pieces then I examined how they worked together.



I cut patchwork templates from a printed leaflet and then using thread, colour matched both images, lime green  and red from the business card, grey shades from the paper patchwork image. If you go back to the image showing the full page you can see how this simple wrapped thread card draws the whole page together.

This page isn't finished yet but here I have wrapped a card with a piece of vintage cloth. Working from that I have created a simple collage of different papers. ( just a word of advice. Any painting or excessive pasting such as collage is best done on the heavy, watercolour paper pages otherwise the page may wrinkle and become shabby) These aren't colour matched exactly but I feel the collage compliments the fabric and is a starting point for further work. Taking this forward I would create stripped patchwork perhaps embroider or print text onto it. Any text, it doesn't have to be an exact match, that's the beauty of being creative, you decide where you go, your personal feeling for a piece sends you in a direction that is right for you. That is how we all, unintentionally I think, develop a distinctive personal style.

In the middle pages of this book I put a piece of embroidery that has been lurking around here for what seems like forever. I used this piece in my damp stretching tutorial if you remember and always hoped it would be useful again!! The blue area you can see on the graph paper was meant to be a pattern derived from the embroidery. It went wrong, I made a mistake. Years ago I would have cried, not any more I just created something else from it, a little doodle.


I then cut up some decorated paper into petal shapes, (I made it a long time ago, see hoarding comes in useful again!)  these are just stuck to the edge of the graph paper with double sided tape but from that an idea for an edge? a motif? Take note of the fine blue line drawing on one of these petals, it's relevant to what comes next.

A strip of paper decorated the same way and extended over the page along with a closer examination of colourful ways to decorate a petal shape. There are ideas for stitch here, do you see them? Orange petal, couching? blue flowers, satin stitch? applique?


This piece of embroidery was found languishing in my basket. Remember my basket of things I am either too lazy to put away or cannnot bear to part with?? When I work dense areas of french knots I am almost always inspired by the structure and pattern of lace. For this page I collaged paper, heavy paper with finer  paper. dappled with subtle, pale colours on top. I then pricked certain areas with a pin to mimic lace. The pricked paper was then cut into circles, (lace pattern) and placed on top of fine pencil marks with colourful dots.


Our favourite techniques, our preferred methods of working and how we are influenced by those is obvious from this next picture, patchwork. Don't ask me why but I just had to see how this paper would look in patchwork form. Your inspiration may come from somewhere else, no , it will come from somewhere else. You may move in a beading direction, a cross stitch direction.......... see what one tiny piece of cloth embellished with french knots can inspire? Something else worth mentionming about this page, think about moving beyond the given page, fold paper and unfold paper. Attach it to the edge of the page so that a particular page unfiolds, grows. Place things under flaps, see how they look partly hidden by a completely different surface.
This page started off with a card wrapped in two bindings or trims. I closely examined the pattern of the trims and doodled with simialr shapes. Colour matching wasn't in my mind for this one, not close colour matching anyway. Tiny flowers created using french knots were the result of this 'doodling'. Another edge, a strip, a border a placement pattern.

So there you have it. how I would use my books, what I would do to enhance a sketchbook, how I would develop an idea. If time wasn't an issue and I mean if I had a butler, a cleaner, a cook, I swear I could do nothing but embellish books, develop designs, stitch tiny samples, try new ideas. We can dream can't we.

Now I promised to show you books I had made before. I consciously hid these at the bottom of this post as I think they look so dated. Some of these books date from 1992!!! But go on, have a look, judge me, comment on my hoarding abilities!! Comment on my apparent love of black?? What's that all about?? Actually, I shouldn't be suprised, I have a confession, you may not believe this but it's true......I got married in black so what's a few black sketchbooks.

Now for my news, probably doesn't matter a jot to you but it's a totally massive thing for me. I have given up my job, my 'proper' job. So this is me, my job, my work, my passion, the only way I have of making a living. I had to try it, I owed it to myself to see if I could make it work. I know it won't be easy but I have to try. Please wish me luck and have fun embellishing those books!!




7pm....working hard, crazy patchwork piece finished and listed here....http://karenruane.bigcartel.com/

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