In which my sloth is shown some love

Hello blog.  Sorry I've neglected you.

Anyway - the sloth has been getting some internet lovin'.  The internet's premier sloth blog, Sloth Action has featured my whitework, as has Mr X Stitch.  This is the third time my work has been featured on Mr X's site - that's very cool!

In which I embroider a whitework sloth

I love sloths.  I really, really love them.  If I’m having a bad day at work I just have to watch a clip from ‘Too Cute! Baby Sloths’ and I’m good again.  One day, I’d love to go to the Sloth Sanctuaryin Costa Rica. 

So what’s the obvious choice for my next foray into whitework?  Sloths!

 

 

After doing my Carrickmacross lace, I wanted to have a bash at cutwork.  I decided to embroider some hibiscus flowers, just about to be eaten by a sneaky sloth!  Sloths love hibiscus flowers.  I gave the flowers a bit of texture – the stamens are done in French knots, and I gave the sloth a nice furry coat.

This was so much fun to embroider!  If I did it again I’d use a whiter thread – this one looks a little cream, and use a sharper pair of scissors to cut the background cloth away.  You need really sharp scissors for this.  If you’ve got sharp scissors and know how to do buttonhole stitch, you’re pretty much sorted on cutwork! 

In which I print some self-portraits

Oh, I've been so lax.  Bad me.  I've been working away at my OCA printmaking course, but just haven't been blogging about it.

I'm currently working on the first section, which is on monoprints.  I have to submit four final prints, and one should be a portrait. 

I asked the mirror on the wall who the fairest of them all is, but apparantly Lucy Worsley wasn't available to sit for a portrait.  So I decided to do a self-portrait.

1 - I propped a mirror up and sketched this.  It looks nothing like me.  I think part of the problems is my eyes and mouth are too small here.

2 - I then put that under a sheet of glass, and painted on it using printing inks.  I looked terrifying - the nose areas is all weird and wrong.

3 - This is my final print - I used masks to print the areas of colour, and backdrawing to define the nose, chin, freckles and ears. I kept the whites of the eyes by positioning little masks on the inked surface.  I first printed the green layer, then the pink face, then the hair and eyes, and finally the red lips.

4 - Then, I mucked around a bit.  I rolled out the browny ink and did some backdrawing - this is the original print...

5 - And this is the negative - after I'd taken the first print, I just covered the inked plate and pulled another print.

6 - The one that looks most like me, really, is just this print I did of the 'brown' mask so you can just see my hair, eyes and eybrows.

So - overall, I'm please with my final print, but I wish my nose wasn't wonky - the print on the pink layer got slightly out of alignment.