Remember in 1991 when we had the wrong kind of snow for British Rail to keep the tracks clear, well I have the wrong kind of images for the image editing workshop!

No seriously, amongst my 1,000’s of images - I never seem to have taken photos of interesting doorways, signs, vintage writing or wonderful faces.  My image library is full of flowers and gardens (Note to self, must get out more)

One of my goals for myself and this course is to try and combine my textile images and photographic images and I am seriously beginning to wish there were more hours in the day, or rather more hours that I can sit in front of the computer without these old bones complaining.

I have fallen in love with masking and blending images together and below is the result of this mornings work.

The textile piece is “Standing Stones”, combined with my favourite angel and some music from a welsh hymn book.

So now it is the winter, and after a very busy summer gardening at last I have some time to turn to the studio.

Unfortunately sales at the last show were slower that I had hoped and I have decided that in 2010 I don’t want to do any major shows.

Also I yearn to make things for myself (bags) and for the house (Curtains and rugs)

However to prod my creativity into, well being creative I signed up for D.J.Pettitt’s online image editing workshop.

What better way to spend the icy weather we are experiencing in the UK at the moment than messing about with images.

I thought that as I work my way through the exercises I would practice them by creating a “digital journal” as opposed to a mixed media one.  However, as I am working very slowly - it will not be a daily occurrence.

We have had ice on the beaches here in Wales and the image below is from my photographs of flowers in the summer, and the ice I photographed yesterday.

“Beneath the ice, the summer garden dreams ….”

Off to “The Craft and Design Experience” tomorrow with all my work.

I feel as if I have been chasing my tail for the past few weeks. (months).  But the work has been mounted and framed, the greetings cards printed, the car is packed, now I just have to find some clothes to wear - as I having been living in gardening clothes for the past year or so!

Not all of my recent work has photographed well, as I have a few pieces that are a long thin format. However, I have put together a small slideshow of all the images that I have turned into greetings cards.  These images start with older work, and end with the current stuff.

I will be away from my computer for the next week - so forgive me for not responding to comments.

Please click on the bunny below for the slide show.

But unfortunately not in the studio.  I am back at work now in other folk’s gardens and I have taken on a couple of new ones.  So I am trying to organize my garden time / studio time to give myself 4 complete days in the studio every second week.  Which I have just had.

I am doing a craft fair in May, so a lot of my studio time has been spent stretching work, in preparation for taking it to the framers tomorrow, but I also started two new pieces.

I was looking at the images that I made for the headers for this blog, which were a combination of images from past work, and dots and lines in Photoshop.  They took me a little while to do, and I thought why not turn them into textiles?

I am currently working on the elephants and the dolphins.  They are quite long pices, and as the light had gone for photographing them, I put the elephants in the scanner.

(Well, obviously not real live elephants, my piece of work with elephants)

If anyone would like more information about the fair  in Henley on Thames on the 15th - 17th May, do drop me a line and I will send you a leaflet.

karenstextiles(at)googlemail.com - please replace (at) with @

or leave a comment and I will contact you.