Steampunk and an anniversary.

This week is the first anniversary of the Rusty and Boots blog. It's been going for a whole year. Yay! 😊 Thank you to everyone who has read it so far, I hope you've liked it.

For some reason this year I've somehow developed a liking for Steampunk. I didn't like it to begin with; when I first heard of it I thought 'What is this?' but then I didn't really get it. The more I saw of it the more I found out and now I understand the attraction.

As I love fantasy novels and films, Steampunk kind of fits into that genre, along with science fiction, with its nature of being an alternative history of the Victorian era or a sort of dystopian time in the future where we've gone back to those fashions and to steam energy rather than electricity. 

Obviously, having begun to like Steampunk and seeing so many artworks in that style, I had to have a go at creating my own art. This is my first attempt so I'm not sure how good it is yet but I have more ideas in which I hope to improve the imagery and composition.

First of all I painted the canvas in a rose gold shade, then used modelling paste to create the cogs, which to begin with I painted gold with brown parts like rust.

Then I used puff paste on some areas.

 

I painted the puff paste gold.

 

I added some brown cogs and placed some actual cogs on it to see where they might fit in.

 

Then I decided I didn't like the rose gold colour and repainted it with a kind of old gold. I also painted the puff paste creating a rust effect.

 

I added some painted cogs then attached the real ones.

 

So there it is. As I've said, this was my first attempt at anything vaguely Steampunk, so I'm not sure of the result yet and I may change it. This is only experimenting and playing with the style and feel and as I continue on my Steampunk journey, along with all my other textile and painting ideas, you will see the results. I hope you'll like them.

Autumn Colours

Here are some photos I've taken of leaves with their Autumn colours and some work in progress which has been inspired by them.

Some lovely sycamore leaves......

Some astilbe stalks.....

Some astilbe leaves.....

Some cherry tree leaves.....

Finally, this is the work in progress I've started which is inspired by the colours of Autumn and is another version of my Wild Nature wall hanging.

So far, I've cut strips of fabric in amber and chestnut and used machine embroidery over them. There's more work on the way! 😊

Wild Nature

I don't know about you but I feel like hibernating at the moment. We had a lovely sunny day at the weekend but from then on it's been rain, rain and more rain. 🌂⛈ There has even been flooding in some parts of the UK already and the winter weather has only just begun. I send my best wishes to all the people affected. 💖 

It's not that I don't like the autumn or winter, far from it, I love wrapping up to go out in the cold then warming up when I get home. I love the colours of the leaves and seeing them carpet the garden and pavements. (You'll see my love of all this in the future when I complete other pieces of work I have in mind.) It's just that sometimes, when you get several gloomy days in a row, it can get you down a bit. 

So, to try to brighten things up a bit and bring back memories of spring and summer with their warm days and bright flowers budding and blooming, here's my finished piece, 'Wild Nature'. 

I began with strips of fabric in two shades of green, representing the order and neatness some people like to impose on their gardens and nature. (I don't really like to. I try to keep mine tidy but weeds are very welcome. They are only flowers and are good for wildlife. 💮😀 )
   

Then I sewed over these strips with decorative machine embroidery. 

 

On top of that, I layered a piece of organza which I printed with leaves all over. This kind of represents the more wild and unruly side of nature. Nature goes and grows wherever she wants to and doesn't seem to like being controlled. 

 

I then applied some hand stitching over this using organic swirls, again representing the, well, 'naturalness' of nature. 😀 Nature doesn't go in straight lines, but prefers circles, spirals and branching patterns. 

 

I also added some daisies, dandelions and forget me nots. As I said earlier, daisies and dandelions are just flowers, not weeds to me and brighten up everything. 

 

I sewed some leaves onto plain green chiffon with machine stitching....

 

...then cut them out.

 

I sewed them around the edge of the wall hanging to break up the lines that the sides create and to represent nature breaking out of boundaries that humans place on it.

So, that's my Spring/Summer 'Wild Nature'. I'm working on Autumn and Winter will be here soon (quite literally! 😀)

Remembrance

I just wanted to give a small tribute to all the people who sacrificed their lives in wars to fight for our freedom.

When people talk about "heroes" now they mean film stars or pop stars or sport stars, but they are just doing their jobs. The real heroes in life are the people who try to win peace in this world, who try to help others live in safer times and places.

So, to all those men and women who have fought for that, been injured or killed, thank you for what you have done so we may be free.

Batty for Samhain

Happy Halloween / Samhain!

To celebrate this time of year, I've got some lovely batty friends to share with you.

This is an amigurumi bat I made with some special effects thrown in:

Here he is without effects. He's quite cute actually.

Halloween has developed into a very different thing from its original purpose. It wasn't always about ghosts and witches, or even "Scary Monsters and Super Creeps" :) Originally called Samhain, it was a festival to celebrate the end of the year. Over two thousand years ago during the Iron Age, this was their New Year, a time to celebrate the end of the old, the beginning of the new and the onset of winter.

They used to have bonfires and feasts. It was also a time when the veil between the worlds became very thin, so the spirits of the Otherworld could come into our world and people could easily accidentally wander into the Otherworld never to be seen again.

It wasn't about being scary or frightening people, though the spirits coming through may have been something to guard against, but it was about a celebration of the turning of the year, the cycles of nature and probably for the harvest they'd had. That would have included apples, of course, which became used, as Samhain developed, in the tradition of apple bobbing - one old thing that still survives. Turnips were carved, not pumpkins, to give light in the darkness and to ward off evil beings in the centuries that followed, especially when Christianity became widespread.

So, although I've made a bat and drawn and painted another, I sometimes wish we could go back to the earlier, nature-based celebration rather than the monster and skeleton stuff of today. But, in the end, it's a bit of fun before the darkness of winter.

Have a spooky day! :)

Photos of Summer

Now that Autumn has arrived, I thought I'd post a few more of the photos I took of flowers, plants etc during the Summer. One last look at their beauty before the different colours of the Autumn and Winter set in. 

This is a photo of rain drops on aquilegia leaves with the sun shining through them, creating sparkling light and shadow.

Here is a tulip with its gorgeous cream and crimson stripes. 

This is one of my regular visitors: a woodpigeon, snuggling down on a branch against a cold breeze. 

 

I intend to use all of these photos in one way or another in my textile work and painting, either through drawing them and turning them into textile art or paintings or by taking influence from their colours, shapes, petals, leaves, feathers, etc. 

Whatever I make, I'll be posting it here so you can see the process and transition from one thing to another. I hope you'll like it. 

Nessie the second.

Remember the Nessie I crocheted for the Loch Ness Knit Fest? Well, I loved him so much I had to make another one for myself that I could keep. This one is a different colour but the same shape and size.

It didn't take that long to make him and I finished him yesterday evening.

Here he is posing on a stone.

Here he is peeping through the leaves, trying to hide just like the one in Loch Ness does.   :) 

I can see myself having to dig a pond for him to use as his own little loch.  ;)