I promised more art, and here it is! My sister is an opera singer and she said last year that she was trying to find a satchel type bag that she could carry her music in to work. She was having trouble finding something that wasn't either the wrong shape or too boring looking. So I hunted and hunted for a modern looking satchel (which was hard to find, I might add!) and then I added an artwork to the front of it to make it different!
The satchel turned out to be a fairly cheap one from a stationery shop. It was perfect with its large blank front panel.
The artwork is handmade "fabric paper" - I have seen this technique in "Cloth, Paper, Scissors" magazine and in Beryl Taylor's wonderful book "Mixed Media Explorations". It is a process of building up paper with PVA glue on a fabric background. I used a plain fabric in the background and then layered sheet music, serviettes, and images on card and paper with PVA glue. The servittes are wonderful because they go quite transparent with the glue and you get different layers showing through from underneath.
This image was from a glossy magazine. I blended it in by gluing serviettes over the edges of the paper. I chose her because I loved the glowing colours of her outfit, and her classical pose.
This image is of L'Opera in Paris (quite suitable for an opera singer's bag!!) and it was a reproduction image that was a giveaway in a "Somerset Studio" magazine.
Once I was happy with the layers I had built up, I took to the art with my sewing machine! I picked some plain and some fancy stitches and sewed around the images (to help make sure they didn't dislodge later) and around the whole artwork to frame it and secure the edges. Please don't look too closely at the sewing because I am NO seamstress! I love that I can finally make use of my sewing machine in mixed media artwork. Sometimes I go crazy with it, and I don't worry at all that the sewing is terrible!!
I gave this to my sister for Christmas and she was over the moon with it! I hope that it hasn't fallen apart yet!!!!
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