Embroidered denim jacket {Pt.3}

Hello my friends!

Welcome back to another episode of what-have-I-been-up-to-recently!

This week I thought I’d post an update of the progress I’ve been making on my embroidered denim jacket!

I’m sure it’s going to look awesome when I finally finish it, denim is super tough to embroider but the stick and stitch paper is magic. Once I’d finished the dandelion and dandetiger I decided to cut away pretty much all of the excess design and and reprinted the pattern so I could literally cut out all the flowers I want to included and play with the layout as I go along, its made the process feel much more organic and if I want to move something from A to B it doesn’t mess with the overall design as I’m now making it up as I go along. So that I have plenty of room to manoeuvre I reprinted the whole image on the sticky paper flipped the image over and printed it again which means I’ve got more flowers to play with.

The wildflowers from Disney’s Alice In Wonderland (the 50’s disney cartoon) are literally my favourite part of the movie and I’m so excited to finish this project.

The pansies were actually really hard to do, I did actually completely unpick one as it was looking so evil! (I really don’t recommend trying to unpick on denim) because these flowers are so much smaller than the ones I’ve already finished I decided to outline them in tiny black stem stitches that I could just colour in between the lines which did speed the process up.

The next part I’m going to be working on is the iris and lily, the stem of the dandelion and I’m thinking of adding a couple of naughty daffodils at the bottom.

Hopefully it wont be too long before I post another update to track how everything’s going! So that’s it for this weeks denim-jacket-project post…I hope you enjoyed it.

As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!

Ps. Its really hard to photograph this nicely in its current state!!

Psps. if you want to see part 2 its HERE

Embroidered denim jacket {Pt.2}

Hello my friends and welcome!

I scheduled this to post last night (Saturday) but for some reason it didn’t work!?

Anyhoo…

This week I thought I’d post a super quick update of the progress I’ve been making on my embroidered denim jacket!

Watching Alice In Wonderland (the 50’s disney cartoon) is literally one of my favourite childhood memories (along with Sleeping beauty) and I just love the Wildflowers so it made total sense to decorate this jacket with them.

I can only embroider the denim for a few days at a time as its so thick it just hurts my fingers too much (I’ve actually taken to wearing plasters as I hate thimbles!) and I’ve removed the rest of the stick ’n’ stitch paper as it had begun to unstick in places. My new plan is to reprint the design and just stick on each flower as I go – it also makes it look a little less daunting.

So far I’m incredibly pleased with how its looking, the Dandy-tiger is my favourite as it look so 3D! 

Continue reading “Embroidered denim jacket {Pt.2}”

Embroidered denim jacket {New project Pt.1}

Hey friends,

I don’t know about you but as a craft minded person I sort of have a craft bucket list of all the things I’d really like to make (or at least have a go at!) something I’ve always wanted to create is an amazingly embroidered one-of-a-kind denim jacket!

I found this particular jacket at my local thrift joint about eight months ago and totally fell in love with its ridiculously long sleeves, its a bit big but the sleeves are just too cool, plus its really soft.

Continue reading “Embroidered denim jacket {New project Pt.1}”

Advice from a Caterpillar

Hello friends,

I hope you’ve had a good week so far! This weeks post a few pieces of art about about one of my all time favourite book characters – the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland! And I thought maybe it might be fun to post some pages from my sketchbook.

And while the original Sir John Tenniel illustrations are in black and white in the book the Caterpillar is described as being blue (and precisely 3 inches tall) so I thought that tall my caterpillar related art should use blue tones. Theres a couple of cute drawings, some hand lettering art of “How Doth the Little Crocodile” and a brilliant Terry Pratchett quote!

So, enjoy some blue toned caterpillar/mushroom related art…I hope you like it.

This caterpillar is based more from the 2010 film directed by Tim Burton, I think the movie Absalom (although in the books he doesn’t have a name and is just referred to as the Caterpillar) is much more chilled out than the 1951 Disney version – who in my opinion was far too much of a diva and he yells at Alice far too often ! It’s drawn with crayons which are far harder to control than I remember them being as a kid!

“How Doth the Little Crocodile” is a poem by Lewis Carroll which appears in his 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice recites it while attempting to recall “Against Idleness and Mischief” by Isaac Watts. It’s such a brilliant little poem and has always been one that stuck in my head.

Continue reading “Advice from a Caterpillar”

Alice in Wonderland

Hello my friends!

This week I want to share an art post with you, Alice in wonderland is and has always been one of my favourite things in the world, the story is fun, the original art was truly incredible and the 1951 Disney movie was my second favourite film as a child (the top spot belonged to Sleeping Beauty!)

So this week I thought I post not 1 or 2, but 10 pieces of Alice in Wonderland related art.

Firstly, if you’ve read my other art posts then you’ll know just how much I love my set of Arteza brush pens. They work like normal colouring pens but instead of a felt tip they have a brush one (as the name implies!) but can be used with water to create watercolour paint – its so nice to have an amazing array of colours with the need to carry around all the little watercolour paint blocks, plus the colours are super vibrant too!

‘The little Blue Caterpillar’ sat on a Fly agaric mushroom complete with a few tufts of grass, is first drawn with ink and then block coloured.

If it hasn’t been mentioned before I love calligraphy art and hand lettering ‘The Secret Alice’ quote is from the Disney movie, but it’s not actually in the book and wasn’t written by Lewis Carroll. But, as quotes go it’s a lovely one and it meant I could write ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in gold ink within the design!

‘I want a clean cup’ is drawn to look like a teacup, using 4 shades of blue watered to a very thin consistency and then written with a calligraphy pen.

Continue reading “Alice in Wonderland”

The White Rabbit

The White Rabbit was illustrated by Sir John Tenniel for ‘Alice’s adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll in 1866. I absolutely love his illustrations, so this is my attempt at Sir John’s White rabbit of Hearts. I’m quite pleased with it! Drawn with Winsor & Newton Indian ink.

“Near the King was the White Rabbit with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other.

Continue reading “The White Rabbit”

A World of My Own

Alice in wonderland has long been one of my favourite things in the world so continuing my experimenting with water colours to try and bring more green and nature inside in the winter and combining my love of all things green with my love of calligraphy and quotes, they don’t take long to do, but look really effective against a white wall – my funny little brain likes to pretend its alchemy!

Little picnic in the woods {Art/Photography Project}

Its happened, its autumn – although I feel like we skipped my favourite season and have gone straight to winter, its so cold!

But I’ve been out in the wild to photograph the change in nature and I took this with me.

The unexpectedly small tea party. Created using paper, unsurprisingly this took longer than expected.  Its made to be about the same size as dollhouse furniture (I think its 1/12 scale) and then I covered some dollhouse dishes.  I made it years ago and found it recently, can’t believe its still holding together!

I made this when I was a Uni as a part of my finals as part of an Alice in Wonderland project. It’s not using actual book pages (I could never destroy a book like that!) but is from photocopies from a book. The paper was then rolled or lined with card to help it keep its shape.

Alice in Wonderland is a big part of my life and I have an awful lot of art to go with it!