Two photos to let you know I am still around, and to try to get into the habit of fairly regular additions to the blog. 
I am presently working on some small Irish Sea textile pieces, in a similar vein to the Eden Valley Summer pieces that you can see on the small textiles page. 
Also rather busy trying to put together a website for ARTetc. 

Trying out acrylic painting. These are small - 5'' x 5'' and 4'' x 4'' 
I still like the square format. I'm not sure they are finished yet - maybe some more layers to add or to cover up. Not as easy as it looks, but I like the consistency of the paint. Both these have a layer of collage as a base. 

New designs for this summer - some based on designs created for a Strathmore workshop, and some based on butterfly fabric prints.

Making new supplies of hand-sewn notebooks.

Inspiration came early this morning - I now have some ideas about how to develop yesterday's print-making session - not a waste of time after all. It's interesting, isn't it how inspiration comes when you aren't expecting it - lucky too :)
Watch this space!

Had a day experimenting with the gelatine plate - with variable success. It is easy to over complicate things isn't it? I guess I have a lot to learn about printing - maybe I need to be clearer about what I am trying to achieve.
But it's necessary to experiment isn't it.

Printing butterflies for book covers today.  Mostly went fine, then I made one of those mistakes that turns out well. Messed up the surface with excess paint and decided that I didn't have anything to lose, so to see what happened I laid the fabric onto water - the wet acrylic softened, I took it out and squeezed the water out. The wet, diluted paint has given the whole a smudgy look, which works quite well in its own way. Serendipity!

Here is the first one I did, without the smudges. The spaces between the butterflies remains white.
I think I prefer the smudgy one.

Day three of setting up the website.
Decided to purchase a domain name - more expense!  Found out that my LinkedIn link doesn't work - access is private. Actually that's good to know, and I don't use it much anyway. Am finding it quite time consuming to get everything right. A good tip is to have all your photos ready beforehand, at a fairly low resolution so that they upload quickly. Also have ready the statements you want to make about yourself and your work.
I like the way the website is easy to edit, the addition of pictures is straightforward, and I like the facility for clicking on a picture to get a larger view -works like a dream.

Today I have taken the step of publishing my new website. It's not complete, I know, but I couldn't resist the buzz of seeing how it looks online. I'm doing it with Weebly, and the system seems fairly easy to use once you get used to its foibles.
Do I have to log on to Weebly and select 'edit' before I write any blog posts? We'll see.