Between football season, getting ready for the holidays at the store, falling down on the ice and hurting my shoulder, working up an online class and Thanksgiving, I haven’t been able to do any felting. But I’ve been adding to my sketchbook fairly regularly. I make a lot of background pages and then keep adding to them as I’m inspired. If I have left over paint or ink, I will add it to pages in my sketchbook, then I’ll add other layers as I go along. Sometimes it is hard to determine when a page is finished. Some turn out better than others, but it’s good for me to not to be “too perfect” and just let the page develop.

This one has quite a few layers on it. The last layer is the dark blue. I used one of my sweaters as inspiration to make the organic/leafy shapes. The hardest part was figuring out whether I was coloring in the negative spaces or not. But it all worked out in the end.

I made the majority of this page quite a while ago but it still needed something. I added the quote from George Bernard Shaw and the “Be Bold” and now it’s done.

This was playing around with my watercolor crayons and seeing if I could make leaf prints. The easiest way to do this was to get a little paint off the crayon, brush it on the backside of the leaf and then print. It didn’t take much paint for it to work.

The ginkgo leaf page was printed with the large leaf several months ago. I added the other bits by printing out a few things from the internet, adding gel pen and more watercolors. Sorry the photos are a bit dark but I am doing this at the last minute and it’s dark outside.

I think this piece was printed first and then I used gel pens to add highlights. The brown paper had been in with my paper scraps for sometime, that’s why I can’t remember how it was done. I don’t keep very good track of what I do, I really just play around.

This one has some watercolor crayon that I sprayed with water and let drip down the page. Then I printed a line of bubble wrap bubbles and added the stenciled iris. The leaves and stem are cut from green paper. This one feels like it needs a bit more but I’m not sure what.

This page had two layers of screen print. Then I outlined the blue with an orange metallic gel pen. It gives a cool reflective edge. So that’s what I have been doing in my sketchbook over the last several weeks. Sometimes these ideas get put into fiber in some way and sometimes they don’t. But it’s a fun way to try out color schemes and ideas.

If you’re going to be in the Seattle area on December 21st, please check out the Winter Solstice Open House being put on by Gwen Lowery. I donated a piece to be sold. You can click on the photo above for all the details.