Swedish bracelet

 On Saturday I participated in a bracelet making session. It is in the style of a Sami traditional crafted bracelet. It is made of tin wires, reindeer leather and reindeer antler crafted button. Very cuddly to make especially with a broken arm. I worked slowly and my arm was aching at the end. Hope I haven’t done further damage. The class was run by a Swedish woman , Annette who gave us some information on the Sami people of Sweden, Norway and Finland the indigenous peoples of these areas. They were mostly reindeer herders. It was really interesting and very rewarding when such a beautiful bracelet came together. 

February being

 I have been doing the 28 days in February creative daily arts practise presented by @prophetofbloom . Working on a large sheet of paper daily. This is a detail of one side when half way through the daily doings. Short simple but so inspirational to keep adding , playing along . 

Last two days

Travel challenge days 4 and 5 were to relate to Z and C so here is the Fort Zeelandis in Tainan. Built by the Dutch in the 1600’s but now called Old Anping Fort.

. This is watercolour pencil on khaki rag paper with part of the wall of the fort crumbling .

Five Day Challenge

 I have just completed a 5 day challenge with Art for your Heart. It was based around travel. Each day the host Heather Matthew drew a letter of the alphabet from a jar and whatever letter it was that is what we had to base our piece for the day. Any creative medium drawing, painting, sketch , collage ,fabric . It could be a country a city real or imagined . 

So the first day was J so I chose to represent the Pink City of Jaipur, where I traveled in 1983. 

It is a sketch in watercolour pencil then lace and organza applied with stitch. On Khadi paper that I have in the form of an accordion book, with five pages. Just enough for the challenge. I might write out the story on the back. At this stage I was hoping to be able to do each page relating to somewhere I have traveled.

The second day the latter drawn was F. So I did Fes and stitched the outline of a sketch of the Blue Gate on a piece of dyed scrim. I travelled to Fes as one of the stops on a trip to Spain and Morocco in 2013.

I have left the paper on partly as I like the look of it , but I may remove more of it. 

The third day the letter was B. So I chose to be inspired by Bergen in Denmark. Outside of Bergman is the historic railway line from Myrdal to Flåm. When I took this trip in 2018 there were flurries, snowy peaks, rivers below , pine trees , steeps cliffs and fiords, small villages and crisp, clear cold.