As an artist my greatest inspiration is nature. I also find the works of other artists inspiring. I have a special fondness for the early scientific illustrators who were commissioned by kings as well as explorers who were brave enough to travel to unknown lands to record exotic plants and record the different species of cultivated and local wild plants. I didn’t mention that I also garden and forage. You will find that these interests are reflected in the ephemera that I create.

This little hat is part of an accessory collection which I am designing influenced by the textiles of South Asia. Traditional recycled fabrics and materials were used to add touch of authenticity.

I am a self taught artist living in the UK. I have always tried arts and crafts although now I mainly work with textiles. I have a passion for design, costume, embellishments and free form embroidery using traditional and contemporary techniques. I usually work small and make  textural and dimensional pieces mostly using vintage and recycled materials. I am greatly inspired by history and culture and love to create both historical and bespoke accessories and buttons.  I am at the start of my journey and enjoy every second of researching, planning  and making all my projects.

This quirky  piece is a sculptural sampler of costume accessories.  It is made up of tiny scraps of fabric, a cardboard shoe insert  and a lot of different techniques.

I am a self taught artist living in the UK. I have always tried arts and crafts although now I mainly work with textiles. I have a passion for design, costume, embellishments and free form embroidery using traditional and contemporary techniques. I usually work small and make  textural and dimensional pieces mostly using vintage and recycled materials. I am greatly inspired by history and culture and love to create both historical and bespoke accessories and buttons.  I am at the start of my journey and enjoy every second of researching, planning  and making all my projects.

My grandmother taught me to crochet doilies with fine cotton thread when I was twelve years old. I always loved the lace like look the fine cotton thread produced. I think it was then I developed a love for shabby chic and anything Victorian. I love the softness and pastel colors of shabby chic but I also like vibrant colors and glitz and glam. My Etsy shop is called TheGloryShoppe and features illuminating and bedazzled items for the home and special occasions.

This little Coptic book has four signatures with three folded pieces of paper for journaling or doodling.  Each signature has a signature wrap with the same doodle print that is used on the cover.  Black waxed linen is used for the stitching.  I stitched the signature loosely in case someone wants to use the book for a glue book.  The pictures will bulk up the book so the loose stitching will give it a wee bit more room.  The inside of both the front and back cover are lined with scrapbook paper.  This little journal can be used for a mini photo book for a friend, new parent, or documenting artwork.  It would make a cute little gift for a fellow artist.

I have always been creative growing up. I watched my mother, who had a beautiful eye for putting things together, and she especially loved fabric. We always had a pretty pile of it in the house. She would find antiques sitting on the side of the road and she would transform them with stain or paint or fabric. Her grandmother was a tailor by trade and she got her love of fabrics from her Mama B as we called her.

I have felt a kinship with old things all my life. If I wasn’t outside making mud pies you would find me in someone’s closet seeking out old hankies,buttons, bits of lace, broken jewelry and old books….opening all those little boxes to discover odd hidden treasures inside. To this day I feel magic when I hold something old – they are like quiet friends in the room keeping me company as I create.

I came upon junk journals on Pinterest right before Covid hit. I was amazed that I had found an avenue to put my love od old things together – to tell a story in a book – so appropriate because both my mother and I love to collect books and read. So it came back around to my mother, the woman who gave me such an appreciation for things that may have been discarded.

We both knew it could be made beautiful again.

This quilt started as a idea to merge together two different shapes/grids – squares and
triangles/hexagons. The tree trunks are squares and the foliage triangles and hexagons.
The tricky part was how to move smoothly from one grid to the other and I am happy with the way I
did it.

At the time I was designing it there was a quilt competition in Brisbane called ‘Love you Queensland’
so I added borders to represent the borders of the state and entered. I didn’t win, nor did I expect to
but it was a great exercise. It took me a full month of 10 hour days.The border on the right is the Pacific ocean and the rivers running into it and top right is the rainforest and the Cooktown orchid. On the left is dry desert of the Northern Territory and at the top is the Gulf of Carpentaria. Bottom left is a small area representing the Darling Downs where a lot of our local food is grown.

As an “experimenter” in art, I use a variety of tools, techniques and materials to make layered, aged- and weathered-looking art that tells a story. I love the idea of using things beyond their original intent, giving a scrap of fabric or bits of metal new life in a one-of-a-kind piece of art.

So my art, my blog, and my website are all about being experimental using techniques that suit my style including stitching, eco-printing, and tea bag art all in an art journal.

My love for creating developed due to my budget constraints when I was a very young mother. My children would ask me if they could be a “ninja turtle” and I could not afford those kinds of costumes back then so I bought a secondhand sewing machine (made payments) and self-taught myself to make their costumes and that evolved to making their invitations for parties, party decorations to include buying a second hand Wilton cake decorating book and making their birthday cakes.  Through those hard times, I learned that I loved art, creating and using what we have to create! Now, my kids are all grown up (my oldest is 40 years old)  and their mama is still creating after all these years and finds herself immersed in hunting for vintage treasures, reusing, and recycling vintage books, and vintage ephemera to create beautiful junk journals in her spare time.