Ballistic Owl on Etsy, shop now open!

After a year or so of procrastinating, I finally plucked up the courage and opened my Etsy shop in February. It stays with the owl theme and you can find it through this link www.etsy.com/shop/BallisticOwl

It has a range of items on it at the moment including tote bags and cushions. The first few items are from a collection I did for the Fashion, embroidery and stitch show and thought I would list them to kick start my shop. These are based on cells and seeds a theme I fell in love with during the final year of my degree. I intend to add more items and will also add some embroidered pieces once I've tidied the edges.

 Pods - Copyright Ballistic Owl 2013

The above image is one of the newer listings, it has my Pods design digitally printed on cotton and made into a gorgeous pillow-like cushion made with my own fair hands. I had a fab week last week, printing, sewing and finishing products. I hope to do more this week too, so keep an eye on the shop as I will be adding to it.

Gothic- Copyright Ballistic Owl 2013

This Gothic cushion is one of the first prints in my new collection, which explores an eclectic mix of inspiring images from my huge library of photographs, which include architectural details as well as other snaps I've taken when I've found something visually intriguing. This collection will gradually evolve as I develop the imagery and start investigating more techniques to translate it onto fabric.

So keep watching and popping by, I do love your company and comments :-)

A measure of time.....

It's finished (well almost), just a few finishing touches to add and a trim. I'm really pleased with this piece and glad I managed to resurrect it from the land of unfinished embroidery. I've really enjoyed sitting by the fire on these chilly nights and sewing away. I also like the way it grew organically and is quite different from the plan I had originally sketched out. 

It reflects on the thoughts of too many things to do and not enough time to do them in, but also that I'm away a fair bit and do not always have the time to indulge some of my other passions. I am though more determined to make more time for my other indulgences and enjoy the progress and the final product of that time.

 A measure of time, 

copyright Tracy Bidwell February 2013

 Bird detail from: A measure of time, 

copyright Tracy Bidwell February 2013

 Detail from: A measure of time, 

copyright Tracy Bidwell February 2013

So what next you may wonder........Well I have lots of ideas and pieces of fabric waiting to be worked into and developed. But I have enjoyed the embroidery so much that I'm going to continue with it especially on these dark nights. I have this piece in progress, which is on a cyanotype print I did last summer when we had that one day of sun! So watch this space, I will post pictures of it's progress here or on Facebook.

My next project......

Solihull and the embroiderers guild

Last March at the Fashion, embroidery and stitch show I met lots of lovely people and had great conversations with many of them. One lady who stopped by was Ann from the Solihull Embroiderers Guild, we had a lovely chat which then led to Ann asking if I could visit the guild and talk about my work. Now Ann is a very organised lady and the following years speakers are always booked way in advance, by the beginning of last April I was booked in for February 5th 2013!

Last week that date arrived and I enjoyed a lovely ride down on the train, reading my book, gathering my thoughts and looking at the gorgeous countryside as it whizzed past. Once in Birmingham I had to change trains to get to Solihull and took some snaps on the walk in between.

The side of Selfridges was amazing with its big aluminium discs and as I turned the corner a man was abseiling down it! 

 In contrast the lovely old Birmingham Moor Street station, with its iron girders and old style lamps and signage. I loved the little old train sitting at the platform here.

 The old seats with high backs, it was like stepping back in time at this station. If I'd have had more time between trains I would have explored a bit more.

My work spread out ready for the talks, it was really hard choosing which pieces to take, but I think I got the right mix in the end!

The guild meet in the local Methodist church hall on a Tuesday and have two meetings, one in the afternoon and the other in the evening. It's a well attended group with at this particular meeting 40 ladies in the afternoon and 25 in the evening. I was asked to speak for about an hour at each session after the general announcements were made. 

The talks went very well with lots of lovely comments and feedback afterwards as people came to look at the work in more detail. Particular hits were my drawing sheets and prints from the minute detail, big impact project, my embroidered dress panels from the 2nd year fashion project where I looked at birds and Art Deco. Also my cyanotypes and needle felt clock that I have worked on since I graduated. 

I loved the whole experience and all those crits and presentations Claire and the other tutors made us do really stood me in good stead! 

I was very well looked after and in between each talk I was taken to a lovely ladies house for cups of tea and dinner. We talked about all sorts of things (even though I was slightly croaky after the talk), including some of the courses she has been on and showed me some of her beautiful work. As well as the guild gaining some inspiration from what do, I did too by looking at some of the projects my hosts had completed. 

Ann and the Solihull Embroiderers Guild are a lovely group of people and very hospitable and I'd like to thank them for inviting me to talk to them and for looking after me so well. They produce some gorgeous embroidery projects and if you go the Fashion, Embroidery and stitch show this year look out for some of their work on the guild's stand.

A step into the surreal and reviving the forgotten.

I was pottering around the other day on a rare occasion of having a bit of time to hand, oh how I love that feeling and having the time to think and let the mind wonder. I had caught up on all my jobs and had spent a couple of days creating a photo book of Barcelona, which I had thoroughly enjoyed doing and I wasn't back to my other job until later in the week. With this time I began to think about some of the work I had started or maybe re-developing some other ideas when I remembered about a piece of forgotten embroidery I'd started way back in Feb/March last year.

I had torn an image out of a magazine that documented the demise of an old building in America. It had caught my eye because of the colours within the image and also the way it had deteriorated. I did a drawing and used mixed media to get across the textures within the image and had thought there was more to be done with it. So I had started this embroidery. However as with some things it got put aside, partly because I'd got stuck on an element and partly because other work called. It then languished in my sewing cupboard for months, until this free day I had.

The images below show what I managed to do in the process of a day and a bit. I had discovered a technique through a friend and I had been wanting to use it on a project and why I had not thought of this particular piece at the time I do not know. Anyway thanks to that I've now filled in the main image and now need to embellish it's surroundings so it's not floating on the cloth alone.

 Copyright Ballistic Owl 2013

Copyright Ballistic Owl 2013

Perhaps as well I'd been inspired and reminded of it by our recent visit to Dali's Museum in Figueres. These images are from the museum and show Dali's most popular surrealist style of morphed images and distorted objects. Perhaps in my subconscious my clock was sitting and just waiting for the right sort of inspiration to revive it.

 Dali: self portrait with grilled bacon.

 Dali: Two bedside tables and a bed ferociously attacking a cello.

 Dali: scene with his famous distorted clocks.

I loved our time at the museum and discovered that Dali did so much more than just the famous clocks and alien creatures. He also painted in a more classical style and enjoyed optical illusion imagery which makes the viewer stop a while to discover more. 

Well I'm not promising optical illusions, but I will work into my clock piece more and enjoy a taste of the surreal world.

Creative spectacular

Happy New Year to all my fellow bloggers and followers! I hope you all had a great festive period and are now raring to go and be creative in the year ahead.

Christmas time for us, as with many people is a busy time and we piled on the miles as well as a few pounds as we travelled the country seeing our family and friends. Now I'm home and the clothes have been unpacked and washed it is time to turn  my creative head on and get some drawings and ideas flowing.

It was a significant birthday for me just before Christmas and as a real treat we flew out to Barcelona for a week and had a fantastic time. I've loved Gaudi's work ever since our art history lecturer did a presentation on him and have always wanted to go and see it all for real.

My poor camera and probably poor husband were taken all round the buildings that I most wanted to see. For me it was a feast for the eyes, everywhere you looked there was an interesting piece of architecture or a fascinating detail. A VERY small selection of my photographs are below.

 The Passion facade at Sagrada Familia

 Casa Batllo

 Ceiling in the living room at Casa Batllo

 Gorgeous windows at Sagrada Familia

 Chimney on Palau Guell

Surreal art at the Dali museum

So now with renewed creative vigour I have tidied my table in the studio, so I can actually work on it and will put together a mood board and start drawing. I have been so busy on the run up to Christmas with my other job that Ballistic Owl and my drawing have been a little neglected, but I will redress the balance. After seeing all the spectacular work of Gaudi and his sources of inspiration I may even visit some old favourite topics with renewed enthusiasm and I'm itching to get started.

I also have a bundle of fabric that was printed last year for the embroidery show and I'm now gathering thoughts as how to use it and then hopefully sell the finished article. So any suggestions as to what I could do with it would be great.

So if you are ever stuck for a holiday destination and you've never been to Barcelona, I would highly recommend it and make sure have a big enough memory card in your camera!!

More than just a doodle....

The other day I received and email from Amazon recommending a book. Sometimes I take a further look at these suggestions other times I don't. This time the book in question tweaked my curiosity, it was "One Zentangle a day: a 6-week course". I thought mmmm what's this then and took a peek and then researched this interesting idea further.

If you Google Zentangles loads of stuff comes up from books, images to YouTube videos. First called Zentangle by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas it a form of drawing that you can get lost in completely!! Their idea is start off with a small square of good paper and draw a string (line) within the square. This string can be as simple or as complex as you like and then you fill it in. The idea is that you let your mind relax and fill in the shapes with whatever comes to mind or maybe it's something nearby. The Zentangle is not really supposed to be of one particular thing, just a patchwork of drawing thoughts I like to think.

Now at first I thought this is just like doing a continuous wiggly line like I did as a kid and filling it with colour. You know those loopy pictures you used to do? However this is a bit more than that, if you look at Google images people have done some amazing things. There are some ideas of what you can fill your spaces with and some websites have special names for certain patterns and instructions on how to do them.

However for me I just wanted to come up with my own and just let my creative mind wonder and enjoy the process. The images above are of my versions and as you can see I couldn't resist adding a bit of colour! The top one is complete and I've just started with the bottom image. It's great to take some time out of a busy schedule and relax and be creative just to be creative, who knows what may happen to my little patchwork of thoughts drawing.......

My owl collection

Next to my desk is a shelf unit which groans under the weight of all my sketchbooks, files, journals, books and paper. It is also the place where I place other precious things such as china cups, special edition golden syrup tins and now my ever growing collection of owls!

The owl cushion was the first resident and I bought it on a craft stall in Richmond from a lovely lady. We found the brass bookmark in an old bookcase we bought. It's delicately embossed with the "Owl and the pussy cat" in their boat and the first verse of the poem and I love it. The jade owl was given to me by my in-laws from one of their trips abroad. The pink felt owl and owlet was from my sister-in-law. The glass owl was a fantastic TKMaxx find and was on my stand at the NEC in March alongside his blue friend, who is on the mantle piece downstairs. I also have a lovely owl pin that is on my coat given to me on my graduation by my Mum.

My most recent find was this lovely mug! I fell in love with it as soon as I spied it on a stall at Tynemouth market last week. It's a Hornsea  mug and was designed and screen-printed by John Clappison back in the 1970's. I love the simple style and the combination of colours and also the humour of the design. All the owls are wide awake apart from the one on the left who is fast asleep, which I thought would be me! It is a very welcome addition to my owl collection and I will look out for more owl things and maybe some more Hornsea pottery as I love the style as it reminds me of my childhood and the herb jars my Mum had.

Is there anything you like collecting?