Tatting and watercolor intersected

Haven't posted anything for a while cause I have been finding lots of pleasure in watercoloring and I didn't want to transform this weblog to a watercolor corner !

But I have done tatting ! Here is a bookmark pattern of which is freely available here. I love all the details in this pattern. Its very intricate.

I can't wait to get to my paintings :P , I have done plenty so I won't post them here at once but I will add a few with a new tatting each time. This is how I am trying to keep the balance between the two !
First a landscape of a rock in the horizon. I have done it on a sketchbook so the paper wasn't good enough for lots of washes this painting had.

Rock in horizon

Next, A chair in perspective. Its a real chair sitting in the corner of our living room.

Chair in perspective

And last is a post card in spirit of the season. Ready to me mailed out to a dear friend:)

Happy new 2013

Colors, Shadows, Splash

Practice, practice, practice
That's what I've been doing and will be ! Last week has been about painting objects. The most important point that I've learned is to make contrast...to make boldness by variation in color intensity and shadows. That what makes your painting stand out and attract the eye ..make it navigate through your painting. My attempt here has not been a very good example of this lesson though ! gotta make it bolder and play with shadows more !

Watercolor Shell

Eastern Window

Next, its about doodles. trying to put color, shadows and pencil lines all together. these types of paintings are my favorites..maybe cause cause they're easier and they look pretty !!

Watercolor doodle

Flower Doodle

More watercolor practicing

Haven't been tatting much lately means I have been watercoloring :)
I have finished lesson 3 of the Alisa Burke's Watercolor Bliss. I feel I haven't got to the good parts of the class yet. Until now I have covered Utensile, Introduction to Color, and Backgrounds. I am more than ready to start the techniques section and do some real work !

Nevertheless I haven't done nothing ! I have tried experimenting myself without worrying much about technique or the fact that I don't know what I am doing. I have no idea how a paiting will end to be like but I am not worrying about that right now..just painting and enjoying myself. Here are my attempts :

Watercolor bridge

Children of the world

Surreal

For the blues of the world

Amusement Doily, not quite

For the past weeks I have been working on the 'amusement doily' which I came across on Tat-a-Renda weblog. The first good thing is that the pattern is out there for free ! :)

As you see I have not quite followed the pattern. I liked Tat-a-Renda's version better. She ran out of thread and that's why she shortened the process but I did have quite a lot of thread ! I am just not  a fan of overcrowded rings cramped next to each other. I think this version shows the pattern more and leaves viewers with more appreciation as it doesn't draw the attention to only overcrowded parts.

Excepts that, I have been up to some other thing ;) I finally signed up for Alisa Burke's water color class. I will be sharing with you my creations along the way. You tell me if you can see improvements in my work over the coming weeks as I continue my progress with the course ;)

Here is my first two attempts. Try to create painting and shades with one color only !

Mixed Bouquet motif

Last week has been devoted to tatting 'Mixed Bouquet' motif which I came across on 'Le Blog de Frivole'. The motif is very unique in the sense that its not a round, same old, same old pattern. I enjoyed tatting it alot. It looks amazing and finishes pretty quickly.

teeny round motif

I have been working on a teeny tiny motif. Its very pretty and can be used as pendant or earrings or anything else you fancy ! Here is a link to the original design and the pattern. Here is mine :

 

The original version looks like it has longer chains. I am not sure why cause I have followed the same stitch count. Maybe I shouldn't have pressed them so hard together.

Tatting, necklace, painting, watercolor

This past week was dedicated to tatting this necklace from Yarnplayer's blog. The necklace is fairly easy to make. builds up quickly and looks good ! So I would say it makes a perfect gift. You can have many different colors of it matching your different dresses too :)

Also, I have not yet given up on watercoloring. Yes, I am hopeful one day I can be proud of what I paint ! ;) For the time being, I am just practicing and enjoying what this world can bring out in me. Here is one:

Tatted bracelet

The inspiration for my new creation comes from a post here.
I got the idea and twisted it a bit by adding beads in the joins. This is one of the very few tattings I have done with beads that boosted my self confidence cause I always taught I'm not good with beads ! Its a very easy pattern and makes a gorgeous bracelet.

As I am getting more comfortable with tatting I am wondering about sharing my experience with other locals...May be like a meetup session that we could gather and see each other's works or learn a few things from each other ? I live in Toronto and I'm not sure how many visitors I have from Toronto but if you are out there interested in doing such a meetup please leave a comment and I'd be more than glad to follow up !

Failed Tatting, Successful Watercolor

I have been living in the worlds of tatting and watercolor simultaneously recently...Not two very related topics I know ! But I am trying to make it work :)

Having said that, I didn't quite succeeded in the tatting pattern I was working on. It was going very well until the very last part where I joined two ends of the tatting earlier than I should. I love the pattern though. You can find it here. I am very sad that I ruined it with carelessness. I might come back to it again and re-tat it..

But the watercolor attempt was a success. I came up with the design and color myself. I like to draw several copies of it and experiment different shades and coloring on it.

Sketch it and watercolor it

I know this weblog is all about tatting but I somehow seem to have developed an appetite for water color.  Well to be fair I can't ignore the very helpful source that I found recently in developing this appetite.

Since I saw this tutorial here I decided to sketch and paint it myself. I finally did ! I changed the coloring as I thought the original painting was too red for my taste...I guess I can still play more with the colors to find a better balance and harmony...maybe next time :)

A rather new start with Watercolor

Since I remember I have always been interested in painting and among all, very in favor of watercolor pairings. I think somehow fear of failure prevented me from even starting ...

I can't say the fear is gone or even I started watercolor painting but what I did last week could be a small stepping stone for what might come next :) Here it is :

The idea comes from a very interesting art blog I found recently. And this water color painting was shown step by step in her blog. I really like her art projects and it was her work that made me start what i always wanted to experience : water color painting !

Tatted Doily : Trinity

I posted an unsuccessful attempt of a tatted doily on my blog a while back. At the time I got tired of so much trying that I gave up. I went back to re-tat it and finally got something out of it :)

As you see the picots that connect the middle circle to the rest of the doily are a little too long :( but except that the rest looks good. I post the pattern here again in case you are interested. Just make sure your picots are not as long as mine ;)

Starfish Pendant

A new idea for a pendant struck my mind yesterday and I eagerly started to give it life outside my mind. Its a simple pattern overall and uses Self Closing Mock Ring technique(SCMR). I have learnt about SCMR recently and I must say they are a really powerful technique that can add lots of verity to your tatting works. Here is the result

 Here is a diagram showing this tatting pattern:

* Start with a SCMR: C5, R(5- place bead and hold it with a paper clip - 5), C7, R(5- join to the bead in the previous ring- 5) , C5 Close SCMR
C5
repeat steps from * five times


For those of you who are not familiar with SCMR here is a video that helped me in learning SCMR :

The Snowflake Frivole

I recently came across a very beautiful and rich blog with lots of precious tatting and patterns. Its probably already well known to you all but I have not seen it before..The patterns and projects are very elegant. Here is the blog.

She has put some of the patterns online and I chose a very pretty snow flake of hers to tat. Here is my version:

She has uploaded the PDF for the pattern with very clear descriptions on her blog in case you are interested.

New year's gift: Trinity Tatting pattern

I have a tatting book that I bought many years ago before the age of internet from my home country and at the time couldn't tat 90% of the patterns as they have minimal description about how to tat them. It has a very clear and nice diagram for each pattern though.

The book is not in English and there is no reference to where the patterns are originated from. I have not seen many of the patterns else where and I think they are all vintage patterns that are re-gathered by the lady who has published it. Her name is Nahid Moazez and I tried searching in the internet in the hopes of finding her or somehow being able to contact her.No Luck. I am not even sure if she is still continuing this art.

Anyhow, the book was published in my country long time ago and I think it didn't even get that much popular and you can't really find it anymore. Now that I have more confidence in tatting I have decided to tat the patterns and even put the patterns here so that more and more people can benefit from them or they will be lost in history.

My first attempt was a complete disaster as instead of 6 picots i tatted  5 and didn't even realize it till very late !!

I'm very disappointed in me. I think I will re-try the pattern again sometime in the future. Nevertheless here is the pattern diagram :

I put the sequenced number which can help you where to start and how to continue. The number of stitches is also marked on the pattern. As there is no name for it I call it "Trinity" for it has lots of 3's. Try it out and leave me a link to your beautiful works. I would love to see them.

My Tatting Adventure with Four Shuttles

Here begins my story for the last month.Yes! I have been working on this for one month !! :)
It started with me seeing a very pretty bridal lace cuff on etsy and wanting to tat it. I started with figuring out how I can tat something like that and here goes my first attempt.

I know not very pretty!:D
At this point I realized tatting this pattern with two shuttles are impossible and I have to make it with four shuttles. I have been wanting to order new shuttles for a while and this was the incident that made me do so as all my other shuttles were full. Here goes the second phase of my adventure: waiting for new shuttles. Finally they came.

These are clover shuttles bought from Ebay. I love them and recommend them to everyone. better than all my shuttles. Now that everything was ready I started tatting and tatting...very pleased with the result I must say :)

Tatted butterfly

I have been tatting the most elaborate and beautiful tatted butterfly I have seen so far. It is done in only one shuttle and is pretty easy yet pretty. The pattern and instructions are posted here.

 Its good to use up the threads that are left on your shuttles...I will make more with my left over threads over the time...love this butterfly!

Five Petal Pendant

For the last week I was working on a pendant from Yarnplayer's Up and Tat'Em book. This is the very first pattern in the book which I told you I skipped it cause I couldn't figure out how I should do it according to her instructions.

Then I came back to it determined to tat it! This pattern has a self closing mock ring which I had no idea what it is. Fortunately I found a very useful video on YouTube that demonstrated this technique ...Here is the vedio for those of you who might be new to this:

and the rest went smoothly according to instructions. I have not yet chosen a chain/ band for it. I think it makes a very beautiful pendant. Would like to tat different colors of this later.

perfect needs practice

The start of making tatted jewellery proved not be easy for me at all!
I started with the book on one side and all the shuttles and beads and threads and all the other good stuff on the other side and I got stuck right at the start :(
Finding the pattern complex for my novice hands I skipped that one and continued with the second pattern in the book. after several times of doing and un-doing I finally managed to finish one earning with some errors and missing beads...

even if you have never seen how beautiful the original tatting by Yarnplayer looks you could still tell this one is not a success...
Nevertheless I still got to finish it somehow which is the only acheivement I got with this pattern !
But hey I'm not a give up...I will start a second, a third and as much more needed to finally get  a good pair!

I want to make jewellery

Remember my frustration from the BIG motif I have taken for my last challenge? Well that made me think I want to switch to smaller patterns and I thought about trying out tatting jewelry. As I have no expertise or the smallest experience in that matter I thought I should start by a good book and here is what came by mail after considering my choices :

Thanks yarnplayer this looks like a very lovely book. I haven't started yet but hey keep an eye on my progress :)

That's not all I did for two weeks. In the meanwhile I tatted one of Jon's patterns called Rose Window which I had an eye on for a long time and wanted to tat it. As all Jon's patterns this one has a very clean and well-drawn pattern as well as written instructions to follow. Its a very fun motif to tat with three rounds.