The DOT Group Blog

Choices

2011-12-12T19:41:00.003Z

Choices

We have been playing a new game recently entitled Choices where we all chose an image and uploaded it to Picasa web albums. We held a secret ballot and our favourite image was entitled Rickshaw, an image provided by Liz. In Round 1 we all worked on Rickshaw, altering it in some way using Photoshop Elements, and then uploaded the altered image to Picasa. In Round 2 we chose an image from Round 1 and worked on it and again uploaded it to Picasa. Rounds 3, 4 and 5 followed the same routine. We had instructions to avoid working on one particular person’s work and Liz gave us some pointers to follow such as to include text, circles, squares, the colour blue and to bear in mind the words transport, tropical, history etc. We made good use of the rickshaw of course and the windows and lanterns from the original image. It was nice to see the use of text and the subject lent itself to pattern making. Rickshaw Jenny and Rickshaw Lesley produced the most follow on images whereas Rickshaw Erica, Pat and Ros didn’t get off the starting block (must try harder!!). From the original image we produced 25 new designs.

I am attaching our starting image and my final image from Round 5. This had started originally as Jenny’s Rickshaw design and had been worked on by Jenny, Liz, Pat, Jenny again and then me. I struggled with Rounds 4 and 5 as the ideas in my head didn’t translate to the computer and in the back of my mind I was thinking “how would I make these into textiles”.

We start a new round of Choices in the new year. Watch this space!

"Lost In Lace" Exhibition - Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

2011-11-01T21:35:00.002Z

Erica visited this amazing exhibition on Saturday http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/collection-and-exibitions/exhibitions/lost-in-lace/

For more pictures from the exhibition see Erica's Google+ Photo Album

DOT On Show

2011-03-30T12:44:00.004+01:00

Proof that we were there! This is the DOT stand just as we had finished putting it up. The work was selected from our recent Consequences Exhibition. Erica Thomson and Jenny King are on the left and our two consenting Mr DOTs Barry and Jim (helpful husbands wielding spirit levels, steps and hammers). DOTs aim was to open people’s eyes to what you can do using a computer as a design tool in textile work, whether it is simply printing an image on fabric or doing more complex things. Every piece of work on the stand was derived from something we did on the computer. All the wonderful members of DOT who manned the stand felt that we achieved our aim. You can just about see Liz Welch's Friendly Plastic masks, and work by Jenny King, Ros Willis, Erica Thomson, and Pat Roberts. DOT’s group piece drew a lot of interest. It was based on a game of consequences (see earlier posts) using an image of an old mangle in the Millgate Museum at Newark. The hanging illustrated some of the very many different materials that can be printed on to at home. the other work in the picture is by Pat Roberts and Hilary Holden. Mr DOT x2 in repose, worn out by all that levelling, measuring and hammering. On the wall is work from Lesley Fowell, Erica Thomson, Jenny King and Liz Welch. In the foreground are the two big books that tell the story behind the work with lots of step by steps of the computer transformations that took place to achieve the finished pieces. Work for the original exhibition “Consequences” can be seen on a CD catalogues (£5) available from Liz (just email lizwelch@rarebird.ltd.uk). The CD contains more than 130 images including overall and close ups of every piece of work in the original exhibition plus work sheets describing the computer stages in developing each piece.

We hope you enjoyed viewing the work and meeting members, but most of all we hope we have inspired you to try your hand at making more of your computer in your creative lives.

Just a quickie

2011-03-26T21:01:00.004Z

Hello to everyone who has visited our stand at the NEC. I have mentioned our Picasa Web Albums to many visitors, suggesting they might like to take a look as we have loads of images which I'm sure will be of interest. Here is the link to our Picasa Web Album.
Erica

DOT exhibit at the Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch Show

2011-03-16T12:07:00.003Z

We really enjoyed meeting visitors at our recent exhibition, so much so that we decided that we would like to meet more of you, so....we will have a stand (ZP 21) at the Fashion Embroidery & Stitch show at the NEC Thu 24th - Sun 27th Mar 2011. Selected pieces of work from our recent ‘Consequences’ exhibition will be on display, along with much of the background computer work available to browse. There will be 2 or 3 of us there every day to chat with, so do come along to say hello.
Your ticket also includes entry to Sewing for Pleasure and Hobbycrafts.

Comments from the Visitors Book, Millgate Exhibition

2011-01-15T12:34:00.002Z

Wow - what a display of techniques and such a high standard and beautiful results - Congratulations. CF

Stunning work! A feast for the eyes and food for thought! BS

Fascinating process and range of outcomes - so many different interpretations and media used. All so beautifully displayed in this space. JB

Excellent exhibition. Really enjoyed looking through all the books. Best exhibition I've been to. LW

So varied and vibrant. It's amazing how one idea can go so many different ways. MA

A very interesting concept. What a good use of 'technology' at last! KS

Wish I could get that creativity out of my computer! DH

A wonderfully stimulating display, using modern technology and embroidery skills that have passed down through generations of crafts people. WH

Truly amazing to see the process from the beginning through to the final piece. I wish I had such imagination - let alone computer skills.

Amazing pieces of art, so different and imaginative. Intriguing how different people's interpretations of 'things' turn out. Loved it. L

Consequences - Last Day

2010-11-28T12:34:00.011Z

Today is the last day of our first exhibition and I think all Dotties should be proud of the success of Consequences. Everyone worked incredibly hard to make it all happen, and judging by the comments in the visitors book it has been very well received. The staff at Millgate Museum in Newark (the venue for those of you who have not managed to get there), were impressed, and the level of interest in the work has been high.

One of our aims was to make people realise just what a wonderful tool the computer is for assisting the creative design process in textiles, and I believe we have achieved that. People, young and old, have been fascinated by the computer work that went into creating each piece, and judging by the comments, we have inspired some of them to try it out for themselves.

We created a CD of images of all the work in the exhibition plus much of the background computer work to aid people in trying out some of the effects themselves. The CD is available for £5 plus P&P and it is incredible value for money as there are 130 images on the disc. (if you would like a copy email enquiries@rarebird.ltd.uk) Here is a little selection from the CD.

Erica's novel earrings created by scanning in clothing, and printing out on to paper and fabric then folding into origami earrings.

Jenny's beautiful Lillies created with print, paint and applique

Ros's nifty little Dorothy bag and how she came up with the design

Hilary's delightful frost inspired 3D wall piece in subtle colours, each of the four rosettes in the piece has been created by printing on to different surfaces.

Lesley is a first time exhibitor and one of the newest members of the group, but you would never know it from this lovely little bag.

I used one of the games of Consequences as the starting point for this mask made out of Friendly Plastic, fabric and wire.

Pat's delightful Clematis combines simple paper print outs and fabric.

If you missed the exhibition, then you missed a treat, but you can still purchase a CD, join a local group or the CTDG (Computer Textile Design Group), take a class, or simply get cracking on your own and see what your computer programmes can do for your creativity (a good way to start is buy a digital photo magazine and follow some of the tutorials on their free CDs, or check out the wealth of free tutorials available on line).

If you want to know more about each of us as artists then some of us have websites and blogs, others you will have to email directly, so check out the links at the side of the page.

Designs On Textiles "Consequences" Exhibition Oct-Nov 2010

2010-10-24T23:25:00.005+01:00

A video from our "Consequences" Exhibition at the Newark Millgate Museum.

The exhibition runs from 9th October to 28th November 2010

You can view this video in high definition (the YouTube default is 320p, you have to click on that and select 720p to view)

The exhibition is up

2010-10-16T12:32:00.002+01:00

Fame at last! The exhibition is up and receiving good reviews in the 'Comments Book'.
Some visitors have come especially, others have just happened upon it. For those who haven't been yet, there's still 5 more weeks to visit.

Intermesh

2010-09-24T13:08:00.004+01:00

This was the first piece of work I produced for our forthcoming exhibition at the Millgate Gallery, Newark which is on from 9th October until 28th November. It is approx. 60 x 40cms and mounted on a dark blue padded background.

Origami Earrings Day

2010-09-21T18:50:00.002+01:00

Today we had a very enjoyable day making origami earrings.

I will be teaching a class at the Husqvarna Shop in Nottingham on 26th October and I needed to practise teaching how to make the earrings with people who were not familiar with Origami techniques.

We made paper earrings, fabric earrings and then more paper ones, but this time to match our clothes. I had asked everybody to bring along paper print outs of scans of some of their clothes, along with the real garments to see which worked best. It was really interesting to see what everybody had chosen and how successful they had been. If you click on the picture, it will enlarge and you can see the huge variety of papers and fabrics we used. You can see some were made from print outs from our Still Life consequences game.

I hope everybody has gone home buzzing with ideas and will make more pairs, maybe as presents.

By the way, I posted this directly from Picasa (using the little icon - Blog this) - just another way to post.

Erica

Putting up posters

2010-09-21T17:40:00.004+01:00

With our forthcoming exhibition only 19 days away we are busy putting up posters in the Newark and Nottingham areas - those interested, please make a note of the details!

The posters were designed by Erica and Jenny - the image, printed on fabric, was taken from 'Millgate Consequences'.... more information on this and other images at the exhibition! Hope you can come along.

Lesley

PS To read all the details on the poster, just click on it.

A bag of frost

2010-09-11T17:45:00.003+01:00

Recipes

2010-09-11T07:34:00.006+01:00

Fancy a piece of lemon drizzle cake, cherry and coconut cake or a cupcake. A wipeclean

recipe book where you can add your own recipes into the plastic sleeves.

Sous the chef

2010-09-09T20:41:00.004+01:00

Dear all, long time, no blog.

In preparation for our DOT exhibition I am posting the details which explain the design behind my chef's hat. We were working on images of kitchen utensils and the idea to make a chef's hat suddenly came to me. I had great fun making it, hope you like it too.

Pink Belt

2010-09-09T15:42:00.003+01:00

Jenny's belt

Our smiling faces

2010-08-11T21:27:00.003+01:00

Here we all are in Ros's garden. It was the first time we had all been together for some time, so we grabbed the photo opportunity at today's meeting.

From L to R Jenny, Hilary, Lesley, Ros, Pat, Liz and Erica

An Exciting Announcement!

2010-08-03T13:42:00.006+01:00

We’ve been very quiet for quite a while now but for good reason - read on…..

We have some exciting news for you – we are holding an exhibition of our work later this year. It will be at the Millgate Museum, Newark, Nottinghamshire from October 9^th –November 29^th and entitled “Consequences”

Whilst visiting the museum to see the space for our exhibition, we decided that we should have a round of Consequences based on a photo taken at Millgate. As it was Lesley’s turn, she chose a photo she had taken of one of the displays – a mangle. On our Picasa Web Album, you can see “All 49” of the images from us which have all been taken from the photo of the mangle. You can also see how we have arrived at each of the images.

Much of the textile based work in the exhibition stems from computer images generated in our Consequences games we have played during the last 2 years. Other work being exhibited has been produced as a “consequence” of using a computer as a tool somewhere in the design process. There will be a very varied display, not only of our finished pieces, but also background information explaining how computers can be used effectively.

More information coming soon….

CTDG Blog

2009-09-01T14:41:00.002+01:00

Did you know that the CTDG (Computer Textile Design Group) has now started up a blog? It is early days yet, but I think it is an excellent idea and a great way to be more interactive with members. I hope that we will see lots of wonderful images appearing on the blog, links to other people who share our interest in using the computer as a design tool for their textile work, and generally loads of interesting stuff.

However, it is really very new, and there is only a little bit up on the blog so far, so what we need to do is visit the blog, make comments, suggest links / content etc and see whether we can help get it up and running and full of intersting things.

Over to you!

Frosty Consequences - The Full Story

2009-03-31T15:00:00.008+01:00

We have finally got our act together and gathered all the images from our most recent game of Consequences here on the blog, and in our Picasa Web Album
For those that do not already know, we all started off with the same picture (chosen this time by Pat), and we each did a manipulation on it and passed it on to the next person. They then performed their magic on the image and passed it on again. So it went on until everyone had worked on everyone elses images.

The aim of the game was to get everyone exploring their own software on a regular basis, and therefore grow in understanding and confidence with their package. This helps us all to more effectively use the computer as a design tool, but it also gets everyone contributing to the group, regardless of level of expertise. It was NOT a specific aim of the game to produce beautiful designs ready for textiles at any stage of the process, but we all found ourselves delighted by some of the images. Individually we might well use some of them to develop further for our own textile work, however we each choose to express it.

If you want a more complete explanation please see some of the earlier posts, or check out the April issue of DesignIT, the magazine of the Computer Textile Design Group (CTDG)

The slide shows below give you a flavour of what we have been up to, but the best way to understand the transformations is to visit our Web Albums and click on any image to enlarge it.

Pat's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Erica's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Lesley's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Liz's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Jenny's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Ros's Frosty Story
View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Hilary's Frosty Story

View these images in larger scale at the DOT Group Web Album Pages

Frosty Consequences

2009-03-09T20:06:00.007Z

Pat supplied this lovely image for us.

Our latest round of Consequences whizzed round the group without a hitch. There were some lovely images created, and some of us had trouble working out what to do with them as we liked them just the way they were. But that is not the name of the game, so we carried on making our changes and passing the images along. Once again it was amusing to see how often we almost reversed a transformation done by the previous person, without of course knowing that we were doing so. Pat had suggested that we retain the "frostiness" in our manipulations. This was very hard to achieve, particularly as we got further in to the game. Occasionally we threw the frostiness out of the window in favour of something summery or just plain lovely, but distinctly warm. At other times we managed to drag back a bit of winteriness, whether that was frosty or not is open to interpretation!

As we have 2 new members to the group (Welcome Jenny and Lesley), we decided it would be too time consuming to replicate everything on the computer so we worked through the A4 sheets without the aid of the computer, but we made notes of things people were unclear about or wanted to see demonstrated. After all the images had been considered and we had our long list of things to explore, the computer was turned on and we demonstrated (fumbled and bumbled) our way through the queries so that everyone was clear (!) about how things had been achieved. This was a much more efficient way of working, and concentrated the mind and exercised the brain cells all afternoon.

Rather than posting everything to the blog this time, we thought that we would upload the images to Picasa Web Albums and everyone can see in more detail the progression of each image. There are currently 3 peoples work to link to, but hopefully we will have every one's up and running very soon.

Go check out Erica's transformations: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/EricaMThomson/DotFrostA4Sheets#

Ros's Transformations: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/roswillis58/FrostConsequences?authkey=Gv1sRgCNHQ5JCzm6j_ggE&feat=email#

Liz's Transformations: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lizziewelch01/DOTConsequencesFrosty#

When everyone has posted their images we will need to gather them together into the right "stories", but in the mean time you can follow each story by looking at the Web albums in the following order: Pat, Erica, Lesley, Liz, Jenny, Ros, Hilary. Start with one persons image (eg Frosty_Liz) and move to Jenny's web album (when it is up) and find Frosty_Liz_Jenny, then to Ros's web album and find Frosty_Liz_Jenny_Ros, and so on. If you do this for all 7 starting images, you can see that there are 49 A4 sheets with iterations on, and that is a lot of information - too much to put up on the blog in full.

The image below is the final iteration of my starting image, and as you can see, there is nothing recognisable left of the starting image, but having been transformed into bright colours at one stage of the game, it was dragged back into the appropriate winter season to finish up as a snowflake - most appropriate.

2009-01-05T13:09:00.003Z

The story of my shell image is in the picture below. I used the magic wand to select some of the shells, and then turned them a bit pink. Erica tidied them up and made some more of them. Pat went wild and funky and Hilary obviously did not want so much green! She introduced a ripply filter which Ros then dribbled down the page and Chrissie made it into a mosaic. We all had fun, and everyone learn't a little bit more about their programmes. Slowly, slowly, we are all feeling a bit more in control; well, at least I think we are!

Hilary's Shell Image

2009-01-02T23:13:00.003Z

This is my shell image as it travelled around the group. Ros built on what I had done but then it took some surprising twists. Like the others there is not much 'shelliness' left, but I love the colours of the last piece.
Hilary

Pat's Shell Image

2008-12-18T16:36:00.001Z

The journey of my shell image took some surprising turns. I love the way Hilary developed my first work on the image, this was then built on by Ros. After Ros the image became a bit of a mystery until it was brought back to 'shells' by Liz in an extremely ghostly manner. Erica then strengthened the 'shelliness' - lovely image, but it does rather look like a plate of tasty mussels !
Pat

Shelliness

2008-12-17T18:14:00.003Z

As everyone soon realised retaining the 'shelliness'

became more difficult as we passed the images on.

If you haven't already done so I would be interested to

receive your A4 write ups of how you achieved each image.

I like the transition of my shell and the final image which

reminds me of a flower. Well done everyone.

Erica's Shell Image

2008-12-11T17:08:00.002Z

Here is the story of my Shell image as it travelled round our group. Some of the images are very watery and Liz's transformation reminds me of ocean waves.
Erica

A New Game of Consequences - Shells

2008-12-11T16:49:00.002Z

This time it was Liz's turn to choose an image for our next game. At the beginning of September, Liz selected this photograph and this time there was a little extra challenge - the idea was to try to retain some of the "shelliness" during our transformations.
We are all learning so much about our computer programmes and we really feel we are making rapid progress. So for the last 3 months we have been working on "Shells". As each of us assembles a page of our own "shells" picture as it was worked on in turn by all of us, it will appear here on the blog

Hilary's Temple

2008-10-21T12:13:00.009+01:00

The original Temple photo was one I took on holiday in Kyoto a few years ago.

It has been great fun to see what can happen to this photo as it travels around the group of six for transformation, and quite amazing when all the sets of consequences are put together as on the Blog. Thank you everyone.

Hilary

My First Try at Blogging

2008-10-12T16:42:00.003+01:00

With the able help of my son I am now going to try and write my first blog.

This is not about 'Consequences' although I am very much enjoying the experience.

I thought I would share with you some of my present work - I am involved with "Kickstart" and the subject we are exploring is Canals.

I am going to try and include an image from my preparatory work. Wish me luck - here goes -

Erica's Temple

2008-10-06T15:58:00.002+01:00

This is the story of my Temple picture as it travelled round the group. The actual temple image is mostly absent but does reappear amid the swirls in the last image.
Erica

Pat's Temple

2008-10-06T15:43:00.003+01:00

As a comparative newcomer to DOT, my contributions to "Consequences" take the form of "What happens if."

However, by remembering to take notes on what I do, and believe me, this is a skill in itself, the temptation being to just hit buttons and see what happens. Anyway, now that I have started to discipline myself, slow down and think about what I am doing, I now realise that I am learning so much.

The three monthly meetings help us all to explore not only our own work but that of the rest of the group.

"Consequences" has been good fun as well as providing me with a steep learning curve.

Hopefully, the curve will begin to flatten out over time.
Pat

The Consequences of Experimentation

2008-09-24T15:27:00.009+01:00

Having concluded another round of Consequences we are beginning to upload the images that tell the story of the Temple picture that Hilary provided for us to play with.

As before with Cactus Consequences, we each started off with the same image (this time the temple above), and made some adjustments before passing it on to the next person in the group.

No one knew exactly how the image that they then received had been manipulated, all they could do was set to work on the received image before passing it on again.

We each kept a record of what we had done to every image we received and passed on. Then at our meeting in August at Pat's house we produced our A4 record sheets and worked through an image from the original through all of it's iterations to it's conclusion. Using a laptop and Photoshop Elements 2 to show how each iteration was produced.

This way of working kept us all involved and learning. Everyone picked up new things to try out, but we also learnt that we needed to keep better records of what we did!

Below is the story of my temple image. Pat's final manipulation was quite spectacular.

One of the consequences of this exercise is that for our next round of the game we are going to try and retain the essence of the original image. It is so very easy to allow the software to create wonderful manipulations, but they often move so far away from the original inspiration that we loose control over the design process. So our challenge for the next round is to try to hang on to some morsel of the appeal of the original image and hopefully end up with some images that we might use as inspiration for stitch: whether they are the final images or steps along the way.

Ros's temple

2008-09-13T12:14:00.003+01:00

Hi everyone

Welcome to my temple.

I particularly liked the inclusion of text this time.

I had been wondering about using it myself.

Looking forward to seeing the other temples

on the blog in due course.

Ros.

Hilary's Cactus

2008-06-10T20:16:00.002+01:00

This is the sequence of Cactus HH around the group. It didn't really change a great deal apart from the colours, as the four cut-and-pasted cacti continued all the way through, although at the end Erica did some fancy work with displacement maps. (Erica has posted this for Hilary)
Hilary

Ros's cactus

2008-05-10T12:51:00.003+01:00

Dear Dotties

This is my first post although I've been a member for several years. I welcome you to the 'story' of my cactus. Some transformations are more obvious than others but I am very pleased with the finished result.

Arrived At Last

2008-05-03T15:00:00.014+01:00

Rather like announcing your safe arrival on holiday with a postcard home ,this is my safe arrival postcard to fellow members that I have arrived safely back on the DOT scene after an absence of over 3 years due to mental illness of which I am recovering (hopefully).

Slower than I used to be but twice as keen.I am not ashamed of having a mental illness and it is true there is always a way back through the maze

I will now start posting my new work from Consequences to the block .

Cactus ET the story

2008-05-02T17:53:00.004+01:00

Here is the story of Cactus ET as it travelled around the group.
It is interesting to see fairly constant colours almost throughout and the different ways we found to distort the images.

From the original cactus photograph, I copied it, applied a gradient map and blended the 2 layers using difference mode. I replaced all the blue tones with green and cropped a square from the part of the image I felt worked best.

If anyone else would like to share how they made the transformations, just send it in a comment.

Cactus LW - the story

2008-05-02T16:51:00.004+01:00

Below is the story of CactusLW and it's transformations as it went around the group.
It began as a cactus, moved through pop art to misty planets, dancing eggs or a string of beads, into a very surreal jelly mould and back to cactus colours and a neat, symetrical pattern, then reverted to the blues and purples and began to twirl. I wonder if we will be able to detect individual styles by the end of this exercise?

Sometimes it is hard to work out exactly what was done to achieve a particular image, but hopefully, next time, we will all have printed sheets that tell the story of each transformation. Trying out some of the ideas on the computer as we went along highlighted things for all of us that we could learn from and explore for ourselves.

Cactus Consequences

2008-05-02T11:21:00.003+01:00

Cactus Consequences was it a game, or was it a challenge? We all started off with the same image (above), a beautiful picture of a cactus taken by Erica at Wisley. Everyone then had to make some sort of transformation to it and pass it on to the next person on the list of members. The image had a restricted size of 1mb and was to be about 10cm sq, approx 150ppi. The reason for the restriction is that not everyone in the group is on broadband (download times etc).

We each recorded what we did to the image, and sent it on as a single layered jpeg so no one could see the previous transformations and be influenced by them. Each week we passed on the images, but it soon became apparent that not everyone was sticking to the rules of engagement! We had some very interesting shpaes and sizes of image and quite a range of file formats too, which made it a little tricky for some to bring the image back in to line! It all added to the challenge though, and I think we all learnt more about how to change file sizes, ppi/dpi, layers and their implication for file sizes, and also keeping records and naming layers.

Below is my record of a transformation I made to one of the images.

Everyone had kept some sort of record of what they did and we followed one image around the group as it was transformed again and again. Whenever an image got to Erica it seemed to turn green! Chrissie was excellent at creating unusual shapes, Pat was in to pattern and Ros was keen to try out something new each time.

By listening and trying out peoples transformations on Ericas computer we all learnt things we did not know before. In fact I think we all had information overload as well!

Hopefully we will all post an image of the stages that transformed each one of our starting images into the end images that we received as they finished going around the group. Mine is still travelling at this point, but I hope to have the finished one back soon.

I am looking forward to the next one, Hilary has kindly supplied us all with another image to work on.

Thanks Erica for being our host this time, and thank you too for your origami skills!

Erica's Folded Books - Template

2008-03-23T19:30:00.002Z

I have put a template on my website as a pdf file, you can download a copy from here.

Erica

Erica's Folded Books

2008-03-12T11:21:00.002Z

The folded books are delightful, very inspirational. I have just today found my practice one after our move, so I'll have to make a proper one.
Hilary

Foil Tube Photo

2008-02-01T21:28:00.001Z

This a one of my photos taken down an iridescent foil/film tube.

The foil or film as it is called was rolled up and stored inside a cardboard tube. I was simply carrying the tube through the house and happened to glance down at the tube. I noticed the ever changing colours - depending on what was visible through the tube at the far end and how much light was entering the tube. It was a sunny day, so I pointed it at a cushion sitting in a sunny spot (if you click on the photo, you get a much larger picture and if you zoom in, you can see the cushion!) . Then I wondered if it would work if I took a photo down the tube - this was the result.

I actually took loads of photos, some with an open end and some with a clothes peg holding the tube closed - all good. I bought the film from Paperchase where it was sold as wrapping paper, but I know you can buy it from lots of craft places to do all sorts of interesting things to it.

I have posted this photo using the "Blog This" button in Picasa. That was very easy to do.

Erica's Folded Books

2008-02-01T12:19:00.000Z

On our first Friday meeting ever (1st Feb 2008) we shared the results of our endeavours. Folded from a sheet of A4 paper with 3 cuts, Erica's amazing mini books were an exercise in being precise! Some of us used Publisher, and others Page Plus. Erica provided a template and we all tried to create the books and import words, images backgrounds etc to create personal little books to treasure.

hello to all

2006-06-18T21:20:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone this is just a quick message from me ,hopefully you will all be able to pick up.Thank you for all your kind thoughts and messages.Liz has let me know that everything is going well at DOT.
Hope to see you all before another year is over.
Chrissie

Meeting Dates 2006

2006-05-02T13:39:00.000+01:00

The next meeting is on Saturday 17th June 10am-3pm
The following 2 meetings will be held on Saturdays in September and December - dates yet to be confirmed.

Wire Bracelets

2006-04-17T11:41:00.000+01:00

Just thought you might like to see a picture of some of the finished jewellery.
Erica

2006-03-24T20:44:00.000Z

This was my final quick creation from Ros's bacteria, the details of how I did it are below.

Thank you Ros for all your hospitality and hard work.

If you couldn't come to the meeting but are inspired by these bacteria images visit the website Ros gave me (see lower down in the blog).

If you want to post to the blog then have a chat with Erica.

2006-03-24T20:32:00.000Z

The third of the images I chose was this lovely lotus-like bacteria.

Invert the image and select an area. copy and paste the selection.

Rotate one of the selections 180 degrees, and overlay slightly using a blend mode.

Use Edit Transfor, Perspective to create a triangle which is cut and pasted 5 times. The trick is to move the rotation point to the tip of the triangle, this makes it easy to move the petals around the centre point.

2006-03-24T20:13:00.000Z

The second of Ros's Bacteria.

Gradient map applied, edges found and blending options applied

Circular selections made, cut and pasted, overlaid and layer styles added (see layers menu)

Background created with a gradient fill, an overlay of lacey selection with small ares filled in using colours picked up from the gradient map layer.

Combine it all and the end result retains the circular feel of the original, and the texture, but adds exciting colour and interest.

2006-03-24T19:49:00.000Z

Using the magic wand tool I selected parts of the design and cut and pasted them into another layer.
Using the eyedropper tool I selected the yellow colour to flood fill a new lower layer.

Using the magic wand tool I selected the dark part of the shell-like design and cut and pasted, rotating, moving and changing size as I went. I merged those layers together and overlayed them on the brown layer (consider the blending options here)

Two tools that are handy for isolating parts of an image are Threshold (from the Image menu) and the filter Find Edges.

The background layer was inverted

Reselct the whorls using the magic wand tool and fill using a gradient bucket fill.

Crop the image for focus on a particular area.

Apply a "sitchy" filter to suggest ways of interpretation.

2006-03-24T19:26:00.000Z

Ros's original Foram image from her wonderful Bacteria Day on 18th March. This is what she sent us to do: "If you have time please look at these images before you come, they were taken from www.microscopy-uk.org.uk. Look in the Micropolitan Museum
Heading - Freshwater - The Archive of Algae, Diatom depot, Desmid dome, Rotifer Room
Heading – Marine – Foram Factory
Also have a go at the Virtual Pond Dipping!"

Ros asked us to have a go at creating something from the images.

Just one more stitch

2005-07-24T23:15:00.000+01:00

Just one more stitch

2005-05-29T19:36:00.000+01:00

Messing about again with my signature

2005-05-29T19:34:00.000+01:00

Lucca, Italy, one of my scrap book pages on which I used some of the techniques in the exercises below.

2005-05-29T19:30:00.000+01:00

Having posted all the images below, I realise that I should have done this in reverse order, as each new image appears above the last, so please view from the exercises upwards!

2005-05-29T19:28:00.001+01:00

Images to go with your exercises

2005-05-29T19:28:00.000+01:00

More Images to go with your exercises

2005-05-29T19:27:00.001+01:00

Using the Text Mask tool

2005-05-29T19:27:00.000+01:00

Fitting text to a path

2005-05-29T19:25:00.001+01:00

Messing about with my signature

2005-05-29T19:25:00.000+01:00

Wicked Words, playing with script

WICKED WORDS

2005-05-29T18:40:00.000+01:00

Saturday May 28th 2005 - Excercises

We had a very good and productive day on Saturday, so for those of you that were unable to be there here are the notes/ exercises for the session. If you missed it, then have a go at these exercises and learn a little about using text in Elements 2. NB some tools are not available in Elements one (mask brush), and I don't know what else is on offer in PE3 as I don't have it.

Signature Art

Write your signature large and clearly in dark pen on clean white paper for maximum contrast.
Scan it in
Open in Elements and make a duplicate layer, blink out the lower layer
Use the magic wand tool set to a tolerance of 2 and contiguous un ticked, to select the white background and then delete the white.
Save your file
Drag and drop or copy and paste the signature without the white background into another file
Make duplicate layers
Rotate, mirror, change the scale, distort and move the layers to create a design.
Use select all / copy merged/ paste to copy all the layers of your design into a new layer.
Blink out the layers below
Colour as you wish using either the paint brush or the flood fill tools.

Text Pasted in to a Selection
Create a new file with a transparent background
Type your text
Simplify the layer (no longer editable, just dots on a screen like a picture)
Create a new layer
Use the lasso tool to draw a shape and save the selection (select / save selection)
Return to your simplified layer and select the text using the square marquee (0 feathering) and copy it.
Go back to the new layer and load the selection (select / load selection)
Use the edit / paste into command and then deselect and your text should appear in the shape.

Vignette Text
Create a new file with a transparent background
Type your text
Simplify layer
Use the eraser tool set to a soft blurry brush at low opacity to erase parts of the text
Copy and paste the simplified layer
Use the selection brush tool (don't forget all the myriad brush options available) to select parts of the text
Either copy and paste this on to another layer, or use the select / inverse and then delete to remove the unwanted parts.
Copy and paste the simplified layer again.
Use the circular marquee with a feathering of at least 20 to select part of the wording and paste it into a new layer

Text Masks
Open an image that you want to use (always make a copy of your background layer) Use the text mask tool (T with marching ants) to type in a word in a bold and large font, the image will be masked with red
Copy and paste your selection into a new layer
Move, stretch, distort, scale, your words
Try layer styles such as bevel and emboss

Instead of typing your text mask directly on the copy background layer, type it into a new layer
Use the eyedropper tool to pick up colours from the image below and paint them in to your text selection

Fitting Text to a Path
The text remains editable until the layer is simplified.
Create a new file with a transparent background
Select the text tool and choose your font
Press the T on the bridge button to the left of the colour box on the menu bar. And select the style you want
Start to type and your words will appear along the style of path that you have selected.
You can choose other shapes after you have typed in the text, as well as changes to the bend, and orientation.

Tips:
Remember to blink out lower layers or you will not see what you have done.
Add in a background layer flood filled with a solid colour if you want to see more clearly the effects you have achieved.
When using feathering remember that if you over feather you may not have any pixels left to select. Eg. Text typed at 8 points with a small selection and a very high feathering (150) might leave you nothing in the selection to copy and paste and an warning message appears.

Go See This Exhibition

2005-03-12T10:47:00.000Z

Waterstones has a great exhibition on at the moment by an artist called Jill Perry. She has recorded a year in her life in the form of a visual diary. Each day takes up a small square and has a short sentence associated with it. The entries are sometimes painted, or collaged, sculpted and stitched, or photographed, or drawn. It is a moving, intimate, vibrant and inspiring exhibition which might give you inspiration for your own sketchbook pages. The exhibition runs until 2nd April in the Bridlesmith Gate Gallery, which is a lovely space on the fourth floor of Waterstones. Along side the visual diary are a number of her detailed and slightly surreal paintings which are a pleasure in themselves. Go and see it, you won't regret it.

Thanks

2005-02-16T09:52:00.000Z

Thanks for the dates

2005-02-03T11:48:00.000Z

St Giminano is the sample sketch book page I am using for the meeting on February 5th. It shows use of layers, blending modes, layer styles,eraser and text. There are at least eight layers here, and the hard edge on the right is still to be eased into the backgound.

2005-02-01T15:34:00.000Z

Ian's Scrap Book Page
I know it is not stitchy but it is a good example of the use of layers. This image is composed of one photo used three times (resized using the move tool) I used a background fill for the yellow bit on high transparency. Words were added and blended on the layers palette. The slide frame is simply a shape from within Elements with added texture and a drop shadow (layer styles). The bees were clip art from the internet. Everything is on different layers with different effects.

2005-02-01T15:28:00.000Z

This image is the improved snowflake that I used for my Christmas cards. I did the first one very quickly the night before the EG meeting, but this one took a bit longer. It was embroidered on a coke can, scanned and then copied and pasted 12 times with a bit of flipping. Then I touched it up to clean up the flake.

Sketch Book Notes

2005-02-01T15:21:00.000Z

Sketch book Pages 5/2/05
Liz Welch

Creating pages for you own sketch / scrapbook is rewarding and fun. Below are some pointers to remind you and guide you through creating pages. At the May meeting Chrissie will be covering ideas for making up the books and adding words.

Preparation
Scan in items, more than one up on the screen, you can select and cut and paste into your pages at will.
Consider the size and shape of the sketch book you want to end up with.

Beginning the pages
Choose page size (image/ resize/ image size) and the resolution (300dpi is fine). Some times I make the canvas size bigger than my finished page to allow for cropping and positioning.

Background layer
This can either be something from your source material or a bucket fill or pattern from within the programme.

Bring in the first object
Select something from your scanned objects using the appropriate tool (often the magic wand will do, remember to set the tolerance levels and whether you want it to be contiguous) Any background you include will be visible in the sketchbook page, so take care to select only the bits you want.

Cut and paste into the new page, it will appear as a new layer (open the layers palette and keep it on the desk top by dragging it onto the work area). If you have selected an Image with no background detail then you will see a checkerboard in the layer which indicates transparency.
Label the layer by double clicking on the box to the right of the eye in the palette.

Manipulate as you choose
Scale changes – move tool, drag out corners/ sides, rotate etc
Apply filters
Apply blending modes
Apply layer styles
Consider the opacity of the layer

Subsequent Layers
Select, copy and paste in any other objects, type text, paint, draw shapes etc
Consider all of the possible manipulations plus try changing the order of layers by dragging and dropping in the layers palette.

Use the Tools Menu
Eraser set to 15% (approx) (don’t forget that you have a huge choice of brush options) is a useful tool to gently rub away areas of a layer to reveal or more subtly blend in opaque layers
Burn And Dodge tools enhance the areas that you choose, not the whole layer.
Blurring and reducing the saturation can also be effective.
The selection tools allow you to choose which parts of a layer you adapt.

Working with layers

· Naming layers will reduce confusion
The layer you are working on is the one highlighted with blue.
Layers with no eye visible are hidden, click on the layer (in the palette) to make it visible again
If nothing appears to be happening when you use a tool on a layer check that
1. You are on the layer you think you are.
2. You have no selection active – go to select/ deselect. Even if you can’t see the actual selection on screen, if the deselect option is not greyed out then you actually do have a selection there, so get rid of it.
· Use the Select All/ edit/ copy merged/ edit/ paste to create a fresh layer which contains all of the images and effects of the layers beneath it (you can choose which layers to include by blinking out the eyes on the layers you don’t want included). You can blink out all the lower layers and work on creating new layers above, in the knowledge that your lower layers are safe NB this does not preclude the need for regular saving of your files in case of a crash.

Ready to Print
When the page is finished make sure it is the right size for your sketchbook page (image/ resize/ image size).
If you are not intending to revisit the page and make changes then merge the layers or flatten the image to reduce the file size. Save it in whatever format suits, eg Tiff or jpeg. (PSD files are bigger and some image viewers won’t open them)
If you think you might want to change it at a later date, merge just those layers that you know you don’t want to mess with and save it as a PSD file (all your layer info will remain) I often have both a PSD and a Tiff of the same image.

Print out onto suitable paper, there are many art papers besides the normal photo papers available including watercolour, pastel paper, canvas and various textures, besides the option of fabric, tissue, acetate, shrink plastic, transfer paper, velvet paper etc. (visit www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk for a few ideas)

2005-01-31T21:43:00.000Z

Blue tassel

Blimey!

2005-01-31T21:09:00.000Z

Well hello there, aren't you the clever one. I am still not sure what a blog actually is and whether I have done the right thing, but you obviously have.

Love the chameleon

2005-01-31T20:06:00.000Z

This to test sending a picture from my screen. For example if I'm using Photoshop Elements and I'm stuck. To do this i'm using "Hello".

2005-01-31T19:58:00.000Z

A Chameleon from Erica to test posting pictures to the Blog from Picasa/Hello.

Machine Embroidery

2005-01-31T19:47:00.000Z

Machine Embroidery

Test Blog This by Erica, to test a useful link to a website.

The Start of the Dot Group Blog

2005-01-31T19:43:00.000Z

Share your ideas and thoughts about DOT here.

Erica