Tag: pencils

Leaf rubbings on silk

Leaf rubbings on silk

This is another little experiment with natural materials and silk – this time some leaf rubbings. I did this activity with the children at work a couple of weeks ago, with crayons and sugar paper, when it occurred to me that it would probably work just as well with silk. A couple of leaves from the garden later, and what do you know? It does!

The rubbings are done with Derwent Inktense pencils, with varying degrees of water applied to the silk to see what would work best. I also used this little sample to practice my hand-rolled hemming. I think you can see that I started on the right and finished on the left! A finer needle and thread are called for, I think, to keep the stitching properly invisible. I also need to do a bit more practice to get the leaf rubbings just right, so I think I’ve just found a handy use for all the dye samples.

There’s a bigger piece of silk steeping in tea at the moment, waiting to be turned into a scarf. It’s two metres long and half a metre wide, so that’ll give me five metres of hem, and a nice big space to practice on.

Stationery Stash

Stationery Hoard - Before

Yesterday I needed a pen, but couldn’t find one that worked. This minor crisis precipitated the tipping out of all of the stationery drawers (yes, drawers, multiple), and a huge sorting out of all of our stationery. Before you decide I have an even bigger problem than you’d thought, not all of this is mine! There are pencils in here that I swear Paul’s been holding onto since he was about eight. We also found identical sets of coloured pencils and felt pens that we’d each had since childhood. Bless.

After a lot of scribbling, we threw away all of the pens that didn’t work. I was astonished to find that some of the felt pens I’d used at school (oh lord, it’s twenty years since I did my A-levels!) were still fine, whereas a lot of our more recent acquisitions had already dried out.

Best. Pencil. Ever.

I also found something that I thought had been lost forever! Grabbing it just before Paul chucked it in the bin, I recovered the last two inches of my favourite pencil! It’s that rarest of all things, a water-soluble graphite pencil. I must have scribbled my way through dozens of these at art college. Unfortunately it’s been sharpened away so much that I can’t read the brand name. On one side it says “…ite Aquarelle”, and on the other “…MACOLOR SOFT”. I looked on the Prismacolor website, but they don’t seem to make a water-soluble graphite pencil any more. Derwent do… but will they be as nice? I’m very fussy about my pencils. Which is silly, given that I haven’t used this one in nineteen years, but there you go.

Stationery Hoard - After
If you click through to Flickr, you can see notes explaining what’s in each box!

We also have a huge collection of watercolour pencils, for exactly the same reason. I had some that I loved when I was a kid, but I don’t know what happened to them, I can’t remember what brand they were, and I haven’t yet managed to find any replacements that I actually like.

The WHSmith own brand pencils (the white bundle, above) are too waxy and you can’t layer them. The Crimson & Blake ones (in the tin) draw well, but don’t blend very easily. I really want to try Derwent’s Inktense range (not least because you can also use them on fabric), but they’re currently out of my budget. (Hence my repeated hopeful purchasing of cheap ones.) And  my local Hobbycraft doesn’t sell them individually, which is a pain. Who wants to buy a whole new set because they’ve run out of one colour? Or pay more than twice as much for the shipping (£3.99) as for the pencil (£1.73)?

Part of the reason for all this fuss is that I’ve just signed up for a local evening class in Traditional Islamic Art. I’m waiting for the materials list to come through, but I’m wondering whether this might be the perfect time to bite the bullet and splash out on a set of Inktense…