Well, this was a very unusual piece of inspiration! The envelope contained two cords (or dreadlocks) from a komondor - kindly sent to me by some friends who live in the Orkneys and keep two of these amazing dogs.


They gave me the impetus to try felting. I knitted a sheet of fabric using 100% pure wool, and then wet-felted it in the washing machine to produce a sheet of felted fabric. I also braided some cord using the same wool, which was felted at the same time. The result was an incredibly tactile notebook.

This inspiration turned out to be a rather pretty metal bead sent to me by Becky. I loved the pattern on it, but I'm not too keen on yellow - so I decided to use the shapes but change the colours.




I created a small painting, gouache and acrylic on canvas.

As promised I've made a second, final, version of this piece. I've used a proper canvas this time, and added torn strips of paper to the top and bottom (on which the text is scrawled). I've also intensified the colour of the eye to try and make it 'pop' a bit more.


EDITED TO ADD:

I seem to have lost the original blog post for this piece. It was inspired by a poem which was sent to me by a lovely woman called Claire:

NORTH OF COVENTRY
A curse be upon you

May you find yourself
trapped
in a Virgin Pendolino toilet -
the 'unlock' and 'alert driver' buttons
desecrated by my own hands.

May you shudder your way to
Bournemouth
and be assaulted by The South.
We are coming for you, with
southern gags,
correctly punctuated and pronounced.

May your excuses prove obsolete,
and your protests gagged out as
Southern electricity is passed
through your body until you are
electric.

May you awaken and love me.
May you awaken and love me again.

The overwhelming feeling from this was obsessive love... and so I created this piece (which could be hung on a wall, or placed on a shelf - who knows!).

This week's inspiration was a card sent to me by Rubytuesday of the LLL forum (www.littlelostlushies.co.uk). I loved the colours and shapes, and so I took a jaunt to the art shop to pick up some coloured paper and created a bold, somewhat abstract design.

This week's envelope contained some origami animals, sent to me by Joan from Switzerland. They inspired me to try something which I saw last year. A book with origami pages, intended to be both useful and beautiful:

My first Inspiration by Post arrived this week. Inside the envelope was this photograph of a seaside town.

When I looked at it the overwhelming thought that came to mind was 'Mondrian...' - and so I decided to create a book which depicted the town in an abstract fashion. It's not so obvious when the book is closed, but hopefully you can see a close up of the town when the book is open and both covers are visible:

Everyone needs inspiration, and I usually pick mine up randomly from the things around me. That can be limiting though, especially if (like me) you tend to live in a bit of a routine and see the same things day in day out.

How to solve that? Well, I've asked the members of the LLL forum (www.littlelostlushies.co.uk) to send me inspiration by post. It could be anything: a word on a page, a picture, an article, ANYTHING.

I think this will make an interesting project, and my aim is to select an envelope at random each week and see what it inspires me to make. I'll post regular updates here, so stay tuned...