Cotton Bag: Coffee for Two

This is a special bag, done for a charity coffee morning. It's based on "Coffee For Two" - can you tell which version?

Cotton Bag: Poppies

Who'd have thought it, eh? Poppies on a cotton bag... it just had to be done. No hill, no sky, but still it turned out a little more complex than my initial idea. That's the trouble with including backgrounds, y'see.

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< Previous Post (Poppy Box in Detail)

Even more poppies:
<< Poppy Box in progress
<<< Main Poppy Box Post
<<<< Mini Poppies
<<<<< Stormy Poppies

Cotton Bag: Eager Companions

This is a "special", done on request for a friend, who has a friend, who dotes on her pets. Well, soon she will have her pets on a tote...

Cotton Bag: Red Admiral

I feel that I've been neglecting the "real" butterflies. Here's one familiar to many - the Red Admiral. This large, distinctive butterfly is a summer migrant to Britain; its favourite food is nettles.
More information can be found here.

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Cotton Bag: Yin Yang Dragons 2

And here is the second of my attempts to twist these flexible fellows into the Taoist symbol for light and dark. I wasn't quite satisfied with the first one; while it did work, it had too much space in it. This time, the dragons (a different pair) are trying really hard - you can see that they are both having to hold their tails in place!

Cotton Bag: Yin Yang Dragons

I had thought that I had done with the dragons for a while (they're great fun to draw and noodling with the Celtic-style knotwork and borders was fun, too, but after a while you just need to do something else...) but then I had the idea of using the dragons' vaguely comma-like shapes to make a yin-yang symbol. Or something rather like it.

Cotton Bag: Dragon Knot 2

Here's another tangled dragon, a development on the dragon knot design. I thought it was going to be the last - for now - but I had a new idea for the dragons.

Watch this space blog...

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Three Cotton Bags: Five Dragons

Double trouble! These two dragons are rather tangled up in the single strand border... maybe they ate the other strand(s)?

Cotton Bag: Dragon Knot

It looks happy enough, but this dragon seems to have got a bit tied up in the border - maybe it's pretending to be part of the border. Whether it's lying in wait or hiding from someone (or something), I wouldn't like to say.

Cotton Bag: Red and black dragon, entwined in Celtic border

Is this one more gothicky?

Cotton Bags: Ice and fire, together, with glitter

I added a spot of glitter to the fire dragon, and here it is with its deadly rival, the ice dragon.

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Cotton Bag: Black Spiral Dragon

More glitter! This started off as a gothic dragon - all black and purple and red - but then I added some yellow and orange in the background to enhance the contrast and I wasn't quite so sure about the description. "Black" will do.

Cotton Bag: Celtic Ice Dragon

If there's a fire dragon, it's perfectly reasonable to expect there to be an ice dragon.So here it is. I'm not sure that you can tell from the main photograph, but I added some glitter to enhance the icy effect - and because the glitter fabric paints I had ordered arrived in the post yesterday. It might be easier to see in this oblique close-up:

Cotton Bag: Celtic Fire Dragon

Everybody knows that dragons (sometimes) breathe fire. This one certainly does! I think it might be a bit annoyed that it's got its tail caught in the loop of the Celtic border, actually.

Cotton Bag: Blue Spiral Celtic Dragon

The second stage in the (r)evolution of the spiral dragon design. This fellow is largely done in ordinary wax crayons - apart from the paler green background, which is fabric wax crayon simply because I liked the colour better. I added a few loops to the border to make it more interesting.

Cotton Bag: Spiral Celtic Dragon

The dragon has got longer and acquired wings... he's also moved out of the butterfly house and into a circle (or should that be a disc?). I have plans to sell these bags at a local fete and it occurred to me that the butterflies might be ever so slightly challenging to the masculinity of some potential customers (and other customers might just prefer a disc). Plus, it's always nice to try new ideas out. This one might (r)evolve a little over the next few iterations.

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Wax Crayons on Fabric

Having nearly worn out the white crayon in my set of fabric wax crayons, I started looking around for a source for something similar. And almost straight away, I stumbled upon this lady's instructions for "Crayon Fabric Art". She says,

I get good results using regular crayons instead of the fabric crayons.

Now, that is interesting. I might have to try that.

Cotton Bag: Celtic Dragon Butterfly

I was thinking of doing another fantasy butterfly, but I wasn't sure where I'd go with it. Fortunately, I was struck with inspiration at work today. This is based on the Common Blue template.

Only one bag left to decorate...

EDIT(1) And this one is SOLD.

EDIT(2) However, I do have a few large, plain handkerchiefs; here's one that almost matches the bag. I decorated it in pen, because the idea of trying to blow your nose on a waxed surface is just plain wrong. Just in time for the end of the hayfever season...

>Atchoo!<

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Cotton Bag: Godrevy

I am rather fond of this subject. And its colours. It had the right orientation to fit on a bag, too - something tells me that a long, narrow landscape like the View from the Dell wouldn't work very well...

I only have two bags left! I shall have to think about what to put on them.

SOLD

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Cotton Bags: Common Blue and Camberwell Beauty

The Common Blue is, as you might imagine from its name, widespread throughout the UK. It is, apparently, our most common blue butterfly. Be that as it may, I'm not sure that I see them very often, but that stunning colour is always a treat to encounter. The male is all blue (well, apart from a few black lines and those fuzzy white edges), but the female - while less brilliant - is actually more colourful, with her soft grey blending into blue, and those delightful orange spots.

The Camberwell Beauty, on the other hand, is a rare migrant visitor to these isles; . As might be expected, the name given is the insect's British name (Camberwell is a district of South London). Its Latin name is Nymphalis antiopa, but in North Europe (from whence it migrates to the UK), it is known, variously, as "Trauermantel" (German), "sorgmantel" (Swedish), and "Sørgekåpen" (Norwegian). These names translate to "Mourning Coat", which is the name given to the creature in North America.

Mr. Common Blue is now SOLD.

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