Dusty Pink Rose

I mentioned a few weeks back that I’d finished doing all the layers of petals for the Dusty Pink Rose.
It was easy to sew each of the 3 separate layers to the ground around the centre, once at a time.
And then do the centre in a coil of Pearl Purl.





I have yet to add sepals (picots), but I’m pretty proud of it. I think he has lots of character! :-)
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I’m going to be a bit slow for the next month or two – stuck on a med that sedates me.
Got to finish the ICK piece, then I have another illumination piece in mind for another gift – so I have lots to do :-)

Gold and Black

I decided not to gild the gold – but to use gold gouache instead. I thought it’d fit better with the watercolour, which is fairly light in density.

I’m doing the black in gouache. I don’t know what that is on the black on the right – something to do with the camera?

Colours

I first did a trial on a photocopy, to work out the placement of the colours.

The plain yellow is where the gold is going to go.
And then I did it for real :

You can’t see it, but I’ve drawn a 1.5mm margin around the letters that sit inside the rectangle.
All the background within the rectangle will be painted black, to make the colours really ‘pop’. Hence the margin - otherwise I’d loose those curved lines with circles at the end into the background.
I’ve made one mistake – on the K – on the left where it’s red/yellow, it should be red/yellow extending into the blue/purple for the rest of that scrolly bit, not blue/purple.
I’ve tried my trusty elastic rubber, and lifting with clean water, but it’s not budging. I reckon the watercolour pencils have staining qualities on the paper. Better not to fuss and leave it as it is.

Dusty Pink Rose

Last we saw of the Dusty Pink Rose was at http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/2008/12/historical-sampler-dusty-pink-rose.html
While working on Ick during the day, I’ve been buttonholing at night, and have finished another petal.
Again, it is just resting on top of the others in the photo. It’s starting to look like the real thing now

I haven’t used anywhere near enough light pink. The only way you are going to be able to see it is by lifting petals and peering into the middle. It’s the top layer that is most important, and I’m being careful to get a nice 1/3 of light pink there. (I started it last night – the last one!)
On this petal, on starting and ending threads, I didn’t weave them further around the cordonette as you are supposed to. I used a looped knot. I find it much neater.
The cordonette can really build up in bulk once you have a few threads woven through it. If you are weaving back up through a finished part, it can look untidy and you can only hope that the buttonhole edge finishing step will tidy it and tighten the threads up into a coherent, neat and nearly invisible bundle.
I also realized that it’s a good idea to use a fairly tightly wound thread for the cordonette. The YLI is very loosely wound, which means individual strands can escape when you are sewing down the cordonette and it can also be a bit loose. I used DMC instead, and it was fine even tho it’s not that tightly woven itself.
The last thing was not to even bother to try to secure the beginning of the wire in the buttonholing at the edge. I left about 3 mm loose, and buttonholed it in when I came back around from the other side, when everything was much more secure.

Design

Her’s where I take a break from the sampler to do a long overdue birthday present. (It’s gotten embarassing)
It’s for my friend Nick.
I did an “N” for him at http://elmsleyrose.blogspot.com/search/label/Illuminated%20N%20for%20Nick
and so the joke is that I could really just do I, C,K, and he’d have his complete name.
But I’m not going to do that to him, but I am calling it the “ICK Project”.
It’s based on Jan Pickett’s Decorated Initials - http://www.janpickett.com/decorated_initials.htm
such as the S, the two K’s and the V shown.
This is my design “

The I, C and K are copied from Jan's work. The N is too, but I modified it a bit because it was from a different 'set'.

The idea is to use watercolour pencils. You choose two sets of 2. With each two, you blend them together in the different sections of each letter. (It’s easier to see than explain). The second K (in greens and blues) on Jan Pickett’s page shows what I’m talking about.
I’ll also be popping some gilding on some letter “sections”
I’ve never used watercolour pencils before, so it should be fun!