Creating Texture - With Old Tomato Paste Tubes!

Sometimes, I do weird things. 

It's kind of fun, and keeps the people around me shaking their heads...

Today, it's been reclaimed tomato paste tubes. (Yes, I cut it open and washed it carefully first - after we ate the spaghetti bolognese, which was awesome, by the way...)

The inside of the paste tube is the loveliest, soft, buttery gold colour, and it's easy to bend, fold and generally manipulate. Here, it's got some painted vliesofix and a chiffon scarf ironed over it, which gives it that orange-y colour in patches. Keeping it company is a piece of copper shim, with many holes poked through it with my trusty - and very blunt - awl. Don't worry, I keep an old awl just for nasty, tough jobs like this. There does exist another pointier, sharper, better looking awl for the tasks awls were really designed to carry out. 

The copper shim becomes a kind of 'claw' to set the glass bubble in, and after a bit of free machine embroidery (plus three broken machine needles and countless broken top threads), the end result looks like this:

This little lumpy treasure is destined, along with some other lumpy treasures, to be the focal point on a canvas that's been evolving in the studio.

If you promise to eat all your vegetables, I might even show it to you when it's finished. (Yes, Carmel* - that means you!)

*Carmel is my Mum - who is awesome - and also happens to be the worst vegetable eater in the history of the universe!