Jungle to the Ocean - Unfinished

A bit late and unfinished but, I had another idea for a bag and just had to go with it.

I wanted to depict the Inca in some way.
At it's height the Incan Empire stretched from Peru to Chile, from the Andes to the ocean and encompassed many peoples and lands.
That is what I have tried to show in the colours and textures.


I had some lovely batik fabrics in the colours I wanted to use but wanted to make them a little more personal.
I decided to stamp on the fabrics. I used dye based inks that can be heat set and stamps that I had carved myself some time ago.
The stamps are leaf shapes and I used copper leaf shapes for decoration.

There actually is more green in the fabrics than you can see here.
The greens and leaves are to represent the jungles, the blues for the oceans and the oranges for the deserts.

The front is embellished with beads and seeds. Some of the beads are from Peru and represent the modern world.
The back is fairly simple with just a little decorative stitching.


I still have to line the bag and make the strap but I don't have enough of the fabric I want to use. Roll on Pay Day ;0)
The strap will be long so that the bag will lie across the wearers body to show it off ~ the bag not the body!
I will post more pics when it is finished.

Hugs, Alis

Cuff

I ended up making two cuffs from an entirely different piece of fabric than the one pictured in my previous post. I think that fabric will eventually become another cuff but I went back to using one of my most favourite backgrounds - silk paper. The theme chosen by Ali and myself for these pieces was Byzantium. I hope I have captured something of the richness I associate with Byzantium. The top and middle photos are of the finished cuffs and the third picture is the work in progress.