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Lustre roses with gold on porcelain- which gold is best?Here are some photos from one of the porcelain painting… »
Video about new expressionist landscape paintingJust finished this painting the other morning....I've made a quick… »
New video about lustre painting and magazine articleThe other week I posted a video explaining the techniques and… »
Porcelain painting and other arts in ThailandThe second post in a series about my trip to Thailand last year.… »
My porcelain feature in Swiss magazine Art and PorcelaineI'm sharing another magazine feature of my award winning porcelain… »
My porcelain feature in DECOR-magasinet from NorwayLast month I was interviewed by Editor Margrete Tennfjord for a four… »
Floating in my freedom, Abstract expressionism on porcelainFinally finished this new painting on porcelain this week, "Floating… »
Expressionist landscapes on canvas and updatesI've been really productive over the past few weeks, I've been… »
We are Soldiers of Love, Ingrid Lee, 2013 porcelain vaseI started this porcelain painting We are Soldiers of Love, late last… »
Challenge of abstract expressionist lustre on porcelainThe challenge of abstract expressionist lustre on porcelain is where… »
Expressionist landscape on canvas
Abstract expressionism on porcelain
Progress of lustre painting on porcelain
What’s on my mind
Demo via skype in St Petersburg
It was 4.30 am in Melbourne and I presented a ribbon embroidery demonstration via skype to a VIP event at NeedleDelux in St Petersburg, Russia. The focus for this demonstration was to look at how to create layered effects in two different styles when working on painted backgrounds. Here are the two ribbon embroidery projects I presented:
Violets with beadwork on painted panel, ribbon embroidery, scissor fob, Ingrid Lee
The backgrounds were painted first, the background petals and leaves were created with ribbon stitch to create depth. I use combinations of organza or silk ribbon (these ribbons are 7mm). The front petal of the violet is a ruffle, made with 13mm silk ribbon.
Violet on painted panel, ribbon embroidery, Ingrid Lee
It was wonderful to see some familiar faces from my masterclasses which I taught there in May 2012, and continue to share experiences of new techniques and approaches to creating violets. Some photos from the masterclasses last year:
Ribbon embroidery and painting Masterclasses 2012 St Petersburg with Ingrid Lee
I regularly use skype to organize commissioned paintings, communicate with my agents or partners of collaborative projects overseas and within Australia, and do some demonstrations. If you’d like to know more about this, please contact me to make an appointment.
Silk Ribbons and roses…what am I doing??
Silk Ribbons and roses…what am I doing?? If you’ve read most of the posts to date, I’m busy painting on a variety of projects, so what do I do when I need a break? I spend time in my rose garden. I always share my garden with my online friends and followers, and I’ve written and posted about it my blogs before…but this is where I relax and have space. My beautiful roses were in full bloom when I got home from Thailand inn November 2012; but sadly because of the heat now in January, my garden is not happy. So to brighten my day, I’ve gone to look back on my photos from last November, and I’ve been inspired to work on an silk ribbon project I started last year.
This rose isn’t finished yet, but it gives you an idea of what I’m doing. I am using the colours of my roses to create the silk roses on this art work. I find making these silk works a very relaxing experience, and even though it is still painting and creating, it is not as emotionally and mentally tiring as my other work at the moment; but it is very rewarding. Clearly, this one rose is not finished…but I hope you enjoy this early stage of the work. I really enjoy combining painting, traditional embroidery stitches, and ribbons for this style of art, see some of Other ribbon work.
What do you create to relax? Please share you ideas in the comments 
If you like this picture or post, please share with the likes, pins or tweets below!
Tutorial: Painting a background for ribbon embroidery violet flowers
I was so inspired by the violets which are flowering in my rose bed….it’s about the only flowering apart from some Italian Lavender. But I simply adore violets, and have painted them in different art forms, see my links to my Ingridcreates.com blog and here.
Paint the background on muslin with acrylic paints, and embroider the violets on top. Here are the videos on my youtube channel explaining a detailed tutorial on how to handpaint these. In this post I’ve included a pictorial step by step, of how to hand paint on fabric for your ribbon embroidery.
Painted violets on fabric for embroidery
Here is the
. This is the PDF file for the drawing used for this painting.
Video 1: How to hand paint violets on fabric Part 1
Video 2: How to hand paint violets on fabric Part 2
Video 3: How to hand paint violets on fabric Part 3
Video 4: How to hand paint violets on fabric Part 4
Here are some other pictures of violets
I hope you have enjoyed this series of tutorials. If you have any questions, please ask in the comments 
Don’t forget to like and share with friends you think will enjoy this post!
Creating art in art with porcelain and ribbon embroidery
This project was finished last year, where I creating art with porcelain and ribbon embroidery, but it entailed a lot of problem solving along the way. Sometimes I like to create a mini artworks within an artwork, so I painted a small porcelain shoe with raised paste roses and gilding, added gold pen work rose buds, and filled the opening of the shoe with a bouquet of silk ribbon embroidered flowers to complement the paint work. All of the colours in the embroidery bouquet reflect the colour you see reflected off the gold paint and off the white white porcelain which is why it is more harmonious. But this project wasn’t going to be as simple as I thought!!
Here is the porcelain shoe
Gold Roses on porcelain shoe, Ingrid Lee
Detail of raised paste rose
Ribbon Embroidery
Here are the silk ribbons I’ve used….they are hand died silk ribbons by ColourStreams.
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These are one of my favourite ribbons to work with. I wanted a dramatic effect with the ribbon roses, so I chose this gorgeous colour of Aubergine silk (13mm)…it is varigated in the deepest black purple, then blending to silver grey and golds. I felt this colour would set the mood of the piece and make it a striking feature of the overall piece.
The small gold roses where made with colourstream gold (7mm) hand died silk ribbon- a very fiddly job.
Initially I thought the design would just comprise of these rolled roses in large and small ones…but I realised it wasn’t going to work. The overall design would be boring and the beautiful colours of the roses would be lost to a poorly constructed design.
So how did I solve the problem?
I decided I needed another texture to lift the central design, so I added some white organza rolled ribbon roses, and the I made a pale blue rose which was to look like it had opened to full bloom- like a blown rose. Glass beads were added to add lift to the design.
Here are some photos of the development and sewing together of the embroidery bouquet:
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Here is the finished piece:
Silk ribbon roses and handpainted porcelain shoe, Ingrid Lee
Do you think the design is successful of mixing the two mediums?
See what I’m teaching in St Petersburg!
Just a quick post to show you what I’ll be teaching in my masterclasses for ribbon embroidery in St Petersburg, Russia. I will be teaching at Maria Shiliner’s beautiful boutique Needlework DeLuxe in St Petersburg. It is wonderful to share and show my art as a guest artist, and is a wonderful stepping stone for my work here in Australia.
The first course is of roses and forget-me-nots, inspired by the rococo artwork I visited at Catherine’s Palace when I went to Russia last October. The roses are almost life size, the whole design is 22 cm x 32cm. Each flower is hand built with dyed silk ribbons, and the leaves are ribbon stitched onto a lovely blue damask fabric- I fell in love with the Blue Room at Catherine’s palace (here is the video I made)
This is the other course- I’ve just used my promo flyer I designed the other day…..You might remember this piece from earlier posts, again hand built roses and pansies with silk ribbons..the original art work was sold at Christmas.
I’m looking forward to teaching these projects and seeing Maria and all of her beautiful ribbons, and especially meeting more people who are passionate about ribbon embroidery and sharing ideas!
Pansies and Roses Ribbon Embroidery, Ingrid Lee
This is the last of my embroidery experiments, Pansies and Roses in silk ribbons. I hand painted the background for this artwork, and using inspiration from my rose bed, where I grow roses, pansies, violets, herbs and so on…I’ve developed the style of rose I am pretty happy with, and had an opportunity to play with the new silk ribbons I bought from Needlework DeLuxe in St Petersburg. These ribbons are pre dyed, I did not paint the ribbons, only the darker lines on the pansy faces…..now I am ready to start my “masterpieces” 
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Masterclass with Valentina Razenkova, St Petersburg
During my recent trip to St Petersburg, Russia, I studied a masterclass with the wonderful ribbon embroidery artist Valentina Razenkova. Valentina’s work is intricately detailed and combined handpainting and ribbon embroidery, and hand embroidery to create the most amazing landscapes and still life compositions. I was fortunate to learn her own technique for roses…and we went shopping for shoes, jewellery, and ribbons of course!
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Some of Valentina’s works are double layered, where she does a layer of ribbon work and embroidery with handpainting, then covers this with a layer of organza, and then embroiders ontop of that layer…it creates a multi dimensional effect. You can’t see this in photos very clearly, but in real life her works are breathtaking!! I love her technique of creating each petal individually to sculpt the flowers, and then handpaint to create definition.
In this artwork, there is a tree and birds on one layer of fabric, then the organza is placed over the top and embroidered onto, to give a sense of depth.
I can’t wait to practice the new techniques I have learned, so that I can start my project based on a rococco style roses still life :)
Thanks so much to Valentina, and my friend Kristina who was our interpreter Valentina is a gracious and hospitable hostess, and beautiful woman who made my stay very comfortable, and the learning a pleasure.