Burning Issues

The other workshop I went on this week was at Stitchncraft at Shaftesbury and was all about using the soldering iron with fabric, run by Margaret Beal.  Margaret was also very generous with her techniques showing us lots of different things, many of which can be found in her book Fusing Fabric.  I had already bought the soldering iron that she sells (it has a particularly fine tip) but hadn't got round to having a go.  Well, it's much easier to do it the first time with the expert there guiding you through it.  It really is very easy though and was just like drawing round shapes with a pen except that you didn't then have to cut them out as the cutting was all done at the same time.  We each made a sampler using both the motifs we cut out of the organza and the negative strips left behind.  Then the second piece was one we did very quickly at the end just using cut up pieces of organza and fusing them to felt.  I came home with lots more cut out motifs and plan to have a go at making some cards with them.

P.S.  The scale of the photos is quite misleading as the second piece is only about a third the size of the sampler at the top!

Silk Paper

I've had a week off work and have had a bit of time to go on a couple of workshops and do some playing.  Last weekend I went to a silk paper workshop at Broadwindsor, organised by Tania from Rumpelstiltskin and run by Janet Gibbins.  It was good fun and we managed to produce 7 different pieces during the day, all made slightly differently so we were introduced to a good range of techniques.  I also had a play one day back at home and these photos are a mix of pieces I made on the day and bits I did here.  The ones with inclusions have hydrangea flowers embedded in them.  I particularly like the pieces manipulated into folds and holds and can see them with beads and stitches in them.

The leaves were made by pressing fibres directly on to the backs of leaves and felting them in place - we chose ones with nice clear veins and they stand out really well.

Doodle Book

I purchased the book Stitching the Textured Surface by Lynda Monk and Carol McFee and the publisher d4daisy is offering online classes to accompany it.  The first class was to make a doodle book using painted baby wipes and here is mine.

The baby wipes have a lovely soft feel to them and a lovely sheen.  I used Brusho paints to dye them and the colours were very bright at first but dried to a soft pastel shade - I think it was that they made me go uncharacteristically girly and stitch bows to the front! I have a whole pile of painted wipes still to use as once I got going it was very more-ish.  Of course I should have worn gloves as it has taken a week for the blue to disappear from around my finger nails.

Christmas & Calendar

These cards were ones I did for a class at Kraft Crazy, Tidworth a couple of weeks ago now.  My starting point was inspired by vintage - I wanted to try out some of the techniques you see on vintage look cards.  Somehow though, they all ended up looking just like more of my cards!  However we did do paper pleating and paper pricking, used buttons, tags, an old fashioned image and paper snowflakes.  I got a bit carried away with the amount of things included on the cards and the paper pricking one bottom right took ages to make.  Everyone was glad to get to the button tree where the most time consuming bit was selecting the buttons!  The two cards on the left both used some of the My Mind's Eye Vintage Christmas papers and I thought it was good of me to actually give away some of that yummy paper in a class!

The image in the frame in the bottom right hand card doesn't show very well but it's a paper pricked sprig of holly.  It's actually a rubber stamp that I stamped on scrap paper and then pricked round the outline to produce the image on the paper underneath - another way of using stamps which adds to their versatility.

Next week is another class with Christmas as a theme - this time using new Christmas stamps from Elusive Images.

I've also made myself a desk calendar for next year using Cosmo Cricket papers and my Bind it All to put it together.

Mermaids and Fairies

Last Saturday my daughter and I went to a class with Tania at Rumpelstiltskin in Broadwindsor and had a go with Paverpol.  The whole thing was M's idea as she had seen the samples in the shop and wanted to have a go.  I was way outside my comfort zone as I'm no good at doing anything that's supposed to look realistic (in so far as mermaids can be considered to be realistic!).  But look what we made!  Mine is the mermaid on her rock and M made a fairy sitting on a log - I was amazed that I could produce something like this and it was good fun if very messy.  M is so taken with the Paverpol that she has now ordered a litre tub plus bits and pieces to go with it and is impatiently waiting for it to arrive so she can have another go.  We started off with wire twisted into a vague shape, wrapped with silver foil and then with strips of t-shirt fabric.  Bigger pieces of t-shirt were used to cover the tail and then bits of lace were wrapped round to give texture and pattern.  M draped larger pieces on her fairy to create her skirts.  The material was all dunked in the Paverpol first as this then acts as a glue and as it dries it hardens completly so that the folds in the drapes stay put.It's a very strange texture and I must admit the best bit was peeling the stuff off my fingers once it had dried!

On Sunday I went back to Tania's, on my own this time, and felt much more comfortable playing with silk rods and cocoons.  I did a canvas which is still a work in progress as I feel it needs something else yet, but I did finish this bracelet (modelled here by M).

It's made from split silk rods rolled up and threaded onto ribbon with beads and pieces of sari silk knotted in between.  Great fun!

It's back to stamping now as the two new Christmas sets of Elusive Images stamps that I ordered have arrived and I am making the samples for my class at Kraft Crazy at the end of November.  One down so far and three to go!  The sets I'm using are Damask Reindeer and Harlequin Christmas - both gorgeous.

And tomorrow it's back to Tania's for an altered art club - have to think what to take with me to work on.

Stampbord

On Saturday I taught a class at Kraft Crazy in Tidworth using Stampbord and here are the samples:

According to the American blogs Saturday was World Cardmaking Day but as it happens we only made one card (back right), the other projects were a matchbook notebook, a fridge magnet and a key ring.  Most of the ladies at the class hadn't actually stamped on Stampbord before and I think they were all impressed by the quality of the surface and the difference it makes to the stamped image. The Pierrot stamp from Elusive Images really showed that up well.  It was good fun as usual and it's on to Christmas next time!

Beeswax Canvas

Another workshop at Rumpelstiltskin in Broadwindsor, this time using the melting pot.  For the first time I had a go with beeswax and we each painted a mini canvas (just two and a half inches square), covered it with beeswax and added a tiny scrapbook paper image. Here's my result with gold rub n'buff added, a metal photo corner, ricrac and a crochet flower and button.  Quite cute though I'm not fond of the smell of the beeswax.