Inspired by Sarah Lawrence

Last week I got a copy of Sarah Lawrence's new (and sadly last) book, 'Stitch, Cloth, Shimmer & Shine'.  As a librarian I like to start a book at the beginning and read through to the end but with this one as I flipped through the pages I was immediately inspired by so many of the pictures that I jumped right in in the middle and made this fabric postcard using the ideas in the book. I punched and embossed the metal, coloured it with promarkers and made the red beads with wire all as described in the book.  I used sprays and stencils to colour the black background and then added hand stitching. The book is wonderful and I highly recommend it.

Take it Further - August

As I mentioned in my last post I had abandoned the Take it Further Challenge because I couldn't fit it in round the other things I have to do. I also said how I wasn't finding time to do anything with fabric and stitch and I've been missing that. The class I'm preparing for September is using paint dabbers and I saw on someone's blog (sorry, can't remember who to give them the credit they deserve) how they'd used the dabbers on metal. So I embossed a small piece with a Cuttlebug embossing folder, then painted the background with the dabbers. I was really pleased with the result and felt that I wanted to incorporate it into something fabric based rather than just stick it on a card. So I made it into a fabric postcard. The background is knitting ribbon machined to a cream fabric then lines of hand stitches added - I went back to my TAST samples to decide which ones to use. When I added the metal piece it didn't really stand out enough so at the last moment I coloured the daisy with butterscotch Alcohol ink and that made it look much better. Finally, cleaning the shower this morning (!) it came to me that this piece is actually all about balance which is the theme Sharon set for this month's Take it Further Challenge - I'm trying to find a balance between the things I have to do and the things I want to do, and a balance between the papercrafting which I find easier to pick up if I have limited time, and the stitching which I find more challenging.
So unbeknownst to me I managed to produce a piece for Take if Further after all, and before the end of the month to boot!

Fabric Postcards

I'm still using up the vilene and aida that I painted red and the gold foil from the Magnum ice cream wrapper, so I've made a fabric postcard. I also sprayed some ricrac red to match (I've still got pink fingers). When I started out I had thought to do more stitching on it but when it comes down to it I'm never very comfortable with the heavily embellished look (though I love it in other people's work), so I've left it with just a bit of arrowhead, sheaf and French knots. I've still got some vilene left so I will make a few charms next to use it up.



This is a postcard I made a while ago, heavily influenced by Beryl Taylor's marvellous book 'Mixed Media Explorations'. The diamond patterned piece in the top right is actually a very pretty decorated paper to which I added some stitching and beading and the tags are also paper. The streaky background is silver foil.