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Paternal Bonsai

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Our Design Team theme this week is Father’s Day and I’ve made a clean and simple card for my Dad.   He loves a bonsai tree, as do I.    They are so majestic despite being miniature.   When seeing them at gardening shows, I’m always amazed as to how old they are.    When I was young, I grew an orange tree from a pip and Dad suggested we grow it on as a bonsai.   It lived for many years on the kitchen windowsill in its little pot. For my bonsai card, I started by stamping the tree from  Resilient Bonsai in Versafine Clair Pinecone ink and clear heat-embossing.   I heat-embossed the pot part again, this time using Versamark and gold powder. After smooshing some Distress Inks on a block, I sprayed them with water and added some colour to the tree.   I watercoloured the pot using metallic gold paint. After fussy-cutting the tree and pot, the white edges of the trunk were visible so I used a brown marker pen to darken these up. T...
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Bluebell Wood

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What a thoroughly wonderful time I had at Alison Holt’s freehand machine embroidery course last week.   It was a splendid three days of learning new techniques – silk painting and machine embroidery – surrounded by other likeminded ladies.   Alison’s tuition was informative, engaging and entertaining and she was always on hand to offer advice and help should one need it. Upon arriving at Alison’s beautiful studio in her back garden, I unpacked my many belongings, sharing a table with Gail and Liz.   We immediately started nattering and didn’t really stop!   The first demo was Alison showing us how to transfer a design onto the silk in readiness for painting. After carefully selecting a suitable picture to copy, I set about tracing the bare bones of the image and then using that tracing to transfer the design to my silk. The lines are defined using gutta, which is a resist and forms a physical barrier to stop the silk paints running into each other.   ...
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Location: Fareham, UK
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Sewing Supplies

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  Later today, I’m heading up to Oswestry to do a 3-day freehand machine embroidery course run by Alison Holt.   I saw her work in a book and was captivated by it!   After searching for any YouTube videos featuring her work, I happened across her website and discovered that she does in-person courses.   There were spaces on one in a few weeks, themed Spring Woodlands, and I was free so I booked it.   Whilst going through the requirements list for the course, it transpired that I needed an extension table for my 30-year-old Brother sewing machine.   I have one for my computerised machine but it didn’t fit the Brother and a computerised machine isn’t suitable for the course – a machine with dials is needed.   It is possible to have a table made but the lead time was 2-4 weeks, which I didn’t have.   They were also priced at over £90!   I started to wonder if I could make my own and saw this blog post which spurred me on.   First of ...
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Location: Fareham, UK
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