Crafty As L

A couple of anniversary cards are the subject of today’s post.   I’d made a card similar to this previously using paper hearts but I fancied using fabric hearts instead for these cards. To give the fabric some body and reduce fraying, I covered a sheet of A4 card with double sided adhesive and stuck scrap pieces of fabric onto it. Using a small Sizzix heart die (which came with my Big Shot when I bought it years ago), I die-cut as many hearts as I could get from the fabric. On 5¼” squares of white card, I drew lines 1” apart with a Frixion pen, which is erasable with heat. The hearts were arranged in place and secured with tiny dots of glue so that they wouldn’t move when I sewed down the lines with my sewing machine and purple thread.   I applied my heat tool to the lines to remove any pen lines that were showing. The threads were taped to the back and then the panels mounted on purple card before being glued to a 5¾” square card blank.   I lightly folded the ...

I love a fancy fold and I’ve not made a swing-fold card for years.   This week’s Visible Image DT post is a square version although you can make other shapes too,  here  I made rectangular versions.    I made a 6” square card but you can go smaller or larger as you wish. The first step is to make the card base, which is also the mechanism.   I started with a 12” square of card and cut two 6” x 12” pieces.   One was scored at 6” (the centre) to make the outer card blank.   The second piece was scored at 3”, 6” and 9” (the quarter, half and three-quarter points) and folded valley-mountain-mountain. For the window, I cut a square from the centre of the card blank.   I used nesting square dies to cut this and my mat layers but you could use a paper trimmer.   I also cut 2 pieces 5¾” x 2¾” for the inside of the card. To assemble the card base, I glued the section of the mechanism from the valley fold to the edge to the inside back o...

Hampshire Open Studios started on 22 nd August and finishes tomorrow.   It’s such a great opportunity to see local artists and their work.   My art group has an exhibition in a local church hall together with some craft stalls and there’s been some fantastic art on display.   I displayed my giraffe eye pastel painting together with a kitten pastel painting that I did from a tutorial by Rob Ballentine , although to be honest, I didn’t watch the majority of the videos as they’re too time consuming.   Here you can see the first stages of the painting, getting down blocks of colour and then putting in the nose and eyes.   I wasn’t sure about the background and regretted putting it in but I think it worked out OK in the end. The next stages were to put in the fur details.   The part of this I found challenging was that the face and the paw were in focus but the leg became less focused and the other front leg was out of focus.   It took close observati...

Several members of the Solent Textile Group have been running workshops over the past few months.   It’s been a great way to learn about new crafts and techniques.   Last week’s workshop was hosted by Chris, (the Group’s “Chair”) giving us an introduction to Shibori and indigo dyeing. Mr L asked me the evening before what Shibori was and I had to fess up that I had no idea!   It is a traditional Japanese resist dyeing technique where the resist is formed by stitching, folding, binding or clamping cloth to prevent dye from reaching certain areas.   I did take notes but any errors in the spelling or techniques are all my own. Chris started with an introduction and demonstration of three types of stitch pattern; nui, ori-nui and maki-nui together with two knots, quilter’s and surgeon’s, that we would use at the start and end of each line of stitching.   We had been asked to bring a small piece of cotton fabric to practice so after drawing lines, we started stitch...