Crafty As L

Last weekend I took myself off to Dorset for a weekend workshop with Katy Rundle to create a bumble bee painting with fabric and thread.   Katy creates amazing things with fabric and thread – check out her website here , where you can also book her workshops.   Whilst I have done a reasonable amount of free-motion embroidery now, I’ve never really done appliqué so this was a great opportunity to learn a new skill.   And who doesn’t love creating bees? Katy had drawn the bee on calico fabric to get us started so our first job was to apply fusible glue to the back of the decorative fabric pieces.   I’d normally use Bondaweb but I’d had trouble getting hold of any so I tried out a new brand called Quiltlines Superweb which did the same job. Then it was just a case of cutting out shapes from the fabrics and positioning them on the drawing.   I was trying to do what I’d do in my drawings to try to get the tonal values right, even though I wasn’t using conve...

Beautiful, fun free-motion embroidery cards keep popping up on my Pinterest feed so I thought it was about time I had a go at some.   I started by just trying to cut shapes from fabric but soon realised that making templates would make the job loads easier. For the background, I cut a 5” square of light canvas and used that as my guide when sketching a slice of cake on a plate, with a candle on top.   I drew all the components out individually on cardboard and cut them out. The templates were drawn around onto Quiltlines Superweb and roughly cut out.   After selecting some complimentary fabrics, the shapes were glued onto the back of the fabric using a hot iron and carefully cut out. The shapes were arranged on the backing canvas and then pressed in place with the iron. Next, the fun bit!   This is like doodling with a fine liner pen but using thread and a sewing machine instead.   I dropped the feed dogs for free-motion sewing and started by attaching a...

Whilst having a tidy up of my craft room, I found some goodies that I’d bought ages ago but hadn’t yet gotten around to using.   So, I got busy with my Big Shot and a load of glitter card. The die set is Happy Birthday Celebration Frames by Tonic Studios and it comprises 2 dies; the image and the outer frame.   I used a selection of coloured glitter card so I could mix and match the designs. After sticking a sheet of double-sided adhesive to a piece of card, I die-cut the frame and then adhered the outline die-cut to that.   “ Happy Birthday”   was then popped into place. Next, I puzzle-pieced the balloons into their respective places.   The balloons were OK to do but the tiny ends were a bit of a faff! I die-cut the balloon panel from white card and used the background pieces to finish the inlaid die-cut panel. This process was repeated to create four cards, using up all the balloons I had cut.   To finish the cards, each panel was mounted on a si...

It’s time for my Visible Image Design Team post and I’m channelling autumn vibes on today’s grungy card.   There’s lots of masking and stamping on today’s card to give perspective whilst creating a totally flat card.   You can use masking paper but I use sticky notes as they’re nice and thin so are easy fussy cut.   I stamped and clear heat-embossed all the images to resist the metallic sprays added at the end. When stamping and masking, it’s important to think about what you want to sit in front of, or behind, other elements and start with the foreground, where I stamped the flowers.   I used the small daisies from Daisy Grunge but the small flower from Sunflower Grunge would also work well.   After masking the daisies, I stamped the large pumpkin from Happy Halloween, masking the face when inking the stamp. A mask was created for the pumpkin and the daisies stamped again so that they would sit behind the pumpkin.   More daisies were stamped behind th...

Today is my sister’s birthday and I’ve made a fun fold centre-stepper card for her.   Ange is a total inspiration, working hard in her job as an NHS perfusionist, together with being the head of the department.   Outside of work, her passions are her cats and harp playing and she’s fiercely loyal to family and friends.   She’s a great listener with a good sense of humour and is even more sarcastic than me!   Ange is the reason that I started to learn the harp at the beginning of this year.   She’s been playing for about 12 years and played at our wedding, even though she’d only been playing for about a year then.   Very brave!   My friend spotted this die when we went to the Creative Craft Show at Farnborough a couple of weeks ago so I had to have it for Ange’s card.   I opted for gold mirror card as one of Ange’s harps (she has three!) is a very grand gold one.   This die-cut was layered with a brown one.   I then decided to cut out t...

This week, I have been doing a free tutorial by Sophie Wheatley to needle felt a portrait of a hare.   I have tried making needle felted figures, with no great success but decided to try doing a portrait.   You had to purchase the supplies but Sophie kindly gave her tuition for free, supplying the reference photo and line drawing. Step one was to transfer the image onto the fabric.   This was done by pouncing, where the line drawing was pierced and a dot transferred, creating a dot-to-dot style line drawing. The first felting tutorial focused on creating the eye and adding the highlight to make the eye look glassy. The next day focused on filling in the head shape, creating layers that would felt together and focusing on shapes within the form.   It’s largely the same process that I use when doing a pastel or pencil drawing. Day three was all about the ears and learning directional felting, which created the lovely fur tufts in the ears. The body was fille...