Crafty As L

This week’s post is something I’ve wanted to attempt for over a year, since I went on my first free-motion embroidery course with Alison Holt.   I fancied trying to stitch a picture of my cat’s eye and the summer challenge from the Chairwoman of my textile group to make something using textiles featuring animals gave me the impetus to get going with it. After overthinking the project, trying to think of the problems I might encounter, I finally just got on with it and figured I’d address them as they arose.   To start, I traced the picture, added gutter to define the sections and then painted with silk paints.   As you can see, the eye was dismal so here was problem one to overcome.   I didn’t want to stitch the eyeball as I wanted it to have a smoother texture. I decided to cut out the eye and do it with some other media.   I snipped the fabric, folded it back to the inside and then stuck the fabric down onto a sheet of self-adhesive dissolvable stabiliser...

This week, I had a play with a new purchase, Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous Botanic Collage.   I didn’t really know where to start so decided to dig out one of my gel plates to create a background and go from there. Using a small brayer, I applied Distress Oxides to the gel plate, sprayed with a little water and then pressed onto squares of white card. This was repeated with a variety of ink pads. Next, using stencils from Tim Holtz Mini Layering Stencil Set #24, I added the same colours used with the gel plate through the stencil. After stamping the botanic stamps on each panel and onto a scrap of card, I die-cut the main focal image from each panel.   The scraps of card were coloured and the image fussy cut. I sprayed each panel with some Shimmer Spritz but I still felt that they needed something more so I dug out my Black Distress Paste, applied some through the stencil in various spots on the panel and the cut out.   Whilst the paste was still wet, I added s...

The dies that are included with Die-Cutting Essentials special 100 th edition are so lovely that I thought I’d share my midweek make with you.   To broaden my horizons, I went away from my usual style and opted for a grungy, mixed media style card instead.   First, I die-cut the butterflies and multiple sentiments from white card and blended ink over.   To give the die-cuts some support, I placed them back into the negative space whilst blending the colour on. Next, the backgrounds.   Using Distress Oxide Picked Raspberry , Peacock Feathers and Uncharted Mariner , I stamped a variety of background stamps from Text{ures} Wildflowers Additions stamp set and blended a little ink around the edge of the panel.   I also added a few sections from Inkylicious Handwritten Script in Ranger  Watering Can ink.   For additional texture, I applied Ranger Grit Paste through Visible Image Mesh It Up stencil and, once dry, blended a little more ink over i...