Crafty As L

Last week, during one of my trips to the hospital to visit my father, I saw a bunch of sycamore “helicopter” seeds laying in the road.   They were so pretty that it seemed a shame for them to rot in the road so I scooped them up and took them home, to have a think how I could use them in a craft project.   I gathered some maple leaves from my garden to go with them. It’s been a while since I used my Gelli plate so I thought I’d try to get a print from the foliage and seeds.   I used a brayer to apply a thin layer of acrylic paint to the plate and arranged the foliage over. I used a scrap of paper to cover the foliage and pressed firmly all over the plate.   After removing the paper, I then removed the foliage and brayered a layer of pale green paint over the plate. Whilst the paint was still wet, I placed a sheet of white card onto the plate and applied pressure all over with the brayer.   When I lifted the card, I had this lovely print. I chopped the shee...

My good friend, Lorie, and I had a day out at the Knitting and Stitching Show at the Ally Pally last Thursday.  I had gone with the intention of not buying a load more fabric and yarn, since I already have stacks of both, but to look for something different.  I bought a couple of embroidery sets which I really liked, even though embroidery isn’t usually my thing, and a couple of metres of a fabric with a dandelion print - you’ll probably have realised by now how fond I am of dandelion silhouettes so I couldn’t leave without it! My main purchase was a block printing kit for printing designs onto fabric.  It was purchased from Block Craft who had a well-designed stall with demonstrations of the technique, lots of examples of the paint colours, stamps, stamped tea towels, bags, clothing and wrapping paper and all that sold it to me. Whilst I realise this is not different as such since it’s very similar to card stamping, I’ve never really done anything with fabric so I was ...