Crafty As L

It’s time for my Design Team post and recently, I’ve been experimenting with using my stamps with free-motion embroidery, thanks to a “Travelling Book” scheme in my monthly textile group, which you can read about here . The fabric is the liner from an old wash basket and I used the Wildflower stencil as inspiration for the background grasses, which I drew with brush tip markers. Next, I added a few flowers and dots to make the wild flower meadow. Using black Archival Ink, I stamped the dragonflies from Brighter Days directly onto the fabric. I then set to work embroidering the dragonflies using free-motion embroidery and raw-edge appliqué.   The feed-dogs were lowered on my machine and I put the fabric into an embroidery hoop so that it was drum tight - this stops the thread getting tangled up underneath.   I placed a piece of rainbow organza fabric over the dragonfly wings and first stitched around the edge of the wing and then wiggled around to make the veins. ...

Over at Visible Image this week, our Design Team theme is End of Summer.   For my inspiration, I’ve chosen the zinnias and sunflowers in my garden that are blooming their socks off and will continue to do so until the first frosts.   I grew these from seed and have loved watching them develop through the various stages. For my non-card make, I decided to have a play in my art journal, something I don’t often do and it pushed me a bit out of my comfort zone.   On a double page spread, I stamped all the elements using Versafine Clair Nocturne ink and the Sunflower Grunge , Daisy Grunge and Create Happiness stamp sets.   The flower in Create Happiness is actually a gerbera but it’s close enough to a zinnia for me! The pages were sprayed with Distress Spray Stains and a gold mica shimmer.   They turned out a bit dark but I thought I could lift some of the colour out.   That didn’t work, so lesson one of today’s make was that the mica spray seems to s...

My makes this week are the card and ATC I made for my swap partner in this month’s Visible Image ATC swap.   The theme is “Summer Love” so it can be anything you love about summer.   Being solar powered as I am, I love the sun and the warmth that the British summer sometimes brings.   What I also love is the massive array of flowers so I test drove my latest purchase, Daisy Grunge . To begin I stamped the large daisy in Versafine Clair Nocturne and heat-set with clear embossing powder.   I planned to use the metallic watercolours and the embossing resists the lines, making them remain visible.   The ATC was straight forward but I hadn’t quite decided on the size of card so I just stamped the daisy on a half A4 piece of card, to be trimmed down later. For the colour of my background, I opted for some ink smooshing using Salty Ocean Distress Ink and Weathered Wood Distress Spritz and some water on my glass mat, repeatedly pressing the card into the inks un...