I'm back

I cannot believe its been almost a month since my last post...so much has happened: first we went on holiday to Porta Pollenca (Majorca), clear blue sky and sea....wonderful.  Then I was away with work and working, working, working......all work and no play makes me a very tired and cranky wife!!

So, I decided enough was enough and crack on with the crafting (what with the coven outing to the NEC craft show coming up I thought I'd best experiment with the goodies I bought last time in case I love them and need to buy some more!!) and try different things for me.

So, first up is an altered canvas.  I printed a photo I took of Exeter cathedral onto calico that I ironed onto freezer paper!  Now, I am LOVING this stuff.  Its from the states and is made to wrap food for the freezer, but you can iron fabric onto it and it become slightly adhesive and 'grabs' the fabric, then you simply feed it through the printer as though it was paper!!  Hey presto, printed fabric.  All that money I have spent on special fabrics and even thinking of buying digital grounding to 'key' fabric and all I ever needed was some freezer paper (if you have any other uses for this please let me know....I am a convert)!

Then I distressed it with some DI, I outlined some parts with a black micron pen and darkened some areas with oil pastels (these are new to me, thanks to Coven Jill for passing on some of her pre loved ones) then I used multi medium to glue it to the canvas.

I cut out the door (a horrible modern door with no entry signs on it,so not in keeping with the rest of the building) and used some old text and a picture of a knights visor, stamping over with DI.

 I then used some metal contact paper (metal sticky backed paper about 2" deep from the hardware store, I think its used for joining pipes) which I embossed by hand with a Ten Second Studio mould and coloured it with my new Snow Cap alcohol ink mixed with some other colours (see, I am trying to use SO much of my stash!) finishing it with a dyed style stone. 

Next (thanks to hubby for allowing me a WHOLE weekend to play...I am happy and VERY inky) I decided to get out the pelmet vilene I carted back from the NEC in March but still haven't used and made a postcard with it.  I dyed some plain fabric, sprinkling it with salt to remove some of the dye then stitched it to the vilene to make it nice and sturdy to do some free machine embroidery. I added sheer fabrics, stitching and burning back with the heat gun, added some foils, dyed scrim, wool and silk fibres. 

 I then made a wee fish by sandwiching some mini sequins between angelina fibres and ironing them to make fabric, then I encased it in dissolvable fabric, stitching the fish design then washing it to dissolve the fabric leaving the shimmering fish.

I made some wire spirals and added sequins to represent seaweed.  Finishing it off with a nice piece of clean calico for the back and stitching all around in metallic threads.

So, a couple of new things from me, a bit experimental (I think I will try the canvas again as I enjoyed making that) I just need to practise a bit more and think of ways of incorporating the techniques into cards and tags also (one question...when you have made all this stuff what do you do with it?  Its starting to fill up my craft room....and I need to space for more new stash!!).

Happy Crafting

Li'l Pidge x