some face wipes and a sampler

Today's ATC has leaves on it again! (are you surprised?)

This card is made from a painted baby wipe and face wipe which I made here
I have layered a square of face wipe on top of the baby wipe and some more pressed leaves.  I freemotioned around the square and the leaves and used the paint colours as a guide for stitching.  I have so much trouble with satin stich edgings (my corners get eaten up) and have tried lots of different ways, and I thought, what if I tried it free motion?  and it worked reasonably well - needs a bit of fine tuning, but no eaten corners!

Now for the sampler,

This rather untidy piece of work began it's life as a sampler for a quilt which I will show you tomorrow. 
Basically, it is simply different coloured strips tacked down on a backing, to which I have then added lots of different stitches and embellishments. 
It now has a new life as part of my TAST2012 challenge, because it is the perfect base for me to practice the stitches on.  And as it happens, three of the four stitches we have done are actually on it already.

On this section, I have

• some straight stitches, 
• a couched piece of  machine wrapped cord
• a piece of tulle bunched up and sewn down
• some seed stitches with a nylon knitting ribbon
• a fly stitch pattern
• some random fly stitches

beginning from the blue frayed piece, which is organza attatched with running stitch

• a pice of satin braid couched down with a line of blue pearl beads above it
• a piece of blue and white eyelash
• cretan stitch with a piece of nylon knitting tape woven through it
• a pice of flat tape secured with vertical straight stitches
• some random lines of basque stitch
• a piece of furry eyelash couched down and surrounded by seed stitches

 Starting just below the eyelash and seed stitches

• green ribbon attached with a chain stitch at top and diagonal lines of fly stitch
• a piece of ladder tape yarn couched down
• another frayed piece of organza attached with a curvy chain stitch and random beading above
• three buttonhole stitch leaves

 Starting from the leaves

• a piece of green chiffon which has not been embellished yet
• a piece of burned organza attached with three lines of very messy snail trail stitch
• some more eyelash couched
• woolen yarn twisted really tightly, then sewn down

and that is as far as I have got.  Now it can be my sampler for the challenge - bring on tuesday!

TAST week 2

Week two for TAST is buttonhole stitch.  This landscape ATC is done entirely with buttonhole stitch.


I found a poor, dead butterfly and put it in one of my little books with pockets

Very morbid, I know, but it was just too beautiful to leave.
And then I sketched it.

I don't know why I tend to do this when I sketch moths and butterflies - that is, only finish one side, but I do (perhaps I'm just lazy)
Here are a few other sketches from my book, whilst you are waiting for me to meet my deadline tomorrow. (or late tonight, maybe)

A quick outline for a landscape.

A fish I want to use in a layered piece.

Some teacups from a home decorating type magazine.

A design for a beaded embroidery.

And finally a shell which was sitting on my desk.

Now, off to finish my Tangled textiles challenge!

Make a playdate with Art!

This was made from a tape transfer with a magazine page, then free motion stitched onto yellow felt.  The ribbon was added with a double sided blanket stitch.

That's it for today,  need to work on my two deadlines which are looming, looming,

Make art a part of every day.

a bit of a daisy and some transfer experiments

This atc is made from a bit of the Pam carriker collage I showed a few posts ago.  The daisy is molding paste painted gold.  I have added a few beads to the centre and blanket stitched the edge.


I have been fiddling a bit with transparency transfers since reading about using hand sanitiser gel in pam carriker's book.  I works really well.

The tranfer (on to fabric) on the left is with sanitiser gel, and worked really well, despite my awful pictures.  I wondered if it was the gel, so I tried some aloe vera gel, and it worked, but it bled a little (right)
This gor me thinking, so I looked at the ingredients list on my sanitiser bottle.  There was alcohol, glycerin and eucalyptus.  I happened to have all these things, so I did some experiments.

For this transfer, I mixed up my own concoction of glycerin, methylated spirits, eucalyptus, water and a bit of aloe vera gel.  It worked, but I wanted to know which things were doing the job.

This was eucalyptus and methylated spirits, with a bit of water, and worked very well, except that I moved it and smudged it.

This one was just methylated spirits(alcohol) and water.  (I have found that a little bit of water is neccesary)
I worked, but was a bit blurry.

This one was eucalyptus and water and also worked very well, although I redid the bottom and mis aligned it!
So, I think that although the alcohol does transfer, it doesn't fix the ink and bleeds a little.  The eucalyptus seems to do a good job, and has the advantage that it will evaporate away.  I think Perhaps the gel or glycerin helps to stop the bleeding because it makes the transfer medium thicker and less able to bleed.  any way, I have had some good results and will continue experimenting.
Oh, I nearly forgot, it also works well on paper.

Also, I had a little mistake and printed on the wrong side of the transparency.  I found that the ink did not dry on the acetate, so I had a go at transferring it.

I sprayed a little glen 20 ( antiseptic spray, mostly alcohol and water) on the ink and simply pressed it into the fabric.  It worked!  Just a bit of bleeding.

In this one, I used fabric which had been sprayed with alum solution to try and stop the blurring.  It worked, but the image was still not great.  The alum seemed to coagulate the black ink although the coloured inks transfered well.  This would be good for outlining with a fine black stitching....

On this one, I sprayed the glen 20 on the fabric and the damp fabric made it bleed.
This second set of experiments needs a little more refining.  My reason for exploring it is that transparencies are expensive and can only be used once.  I happen to have a lot of simple acetate sheets which I picked up at a junk store, still in their packets (the type we used to use with white board pens, when they were called overhead pens - a long time ago, lol)  The second two prints above used these sheets and after transfer, I simply wiped them clean and used them again-wow!
Anyhow, I have been having a bit of fun, playing with this technique!

don't forget to play with your art materials!

spiral sun and some collage

Here is my ATC for today.  Fabric paper, crushed velvet, satin free machine embroidery, dimensional paint beads and blanket stitch.

Pam Carriker's "Art at the speed of life" is the inspiration for this collage background that I am working on.

Here is the fabric paper base, using magazine clippings and scrunched tissue paper.

Some molding paste through stencils.

Multicoloured glazxe over the top of the stencils.

A better picture showing the stencils

I love the texture of the glaze on the wrinkled tissue.
I am not sure what I am going to use this for, or if I am going to finish the other steps Pam uses, because I like it the way it is. - Any ideas?


Any time is a great time for creating.

ATC No. 1.

Let's hope this is the first of very very many!
Here is my first ATC-a-day.

Fabric paper, green crushed velvet, free machine embroidery, shot organza, beading, blanket stitch edge.
I must have been half asleep when I squared this one up as there is more border at the bottom than the top.  I suppose I could have left it and you all would have thought it was by design, lol.  I just put the bugle beads at the bottom to make it seem that way!

Don't forget to check out Lisa's gorgeous birdie ATC here.

By the way, I will still be posting other stuff, tutorials etc as separate posts

Don't forget to create every day!