Angel Blooms

I loved the process of the 'Basket of Dreams' canvas, (by Tracy Easson) so I decided to make another one. I think I will probably give this to one of my nieces. I have been promising them all a canvas, so this is the first one done.. 

Quick sketch onto canvas..

This time I painted the background first, then I stamped it with a text stamp from ESN15 and white paint. 

I added the texture to her wings and covered them with Treasure Gold.  in several colours. I also roughly cut some flowers from patterned paper and glued those down as the background for the posy. 

Next I worked on the face and hair, and then the dress. 

Love how this face turned out considering it is so small and fiddly to get the shading right. 

Using ELB15, I stamped little dots all over the background and added WOW embossing powder to them. I also added some lines of colour using a credit card and an old discontinued blue fresco from PaperArtsy. 

I wanted to add dimensional flowers. Paper doesn't always hold its shape.. so I glued lots of bits of patterned paper to aluminium foil. Once dry I die cut them all, layered them up and added a brad. Then I was able to bend them into shape. 

Using a Faber Castell Pitt pen I added some stalks, then poked holes in the canvas so that I could tie on some ric rac. 

I die cut these letters, painted them and added Treasure Gold.

and here she is all finished..

Here you can see how amazing the shine is from the Treasure Gold on the wings and bodice. 

Darcy x

Colourful Blooms

Today LETRASET... have a great new competition starting. Seriously this is so much fun you must go over and check it out. It's all about COLOUR, do you know someone who loves colour? Why not nominate them? Go on over to THE LETRASET BLOG... and you and a friend could be in with a chance to win a £50 Letraset voucher EACH..

GO DO IT...NOMINATE YOUR COLOUR CHAMPION!!!

Wondering what to make with all those glorious colours, have a look at this quirky flower cards that I made for a friend.

First I drew out my basic flower shapes.. and then I inked the outlines with my LETRASET FINELINERS...

I then used all my wonderful colours..

and finally inked all the details in, to really make them pop..

Here you can see the individual details... spots and lines..

teardrops and zigzags..

wiggles and chequers...

dots and dashes..

bubble and criss-crosses

bold and geometric....

notice how the colour goes outside the inked outlines, this was deliberate to keep it all free and easy.

Colour is a wonderful thing, don't be afraid of it. Just dive in there and play..play..play

Today I shall show you my Cricut cover. I have had a Cricut Expression for I think 3 years now, and I do love it but it does not get used every day and so does tend to get dusty. I have noticed how much more dust we get in the house since we had wooden floors put down...

When round at my friend Effie's house I noticed she had a cover over her Cricut that she had made, good idea thinks I....and here we are about 2 years later LOL

So first of all, a few weeks ago, I took some sheets of paper, lay them over the cricut, drew the shape onto the paper and faffed about with it, trimming the paper and pinning in place till it fit, next i *ahem* left it hahaha It looked great with it's tatty paper cover!!! ok so it didn't but I get bored easy, and it could wait for another day...or week...

Eventually, I took off the paper, unpinned it and cut some fabric using the paper as a pattern. My fabric was just an old off cut in the cupboard, and wasn't quite long enough, so I had to piece it.



Then I hemmed the bottom and fastened on a piece of elastic underneath at each end, this just slips over each end and keeps the cover down.


So far so good, but it looked awfully plain, the greeness looked like a meadow, which of course needed flowers.

I don't have a large flower sizzix, so i cut these flowers and leaves freehand from calico, then painted each piece with gesso, 2 coats back and front. Before painting the leaves I folded them and did a little seam from the bottom to about halfway, just to give a little dimension to them. This is not a quick job, drying takes a while, and it's boring...well ya know what they say about watching paint dry...



So onto another day, lol, I swiped the flowers and leaves with various Distress ink pads..now these wont dry on here, so you can smudge them around till you get a pleasing background colour. They do eventually dry, but are not 'set' so if you wet them the ink will come off. I then used navy stazon to add my images, using background stamps and word stamps. I also found out some flowers for the centres.

The material is not hemmed, I wanted them to look a little rough around the edges.



Next I stitched thru the 2 layers of painted calico, and the paper flower centre with some gold seed beads. I also machined around the leaves with a zigzag stitch and some gold thread. Lastly i painted the paper flower petals with shimmerz.





In the photo above you can see cording at the bottom, this is about 6-7 lengths of different fibres, twisted slightly and fed thru the machine under a zigzag stitch, again with gold thread. This binds all your fibres together and gives you a machined cord.

here they are all stitched on,by hand, to the cricut cover. The wide ends of the leaves are tucked just under the cord to hide them,then stitched, and the narrow ends are stitched down aswell, but not flat. Give the leaves a bit of height by arching them slightly and then catching down.

This is a handy compromise between using paper(too flimsy) and using patterned fabric (too restrictive in what you can do to it, ie: inking and stamping. I mean i wouldn't want to ink over expensive quilting fabric lol) the calico doesnt need hemming, will not fray further after painting, though you can hem for a neat edge if you wish. I first used this method when making birdies with Effie, you can see them HERE.

I am sure there are a thousand uses for painted calico, if you come up with one let me know.