Beryl Taylor style wall hanging

I've been making a Beryl Taylor style wall hanging this week. I made some fabric paper using paper napkins/serviettes, I think it's the nicest I've ever made, probably because there is less contrast in the images and colours than using random papers.

I took an old cotton pillowcase, and cut it into 4 pieces. I mixed equal amounts of PVA (white) glue and water together in a pot, and used an old paintbrush to paint the glue mix onto the fabric. I laid cut up napkins on top, leaving gaps between the pieces., and painted with more glue mix. A top layer of white tissue with more glue mix finished the structure, and before the glue dried I added a wash of 3 colours of watered down acrylic paint. I left it to dry overnight, and this is the finished product.


I cut a piece about 7 inches by 11 to use for the wall hanging, and started to use some of the rest of the sheet to make embellishments. Here are a couple of small pieces sewn onto felt, trimmed, and with buttons and beads added.


This heart is made the same way - sewn onto felt, trimmed, then embroidered and beaded.


I sewed the background onto a piece of felt, then added some painted diamonds, ribbons and hand dyed lace. I stamped onto the diamonds with gold paint, and sewed around the edges to make them stand out from the background.


I added another ribbon, and sewed square sequins and beads onto it to break the colour up. I sewed some of my little beaded and buttoned embellishment pieces on, and thought about what to put in the big space!


When I'd made some more embellishments, including one made from Paper Perfect, and sewn them on along with some silk flowers, the quilt was almost finished, but the vertical stripe of turquoise ribbon was too strong, so I broke it up by applying moulding paste through a heart stencil at regular intervals down the ribbon. Once dry, I finished them with Treasure Gold rub on wax. To finish the hanging off, I sewed deep pink organza ribbon around the edges, and backed the fabric with some mount board. The finished hanging looks like this:


This quilt took about 20 hours to make, but I enjoyed making it, and hope the long standing swapping friend who receives it like it too.

Ribbon storage

I have tried all sorts of ways to store ribbon, and have always ended up with several problems - I can't see what ribbons I have, or how much I have of each ribbon, and despite my efforts to wind it onto various things, I usually end up with a tangled mess in a box.

And then I found this:

http://www.ribbonring.com/

and I thought it was too expensive, so I bought some plastic ribbon storage cards which did stop my ribbons getting into a tangled mess, but still stopped me seeing how much of any ribbon I actually have. And all the ribbons on the cards were still in a box, so I couldn't see at a glance whether I had anything which would go with whatever I was working on. I certainly couldn't just lay some ribbon onto a project to see how it looked - I had to delve into the box, unwrap ribbon form the cards, try it and re-wrap if it didn't suit.

So, I decided to try the ribbonring system. I am a complete convert. I don't usually promote products here, but this has made my life so easy I thought I'd share it with you all! All my ribbons are now stored on the system, and hang from a coat hook on the door in my craft room. I can see what i have at a glance, and there are no tangles. Bliss!!!!

ATCs

Here are a few of the ATCs I've made recently. I love the small scale of ATCs as a 'canvas' to try out new ideas, techniques, and products, before using them in bigger projects where mistakes would be more costly in terms of time and materials.

The pear on this ATC is made from polymer clay, painted with acrylic paints and stamped onto. It's set onto textured card, which I painted with fluid acrylics then rubbed with metallic rub on wax to bring out the texture.


This ATC was a way of testing out Brilliance white ink on colourwash & distress ink backgrounds. I used watercolour paper which had been sprayed with several colourwash sprays, then stamped the main image using black Stazon. I used a mask to cover the centre of the image, and added distress inks around the edges using cut and stamp foam. Finally, I stamped using Brilliance Moonlight White.


This was another new technique try out. I created 'luminous paste' by mixing PearlEx with glossy soft gel medium (one of the variations in Julia Andrus's Paper Transformed book), and applied it to painted canvas through a stencil. The letters are die cut. The butterfly is polymer clay - using clay which was rolled out, had a layer of metal leaf added, coloured with alcohol ink, then rolled out thinly so that the metal leaf 'cracks'. I had leftovers from my mian project so put them into the small buttefly mould to see how they looked. Works for me! I'm not sure I like my design here, but it is a little record of the techniques I used, which will act as a reminder for me.

Fabric paper jewellery

One of my friends has a birthday this week, so I thought I'd make her a little something!

I used an antique copper heart pendant finding from Nunn Designs - I love their findings, they are well made and gorgeous. And several of the pendant bases have punches in exactly the same size and shape, which takes all the hassle out of cutting your artwork to fit!


I used a scrap of fabric paper, punched it to shape, laid it onto a piece of felt and sewed around the edges, and trimmed the felt. I beaded the surface, then stuck it into the heart bezel with heavy gel medium. I hope the recipient likes it!

Recycling

I made a votive for a friend, using an old translucent cosmetic pot. This is a really easy project, and looks pretty! Stamp your design onto pastel coloured tissue paper, adhere to pot using gel medium, add a circle of velvet paper underneath to cover the scruffy tissue edges.

Cut decorative canvas scrap to size to fit neck edge (this covers the screwtop ridges) and adhere using gel medium. Add a trim of gold german scrap to the inside and outside rim, and it's done!