Prayer Flags returns

Last week my returns arrived from Lenna Andrews, the hostess of the Prayer Flag swap on the Creative Swaps site. The idea for the swap was that each participant would make 3 prayer flags, send them to Lenna, and receive 3 flags from 3 different artists in return. We were then to share pictures of our flag collection in situ.  I wouldn't chance my beautiful flags in the Scottish weather so this display seen above in our garden,  is only temporary for the photograph. The flags will be living in my studio from now on. You can read more about this project in an earlier post here and also on the Creative Swaps site itself.

I kept 2 of the flags I made myself and you can see them at each end of the above display and the Radiance one in more detail below. The other 3 flags have been made (from left to right) by: Leslie Sowden (CA, USA), Siri Hauge Opdal (Norway) and Vicki Page (WI, USA).

Prayer Flags

Lenna Andrews has arranged an exciting new swap on her Creative Swaps site and it's for prayer flags. I have lots of Tibetan ones hanging in the garden so was immediately enthusiastic about this idea and then discovered that there was also a free class about them on the Creative Workshops site, another example of great synchronicity. Lenna too provides an extensive PDF with imfo about them when you sign up.

So after absorbing all that I set to work. First of all I painted some white cotton in my painting shed (actually half of it belongs to John and is dedicated to all things tool related and some of them get painted too in the process!) and layered that up with hand-dyed fabrics to form a 5 x 11" piece of which I folded over the top edge  to finish up with 5 x 8" flags.

I then rummaged around in my box of imagery printed onto fabric sheets. When I do this printing, I always make sure that the sheets are completely full of pictures as the fabric sheets are quite expensive so you might as well make the most of them and this is how I use up the images I didn't need at the time. I layered these with lace, ribbons etc. and made arrangements I was happy with. You have to remember that the top will be folded over so keep that in mind when arranging your lay-out.

I mostly sewed everything down, including some transparencies I also came across as that to me as a quilter is the most secure way of attaching things together. And these flags are supposed to be hung outside so it's important it's firmly secured.

When that was done I added buttons as and where shown by hand..

For Lenna's swap you only need to make 3 (and get 3 back) but I knew I wanted to keep two myself so that I will eventually end up with 5 to hang up once my returns arrive and I also wanted to make an extra one as a hostess gift for Lenna, so in total I produced 6 flags. I chose the one below and John the one at the very top to keep. I'm leaving Lenna's choice to her out of the remaining 4.

Lenna's Little Book

This has been a bit of a day, where I rushed to Loch Lomond this morning to deliver 3 quilts for the upcoming (18th - 21st May) Loch Lomond Quilt Show and I'm out again this evening to a meeting of the Tweeddale Quilters where apparently there will be fabric for sale. Very dangerous! But before it's really late I wanted to show you the Little Book I made for Lenna herself as the hostess of the Little Book swap she's hosting on her Creative Swaps site. The booklets for the swap have been shown here earlier but I wanted to wait with this one till she had received it so that it would be a surprise.

The folding is the same as for the other books but I started with a paper page which was covered with printing. This was a try-out for a new toy I obtained recently i.e. a Xyron Design Runner. And what fun it proved to be plus it also works on fabric. Wonderful. Anyway it came with cartridges featuring all kinds of lovely text and I played to my heart's content. Then I covered the page with fluid acrylic paints using spray bottles. And as promised in the brochure the text didn't run.

At the top you can see the theme of the book for Lenna which was of course friendship and I also added a taste of romance as we are both inveterate romantics. The front and back pages (seen at the top) are also adorned with my picture (when I was very much younger!) I practised with the Design Runner on fabric and then tore that into strips and added it to the pages together with stamped images as well as pictures from collage sheets.

I was particularly happy to discover the XOX on one of the cartridges and have been adorning not just this book but lots of other items with it. I have big, big plans for my new toy in future projects and have now gone one step further and acquired an accessory where you can make your own text rather than depending on what is on the commercially available cartridges. Oh boy, when I'm bad, I really go on to be even worse.

To pull the little book together I added a uniting element to each and every page. One of my most favourite textured stamps consisting of tiny little dots. I bought it in the children's craft section of Hobbycraft and it has proved invaluable, despite only costing a couple of pounds! I used blue and red Staz-on inkpads.

I'm happy to say that Lenna loved it as you can read in her blogpost here.

Lenna's Little Books

Lenna recently announced a new and exciting swap on her Creative Swaps site. It was for little books and if you're interested there is still plenty of time to sign up here. At first I wasn't sure if I would have either the time or the inclination to make Little Books but I did know that I wanted to have the PDF file about them with lots of information and instruction about how to make them that Lenna provides to each participant as part of the registration fee which, by the way, also includes the return postage, regardless of where you live.

But once I had downloaded it I found myself doing trials using plain copy paper. Well with a little bit of effort I could use painted paper so I made 3 A4 sheets using my Inktense pencils. They are a bit deceptive as the colour doesn't explode till you add water, for which I used a water brush. Then they are beautifully rich and I love using the same brush i.e. not cleaning in between while shifting from one colour to another so that the colours run into each other in a water colour way. Gorgeous.

Then with the help of Lenna's clear and excellent instructions I folded and cut till I had 3 little books at the ready. It's not a requirement of the swap that you decorate the books you make but for me that is the most fun part of making them so I got to work using both postage stamps and rubber stamps. The title for all the books is Ars Longa, Vita Brevis, which I translate from the Latin as Art lasts a long time, but life is short (Latin is a very concise language, just about the only thing I like about it, having been made to study it for 5 years).

The pages I'm showing you here come from each of the little books and above is the first and last page of one. On the last page I have used one of my Blipcards! As they have a thick quality I sewed them on. Something I also did with the pages of my book. You could, of course, use glue but I prefer sewing!

Here you can see how I used postage stamps and Cavallini vintage labels with butterflies and plants. They were outlined with pink gel pens.

I also used one of my most favourite texture stamps, bought in the children's department of Hobby Craft. It consists of tiny little dots and is a great way to unite the pages. I used it with both blue and red Staz-On inkpads.

Thank you to Lenna for coming up with another great swap idea and for encouraging me to take part. You were so right, I did enjoy myself no end!!

I also made a separate little book, specially as a hostess gift for Lenna herself but I'm keeping that one a surprise and won't show it here till it's in her hands! Sorry, Lenna!!!

Sweet Marie Valentine ATC Swap

The snow remains the main attraction here at the moment. I'm enjoying it to the very fullest brim because who knows when so much snow will come again? It might be the last time in our lifetime and I will make absolutely sure I'm making the most of it. I might even be tempted to create a snow angel before too long!

But of course I am also making art. Those quilt blocks I mentioned a few days ago are now finished, all 200 of them and they are being sewn together. Then I only have to layer them up, quilt and bead them!!! I must have some masochistic tendencies.

I'm also cleaning up the To Do list and at the same time trying to ensure that no new items get added. That means I'm forcing myself not to sign up for anything else this year. An almost impossible task but it MUST be done!! Lenna exposed me to extreme temptation with her Love Gone Wild ATC swap so I'm hoping lots of you will sign up here so the swap will be full!!!

But there are still things to tick off that list and today I finished my Sweet Marie Valentine ATCs for a swap on the Marie Antoinette swap site. I used a fabric-paper collaged background full of love and pink hearts which was a left-over. To this I added a transparency image of Queen Marie herself which I had glittered up. Also added were transparent ribbons, sticky hearts and the Dymo made text: Marie, je t'aime (which means Marie, I love you). The edges were finished with sparkling transparent ribbon and machine stitching.

I made three for the swap of which two are shown at the top of this blog , and also made one for me to keep, seen above. Just wish the transparencies were clearer on the scans!

A bag for Lenna's swap

I have more or less come to a complete stop with my large quilt. I had set my mind on a border fabric of which of course I did not have enough to go around. I knew it was quite old but managed to find it online during a search on http://www.quiltshops.com/ and duely ordered a yard which was all I needed. They mailed it off immediately on the 29th September but helas, it is now stuck somewhere in our postal system as the postal strikes really begin to bite.

I can't quite believe how upset I am not to receive any mail for days. It is also a problem getting things out and yesterday I mailed 3 letter sized items, 2 went Airsure to Canada and the USA and one Special Delivery to Dundee at the grand cost of more than £15.

As least the Dundee one duely was delivered there today. Paying more money does mean items get priority when the posties are working.

More strikes are apparently coming next week unless a solution is found. Please!!!

Anyway this is all to explain why I belatedly decided to make a bag for Lenna's fabric bag swap. I thought when she posted it first that I would simply be too busy but as I can't actually work on my quilt I grabbed the last place she had left on the swap. This is a simple swap. Make one fabric bag and you'll receive one in exchange. My bag is about 8 x 10.5" (not counting the handles).

I started playing with my new embellisher (Pfaff Smart 350) and used black felt as a background, unto which I embellished Colinette boucle knitting yarn (which I had actually bought more than 10 years ago!!) and a pink felt heart for one of the sides. I used Alphastamps fabric images for both sides. Somehow the theme for this bag became Valentine like, with hearts and pictures of amorous couples. I must have been thinking of Lenna's romantic life (read all about it here). I mounted the pink felt heart onto vintage lace which I had stitched onto the black felt first. The embellisher attached the heart through the lace. To make the heart less pink I also embellished from the back so that some of the black came through to the front, calming down the pink. The fabric image (on both sides) comes from Alphastamps Lovers sheet. The boucle yarn embellished beautifully and again it also did it from the back. After this I layered up the felt with black wadding (batting in US speak) and started to add more embellishment, this time by hand. I beaded with pink and red seed beads and added some flower trim. Then I remembered some sparkly flower beads I bought in a garden centre last time I was in The Netherlands and that was simply perfect for this side.
On the other sideI again started with black felt and then added a very wide vintage trim depicting flowers which I stitched down. I added more boucle yarn with the embellisher and then added flower trim on both sides with the sewing machine. I added the fabric image and the title Lovers (both from Alphastamps Lovers fabric sheet) and beaded around these. More seed beads and flower beads were added to this side and as by now the theme was definitely LOVE I added a pink lining and handles to the bag.

I think it has Lenna written all over it, she is definitely the inspiration for the Love Theme but of course it is going to be swapped and the swap is entirely up to her. Now the only worry is getting it to her in the short periods we actually have a working mail service. Due date is still quite some time away so I'll give this some thought?.

More Summer Garden ATCs for Lenna's Swap

I had a look at all the lovely, wonderful ATCs made for the Summer Garden Fabric ATC swap organized by the gorgeous Lenna Andrews and being ever greedy for more fabric ATCs decided I wanted to make more than the 3 already send to Lenna. She generously allows us to make the ATCs in multiples of 3 so I've made another 6 (plus 1 extra for Lenna) which will go in the mail to her on Monday.

After learning about my win yesterday, I seemed to take off on a huge doze of adrenalin and I worked away fiendishly the rest of the evening in my studio.

The first set is from the same fabric collage as I used for Bev's album, with images of pansies and other flowers. To this mix I added some absolutely adorable flower fairy pictures from a paper sheet from Altered Pages that I painted with Pearlescent Acrylic Paint in blue to tone them in with the rest of the collage. I added small transparencies (3 from Bmuse and one from Altered Pages again).

I made an extra one (see the top of this blog) which has become ATC no. 64 in my 100 ATC project, and is called P is for Pansy.

From the remnants of another fabric collage (the one for my May Journal Quilt) I made another 4 cards. This time I added transparencies of flower girls from a Bmuse sheet which again seemed to be made to go with my background. I added quotations which are from a vintage book, which celebrate the sun. Appropriate enough for these sunny yellow ATCs. Here is a detailed card to see how it's done. All the cards are stitched onto a paper background at the very end, using a zigzag stitch on the sewing machine.

Mermaids and Gardens

I had a very productive evening last night. As I had been hand quilting all day, my fingers simply weren't up to doing any more hand stitching so I made a background for 2 separate Mermaid events on my list. No idea why mermaids suddenly are the "in" thing but I certainly enjoyed making the cards. I'll show you the Lost Art Creations ones as soon as I finished beading them but this one is for a Faux Postage competition run by http://www.artchixstudio.com on the theme of mermaids. We make an ATC using the theme and Helga, the owner of Artchixstudio, selects her chosen ones to feature on a Faux Postage sheet she will be selling through her site. The background is stitched with as many blue threads on a fabric background as I could find and I added an image from Artchix collage sheet E129. This was covered by mica (also from Artchix) . The water god comes from one of my old college books on the classics. Finally a really good use for it! The face and the quotation were rubbed with metallic blue.

As I was rather pleased with the blue background I decided to go multi-colour for the next one on a flower fabric background. These ATCs are for Lenna's Summer Garden ATC Swap, see more details here: http://creativeswaps.blogspot.com. I loved this background even more than the yellow and blue ones and did not want to cover it up too much so I used decoupage lady images (from South Blackberry Design on Ebay) which I applied using Fabric Mod Podge. I then added bits of the glorious flower trim I showed you earlier which Ibought in Holland. The above 3 are for Lenna's swap but I also made one for my 100 ATC project ( no. 58!).The quotation on all of them reads: A Garden in her Face. I beaded around the edges of all of them with some beads from a multi-coloured selection bought in a shop in Hilversum (where I used to live before moving to the U.K.). They are matte coloured which usually I don't care for too much but these were so lovely I could not resist. They go wonderfully well with these ATCs.

On a sad note one of my chickens died today (her name was Lacy). We found her dead in one of the nest boxes. She did not have any obvious injuries so she probably succumbed to old age as she was 6 years old, which is usually as long as chickens live. This makes the matter of getting some more chickens even more urgent as Hector, the cockerel, now only has one "wife" left which is a bit stressful for both him and her (Cagney). So we will be looking out for some nice young ones.