Let It Snow

This week I have been making landscapes, including this winter landscape. These mini fabric creations look good mounted on a card, or framed as I've done here.

On the base of some blue suiting weight fabric, I started with the sky. With my fingers, I blended little wool with a couple of Angelina fibres: shimmer blue pearl & shimmer ultraviolet.

I attached these to the background with a felting needle, but glue works too.

Next, I layered some fabrics. You may recognise some of these fabric scraps from my blogs this year, the snowy hill in the distance was from screenprinting with fibres. There are some pieces of painted Tyvek and Lutradur from this year included too. I used a Gemstone Glue Pen to hold the pieces in place.

I chose to add some free machine stitching with Gutermann sulky 4071 variegated thread.

Next, I added some titanium white acrylic paint to some of the fabric, and then sprinkled on some iridescent silver glitter crystals

Here is the trimmed,  mounted landscape in an upcycled frame:

Metallic Layered Greeting Card by Teresa

Hello and welcome back to the blog. Today I am sharing a fun card using Lutradur and metallic paints:

I began by cutting 3 squares of Lutradur and painting them using different shades of metallic fabric paint.

Once dry I layered them and stitched around the edge using my sewing machine.

Next I carefully used a pyrography tool to 'cut' out circles of the Lutradur, revealing the layers below. (You may prefer to do this before stitching the layers together, then assemble once finished).

Finally, I matted the piece onto a black card blank and added a fun sentiment.

Lutradur

Mettalic fabric paints

Mixed Media Mushrooms By Karen

I love all the wonderful wild mushrooms that pop up at this time of the year and they inspired me to make my decoration.

I had bought a wood base and I gathered up some cardboard pieces and rolls to recycle and create the mushroom shapes. Two tubes were cut in height and along their length and rolled narrower to make the different sizes. I filled the tubes with pieces of cardboard to make them more stable and give a bigger surface area to glue at the top and bottom.

To decorate the lower parts, watercolour paper was coloured with Brusho Crystal colours in Burnt Sienna and Light and Dark Browns

Cardboard boxes were used to cut caps for the mushrooms. Red, Yellow and Leaf Green Acrylic Paints were mixed to make a red-brown and, although they are unlikely to be seen, I painted over the cardboard with this.

Once dry, I cut up the watercolour paper to fit around the mushroom stalks and to create the gills of the mushrooms. These were accordion-folded and then sprayed with Copper Shimmer spray for the smaller mushroom, gold for the middle size and bronze for the larger one.

Lutradur and Tyvek fabrics are wonderful in the way they react to heat, shrinking and getting lacey effects so I wanted to use these for the tops of the mushrooms.

Pieces were cut to size: One Tyvek circle and two Lutradur circles for each mushroom. These were sprayed with Shimmer spray and left to dry.

Once dry, the watercolour paper was stuck on to the mushrooms using Flexi glue:

The Lutradur and Tyvek papers were heated to get those wonderful lacey, bumpy textures...

 and then glued on to the tops of the mushrooms with Gel Medium, Tyvek first followed by the two Lutradur layers:

The wood base was washed with Dark Brown Brusho Crystal mixed with water to match the mushrooms. I also used some Aztec Metallic Paints to rub over the raised parts of the Lutradur to enhance the texture and shine.

Finally, for some contrast on the tops, I added some Leaf Green Brusho Crystal colours to the bits of paper left over and reactivated them with water and gold Brusho Shimmer Spray. I used this to die-cut some leaves and glued these and some sequins to the tops of the mushrooms.

I particulalry love the stalks and gills though: Quite lifelike!

I hope this inspires you to make you own Autumn decoration. Please leave a link, or any comments and questions, below.
Karen
x

Tyvek Light Weight Fabric	Brusho Shimmer Sprays	Lutradur	Gel Medium	Clear Spray Bottle
Eco Acrylic Paint	Heat Gun	Aztec eco metallic paint starter paint	15g brusho

Lutradur Lantern

October is here and despite some sunshine, there is definitely a chill in the air! Here in the UK, it is time to make our homes cosy and think about having light in darker evenings. This past year I have been experimenting with Lutradur and particularly like making vessels that can be used as a lantern or as a vase.

Lutradur is a spun textile. "Hot textiles" refers to using heat with spun textiles, creating new effects for crafting projects. Did you see the leaf arrangement made with Tyvek I made last month?

Lutradur comes in several different weights (weight per square metre), which suit different uses:

Lutradur 18gsm very fine. I haven’t used this, let me know if you have and what you made?

Lutradur 30g Lightweight has transparency which can be utilised in appliqué, enabling the background(s) to show through. Further heat distressing will allow total reveal in places.

Lutradur 70g, Regular is lovely for brooches, having enough body but having a little drape.

Lutradur 100g, Medium weight has a little transparency and distinct shapes and distressed areas are easy to achieve.

Lutradur 130g, heavy weight, enables self-supporting artwork ie. small screens.
Lutradur 230g extra weight similar to felt I haven’t used this, let me know if you have and what you made?

Colourcraft provide four of these weights in different quantity options

I find the medium weight, 70gsm, is most versatile and my preference for these Lutradur Lanterns. The picture below shows lanterns I’ve made with 70g

and 130g.

Taking a rectangle of Lutradur (25 x 17cm) apply some surface decoration.

This can simply be spraying with Brusho Shimmer Spray such as the bronze I used here, or stencil with some orange Eco Metallic Acrylic Paint

In the other lanterns I have used a Markal Artist Paintstik, making freehand swirls first, before applying some Brusho or acrylic paint. I have experimented with small pieces of appliqué and couching some texture threads too!

Take care as, unlike Tyvek, paint can go through the Lutradur to what is underneath. However, any paper underneath the lighter Lutradur will gain a pleasing paint effect that could be used in another project.
Once any paint is dry I like to add stitch. Lutradur is really easy to stitch through, either by hand or by machine. In these later, more architectural lanterns, I have used a thicker thread hand wound onto my bobbin and sewn along a design marked on the wrong side, so the thicker, bobbin thread is on the right side. The marker pen with eraser ink is great for marking up any design.

Add beads preferably using invisible thread.
Folding under a little to the wrong side and stitching along the bottom edge can add stability if using the lighter Lutradur.

Now comes the hot textiles bit:
You can make a simple heat tool mat by pinning tin foil onto a folded up wad of newspaper. (a glass worktop protector can also be used).
You maybe wondering what the ceramic plant pot in the picture is for? Well, I find it really handy to have upside-down next to my heat mat and put the heat tool down through the hole. This avoids burns and damage.
Work in a well-ventilated space and avoid distractions.

Using a Fabric Master Heat Tool, I cut out window shapes and added a variety of sized dots. These will add to the design and also allow light through the lantern. I also distressed the top edge too.
I just used the one plain pointed tip, but there are several that come with the heat tool. If you do change tips, take care as they are really hot, switch off and allow to cool down. You can get some silicone finger protectors, but do still do take care!

The final stage is to form a cylinder around an empty glass jar and secure the overlapped edge with some invisible thread stitch (or glue). The lanterns look good on a shelf all year round, but as twilight approaches they are great with a tealight inside the glass jar.

I love to see all the different lanterns produced when I run a Paint & Stitch workshop with Lutradur. I would love to see your creations too.




Helen x

'Happy' tag with Karen

I have used this month's theme of autumn colours to create a tag that I can hang on the wall. The photo of this lady just makes me smile everytime I look at it so I wanted to be able to see it often!









I started by colouring a sheet of waterproof paper using acrylic inks in autmnal colours. These were dropped on to the sheet when it had already been sprayed with water so the colours run and pooled together for soft shades of colour. I colour-matched some ribbon by dragging it through these colours while the sheet was still wet.

At this stage I have to apologise for the lack of photos: I took lots but, when I came to look at them, all I had was a bunch of error messages: The card had failed so this is all I have of the materials gathered ready to create the tag! This included a rectangle of Lutradur fabric.

The wooden tag was prepared with a coating of clear gesso and then layered with scraps of book paper. For more layers and texture, I stamped the tag with a text stamp and a mix of white acrylic paint with the tiniest touch of yellow mixed in to make a light cream colour. I particularly wanted to point out the rectangle of Lutradur which I heated round the edges to get a lovely wrinkled and lacy effect. I also sprayed it lightly with Bronze Shimmer Spray.

The coloured sheet of paper, also lightly sprayed with Bronze Shimmer Spray, was die-cut in to flowers and these were layered with some sequins to embellish the tag.

I hope this tag has made you smile. Thanks for reading.
Karen

Materials:
Acrylic Inks
Eco acrylic paints

Pipette

Clear Spray Bottle

Heat Gun

Brusho Shimmer Sprays

Lutradur