Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Ready for SPRING!!


As usual, I am WAY ready for spring and making it harder to wait because I start thinking about it really early.  But for those who want to know, the first day of spring is three weeks from today!!

I'm posting today a few cards featuring Creative Impressions twine.  I luv this stuff and use it regularly for sewing, tying off ribbons and tags, and layering with ribbons to give them more body when I tie bows.  Its got a great organic earthiness which I like to incorporate into my work.

In this first card I used CI twine in a natural color to embellish twill ribbon with sewn "x's", french knots on the little cotton frame and tying a knot on the yellow button to unify the whole piece.


This could be a valentine, but works well anytime.  I borrowed from the "hello" in the background paper and stitched the word on a simple cotton panel, outlined a Bits of Bling heart and x's at the corners to visually anchor the front panel.


I love using this paper piecing technique.  I take some strips of patterned papers, scratch up the edges and piece them over a black card stock panel.  Then, pulling colors from the patterned paper, I stitched stems and a border with CI twine and used Bits of Bling flowers and pearls.  


This is a similar card using flower brads with Bits of Bling as centers for the flowers.  A little pink Bits of Bling butterfly at bottom right finishes the piece.


Here are the papers I started with.  The top two are both sides of a double sided paper and the bottom to are coordinating papers from a paper stack I picked up someplace.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

True Love - A Creative Impressions Valentine

Its time to start thinking about making valentines for the ones you want to give just a little extra love.  I was thinking about making something special but not-a-card.  I've got some cotton duck (duck??  Really, why is it called duck??) that I bought at Joann Fabrics.  Its a great material for making tags, which is what I bought it for, mini books, or anytime you need a nice, heavy fabric to work with.

I cut 8 3x6 inch pieces of fabric, then layered 2 pieces together and messy sewed them around the edges with black thread.  This gave me two layered 3x6 pieces; I layered those on top of each other and sewed down the middle to make a little 4 page mini book.


Now for the fun part.  I gathered just a bunch of Creative Impressions embellishments in red, pink, white & black, plus anything with hearts.  I then just started to play and assemble elements on each page.  Not much technique here, but I've included photos of all the pages plus some close ups.

Enjoy!


On some pages I used another bit of fabric glued to the page so as to hide rough edges and the backs of brads.  On the left page here, I added some french knots in black to balance the bit of black on the left page.


A large white brad makes a good flower center to which I added a rub on.  The right page also uses a rub on.  Cute pointer finger from which hangs a felt heart!


More rub ons frame a web ribbon heart on the left.  "Love" is stitched with embroidery thread on a bit of cotton and glued down on the right.  Glitter ribbon tab finished the mini book with a little sparkle!


I love that the folk heart brad mimicks the shape of the felt die cut heart.


A copper heart brad gets pink embossing powder.




On closer inspection you can see the white web ribbon heart layered on top of the red one.  Hearts were cut freestyle by hand.  Sheer Blossoms are layered and fastened with a heart brad.


Hope you're in the mood for love and inspired to make your own little valentine mini book!