Creating stitched embellishments for art journals

I had a bit of a play day recently making stitched embellishments to add to my books for June and July. I thought it would be useful to gather all my ideas here for our collective future use.

My new favourite thing is to free-motion machine stitch over organza and a layer of paper as seen HERE

I start with organza, laying it over a large print book page and stitch around found words I like on the page. Then fill in the gaps with shapes and cut apart

This organza is actually orange and the colour is much truer below. Doing found words this way may be my new favourite thing!

You could also use sheet music or some other text page - in fact any other paper - you just won't have that found word option. 

Free-motion machine stitch over inky paper and tear out as you see HERE

and this one is on watercolour paper - other shapes could easily look cool on watercolour scraps

I also tried a few circles that I can glue a word or other embellishment onto later

Making small tags is always fun though they will cover more of a page of course.

It also occurred to me that I could use some of my acetate shapes more easily in my work by stitching them to scrap inky backgrounds... (these are all on watercolour paper)

All of my examples have been done with the machine but you could use hand stitching instead or as an addition....and I like using black thread, but I also love the gold above and think purple goes with everything 💜

All of these options mean that I can add stitch to my journals but glue them in without having to worry about stitching showing through on the back side of the page. Naturally when I have some more time I will also be having a play with adding sari and organza ribbons and other fabric scraps. The possibilities are endless....

Can't wait to use these and show you how they look within my book pages.

Paper mache teacups

When we had a play day earlier this month for a friend's birthday, we made a start on paper mache teacups. You might remember this photo from one of my daily journal pages

The FREE pattern is from Ann Wood and available HERE. I brought home some extra wallpaper paste, and went on to add to my bases - first a layer of small book text.

Then time to add colour - I chose to add serviettes to mine, and this was what I used to add colour to the large cup.

The large cup is 8cm high and the mouth of the cup 10cm looking down on it. The original pattern was for the small cup, but I enlarged just for fun.

I enjoy adding found words - I discovered the perfect sentence in a large print book, and was able to use a couple of tags from actual tea bags on the small cup.

And I ♥ the glitter effect

Here they are side by side - I don't care that they are a bit wonky. 

They make me smile.

Hope you have lots to make you smile this lovely long Easter weekend.

Bringing history alive artfully

I'm excited that I've been asked to teach an art class at our public library's Local History Week! (brochures at the library, I will upload link when their website has the info)
The project will be called Bringing History Alive Artfully and I'll be helping people create a piece of art that celebrates an ancestor, or a meaningful place or local event from their history.

This is my sample and the intro information (click on the photo to see it larger)

Create an A4 piece of collaged art honouring an ancestor or special place or event in local history.
Your finished piece will be able to be hung by ribbon, mounted on canvas or a book cover, or perhaps framed.
We will spend 2 hours exploring new ways to celebrate local history artfully by using paper collage techniques and sharing a variety of ideas for mixed media embellishments and composition.

I'll also be sharing different ideas for printing images on your inkjet printer at home onto different papers

Hopefully get enough interest to run with this in November...
It went ahead :-) Blog post about that HERE.

Paper & Stitch Collage Play day

I love Anne Brooke's work and wanted to make a collage inspired by her style. I live too far away to take a workshop with her, so this past weekend, 3 of us got together for a play day to see what we could do by ourselves. It was a fantastic day and I came home with an almost finished piece. Here's how mine developed :

Collaged background onto a base of wallpaper.

Lovely batik fabric from my stash makes great flower base

First auditions

By lunchtime, all the main pieces were glued down ready for machine stitching.
After lunch it was time to get out our sewing machines.

Good idea of my friend is to have a small test piece to make sure tension is right and to audition stitches. Because we had 2 layers at least in most places (the bottom layer a piece of wallpaper cut to size) there wasn't any problem with machine stitching through the papers. Although I have my gorgeous new machine for quilting, I am still using my trusty Janome Memory Craft 4000 for stitching paper. 

Finished with the sewing machine

The back view

End of day : 

Click on any photo to see it larger
Thought you might like to see the other pieces before any stitch was added, and at the stage we finished our day.

Our hostess stopped to make lunch and our lovely drinks and snacks through the day but still made good progress. Her dandelion heads will be more obvious once stitched. 

The fox is very cute

Even lovelier with the stitching. The piece is now ready for hand stitched details. 

It especially makes me smile that we can do the "same" project and get such different results - if you know us, you would know these are very indicative of our style.
By the end of the day, I had done some hand stitched x marks and some bar stitches on the edge of the cream paper. 

Yesterday I got some time to add some beading. 

To finish this piece, I wanted it mounted to a canvas. First I added some paper collage to the edges, and then I used super heavy gel medium to fix the art securely.

Although I cut my initial piece of wallpaper to fit the canvas size exactly, I like uneven edges so had lovely overlaps by the time I was done. Really happy with the finished piece

Week 19 : DLP 2015

Information about the FREE Documented Life Project is HERE. 

Really happy to see this week's challenge - I LOVE to combine paper and stitch in my art journal as you will know if you're at all familiar with my blog. In fact, I have a label so you can see all the posts that I've combined Paper and Stitch.
This week's guest artist is Ruth Rae - her page for this challenge is very cool. I have been a fan since I discovered her, I own both her books, and have made a few projects inspired by her work. One of the techniques I've used in the past is that of stitching organza over paper, and thought that would be fun to do again. Started with no idea of what my page would be, but decided flowers would be a great start :

If you click on the photo you can better see the gleam of the organza. I also wanted to try Linda Vincent's technique for making "shabby leaves". Started with a piece of inky newsprint

Free motion stitched leaves upon it

Then you tear them out - I did some double stitching over a couple thinking that might be less rough, but in the end they all came out ragged and imperfect and I LOVE them like this! Will definitely be trying to remember to use this technique again.

Now for the background. A family member visited the other day and asked me what my favourite mixed media piece was that I've made in recent times. It's a hard choice, but I really love this envelope that I did in August last year : 

It combines most of the elements I love - molding paste, stencils, spray, found text, stitch, paper serviettes, combining fabric/paper/stitch together. I used this piece as inspiration for my background for my journal page

I used dylusions sprays over the modeling paste. Delicious. Then it was just a matter of arranging my elements on the page, and as I wrote the word "Laugh", the rest of the words came to me. They make perfect sense on the page and they make me smile ;-)

Click on the photo to enjoy it larger or see it in the Flickr album I've created for all my Documented Life 2015 spreads HERE. 
Here's a close-up so you can better see the scrummy texture

You can see all my posts about this project HERE.