Walking On the Moors

This evening I have a post over on the PaperArtsy blog, inspired by the beautiful Yorkshire Moors that are not far from me. 

I have used some of my older stamps and Brusho Pigment powders to create a moorland scene. 

I love this piece, it has such great texture. 

if you would like to see how I made this then pop over to the PaperArtsy blog where you will find  step by step instructions. 

Darcy x

Guest blogging for PaperArtsy Aug Project 3

No-sew Fabric Journal

A little confused? well today I will show you how I made a fabric book without any sewing..

Plus some homemade beads...

There are lots of great photos showing the process, so come over to the PAPERARTSY blog...and see..

Get me to the church on time...

One of my cousins is getting married, down near London...that's a long way away from us. It will take us about 5 hours to drive down there. As such, and because we want to spend time with family we are going down for 2 nights, it will be a lovely break.

however, as we all know weddings are expensive shindigs,no?

new clothes,new shoes,new bag,petrol,travel lodge,hair cut...etc etc...oh and a present for the couple, obv lol...I promise, I did think about the gift before my clothes..no really I did, stop sniggering!

So the couple have asked for money, towards the honeymoon..yay easy gift! But me being me, I felt I needed to make something as well. so indeed a gift and card have been made. I will share them after the wedding.( end of August)

I chose a new dress and shoes...wasn't able to get hold of either, chose a second,third and fourth dress...bought the second one. Ian is mightily pleased with this choice, not because it looks stunning but because i already have shoes that will go with it. i do however need a bag, which I will make.

In other news..and this does all tie loosely together, my son has moved home. He has been at uni for 4 years doing 2 degrees( definately not a euphemism for romancing 2/3 of a 70's pop group)

anyway, he is home for a while till he finds work and a flat, I have been tidying,sorting,moving stuff around...and here is where it relates to the wedding... in the sorting I came across a beaded necklace kit. I started it a mere 5-6 years ago!! I could not remember what it looked like, and was pleasantly suprised to find it matches the colours of my new dress perfectly.

so I finished it off last night.




it is very pretty, and didn't take long at all to make....well if you don't count the years it has been in a cupboard lol

Today I shall show you my Cricut cover. I have had a Cricut Expression for I think 3 years now, and I do love it but it does not get used every day and so does tend to get dusty. I have noticed how much more dust we get in the house since we had wooden floors put down...

When round at my friend Effie's house I noticed she had a cover over her Cricut that she had made, good idea thinks I....and here we are about 2 years later LOL

So first of all, a few weeks ago, I took some sheets of paper, lay them over the cricut, drew the shape onto the paper and faffed about with it, trimming the paper and pinning in place till it fit, next i *ahem* left it hahaha It looked great with it's tatty paper cover!!! ok so it didn't but I get bored easy, and it could wait for another day...or week...

Eventually, I took off the paper, unpinned it and cut some fabric using the paper as a pattern. My fabric was just an old off cut in the cupboard, and wasn't quite long enough, so I had to piece it.



Then I hemmed the bottom and fastened on a piece of elastic underneath at each end, this just slips over each end and keeps the cover down.


So far so good, but it looked awfully plain, the greeness looked like a meadow, which of course needed flowers.

I don't have a large flower sizzix, so i cut these flowers and leaves freehand from calico, then painted each piece with gesso, 2 coats back and front. Before painting the leaves I folded them and did a little seam from the bottom to about halfway, just to give a little dimension to them. This is not a quick job, drying takes a while, and it's boring...well ya know what they say about watching paint dry...



So onto another day, lol, I swiped the flowers and leaves with various Distress ink pads..now these wont dry on here, so you can smudge them around till you get a pleasing background colour. They do eventually dry, but are not 'set' so if you wet them the ink will come off. I then used navy stazon to add my images, using background stamps and word stamps. I also found out some flowers for the centres.

The material is not hemmed, I wanted them to look a little rough around the edges.



Next I stitched thru the 2 layers of painted calico, and the paper flower centre with some gold seed beads. I also machined around the leaves with a zigzag stitch and some gold thread. Lastly i painted the paper flower petals with shimmerz.





In the photo above you can see cording at the bottom, this is about 6-7 lengths of different fibres, twisted slightly and fed thru the machine under a zigzag stitch, again with gold thread. This binds all your fibres together and gives you a machined cord.

here they are all stitched on,by hand, to the cricut cover. The wide ends of the leaves are tucked just under the cord to hide them,then stitched, and the narrow ends are stitched down aswell, but not flat. Give the leaves a bit of height by arching them slightly and then catching down.

This is a handy compromise between using paper(too flimsy) and using patterned fabric (too restrictive in what you can do to it, ie: inking and stamping. I mean i wouldn't want to ink over expensive quilting fabric lol) the calico doesnt need hemming, will not fray further after painting, though you can hem for a neat edge if you wish. I first used this method when making birdies with Effie, you can see them HERE.

I am sure there are a thousand uses for painted calico, if you come up with one let me know.

I have been sorting through old photos, here are a few of bits and pieces that I made over the years.
At one point I did a lot of beading, this necklace was a kit, and was sooo easy to make.


This is a bookmark that I made for my Mum years ago, it is pretty big, and was made to go in a large visitors book. The design is my own, and was done on tapestry canvas.

This is a flip calendar that I made for my friend Jacqui, she has a couple of Boerboel dogs. They are the most beautiful dogs. I put a different photo of her dogs on each page. Papers used are k&Co and the whole thing was bound with the Bind-it-all.

My friend Hannah designed this bracelet and brooch set for Craft Stamper. I made myself a set in red,beige and black to go with an outfit for a party. My niece liked them so I made her a set in pink and purple.