Arp~egg~io

The theme at Tag Tuesday this week is 'Eggs'

I enjoyed working with the sheet music on the eggs last week so much ,

 I decided to keep the theme the same for my egg tag

I cut an egg shape from some sheet music and stitched it onto a black card background which I had printed and embossed on cut it into a tag shape and punched a hole at the top.

 I was quite pleased with the result and proceeded to put the ribbon through, at this point the top of the tag ripped off... the ribbon was too thick.

I was talking with Kevin at this point and he remarked at how calmly I had taken this setback.

It was all replaceable, but sometimes these things can be happy accidents and meant to be.

So rather than start again, I cut round the torn black tag, giving the egg a second border which highlighted the black stitching.

I then stitched this onto one of my pink spotty tags

which had thin ivory lace wrapped round it.

I added a shiny large black sequin and on top of that a white iridescent sequin

then topped these with a diamante stone.

I added more lace round the egg and punched black flowers with tiny pearl glass seed beads.

The ribbon is from a lovely box of handmade chocolates that Kevin bought me a couple of years ago.

Tag: Recycled greeting card

Embellishments: Sheet music, embossed black card, punched paper flowers, seed beads, 

lace, sequins, diamante set stone recycled from an old necklace

Tie: Recycled ribbon from a 'Cocoadance' chocolate box.

xYx

Snow Garland

A few weeks ago whilst browsing on the net I saw a lovely idea for a snow garland, 

I don't remember where.

I thought it might be fun to try out and if successful, I might make a few to hang in the window for Christmas.

The idea looked quite simple small circles of white card and paper doilies sewn on a string.

I used white thin printer quality card and a 1 inch circle punch cutter.

I tried to cut out the circles from the Dollie but they kept jamming in the cutter......this reminded me why I do very little paper craft projects I am never lucky with paper punches they are always jamming on me and I loose interest. I think you have to spend a lot of money on these punches for them to be any good.

Anyway the way round my problem was to cut both together a layer of card with a layer of Dollie on top. This worked much better.

The only downside to this is that its a bit more time consuming, positioning and checking and there is perhaps more waste thank I would like.

So I got out the glue spread some over the card, picked out and stuck down the little bits of leftover Dollie and sprinkled it with a layer of fine iridescent glitter

and got some more little circles to add to my pile...........

Next was the sewing bit which I thought would be difficult but it was easy. Making these only from memory of a picture of a finished garland I thought I would have to use a cord or string so I fished out some white crochet cotton and started to try to stitch the cord along with the first circle.

It was not very successful and the cord came right back out again. I don't have any pictures of the sewing stage but I soon worked out that you don't need cord you simply just keep sewing and feeding the circles through .....card  on the bottom Dollie on the top....a little space of about 8 stitches in between each one. I added a glittery one every now and again spacing them out.

For me the sewing was the fun part and it took very little time to do.

if I didn't have to sit and cut out all the circles I would probably make more but I made one garland with this lot and decided it was all I wanted to do for now.

You can see from the pictures that on some of them I folded the Dollie back for a pretty 3D effect.

I think they are pretty effective and I might make more, perhaps as a two step project of sitting in the evening with the card, doilies and cutter and building up a box full ready to be stitched. 

Right now I'm happy to admire my little garland up on the mirror above the sofa, reminding me of the season.

*******

We got more snow last night............... isn't this icicle amazing!

we have them all around the outside of the house, this is the view from Charlotte's window and her collection of icicles

Our car hasn't moved since last last Saturday, better safe than sorry

and my studio too has a lovely collection of icicles down the side

and this is what the snow pie looks like today..........

it's now 9.5 inches high!..... the bricks you see to the right are the first step to the back door the snow is the same height its quite a deep step about 10 inches high.

Thread sketching samples

Whilst looking for a suitable sketchbook for a journal, these 3 little pieces fell out my sketchbook this morning. I hadn't even photographed them until today the date on them is 2008!

Flower

I was just having a little play around with paint paper and my sewing machine, having been inspired by a Cloth paper scissors project by Kelli Perkins ~ Thread sketching October 2007 issue  ......wasn't sure about them at the time but I think I quite like them.

Birdhouse

The last one isn't stitched, I couldn't decide whether to or not

Dancers

I think I might do some more of these...................

Flower Pins & Pendants

New items in my Etsy shop..... Three new fabric flower brooch pins

................ and three new stitched paper pendants

available @ Boxoftrix

Stitched Paper Pendants

I have been working on these little stitched paper pendants. First painting some paper with fabric paints then stitching over the surface, this created interesting texture, sometimes tearing the paper, I then embellished them with punched flowers, dragonflies & beads. I stitched them around tiny mirror tiles. The one on the bottom right is the only one made using stitched fabric.

These little pendants measure only 22mm square

I listed the three paper ones in my Etsy shop Boxoftrix ......One already sold....

More coming soon.......................