Spring is in the Air!

I've been busy up in my craft room trying to get ahead with my long list of cards needed for 2017, and as I was tidying up I found some bleeding colour tissue that I've had for ages but have never played with.

I didn't have my laptop at hand to re-watch the YouTube tutorial that the very talented Eileen Godwin had done on the technique (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oivloSbeLXA), so I relied on my memory instead! What I did recall was that she used dies to cut multiple shapes of the tissue, and reinforced that it was messy, that you should wear gloves and an apron, and dispose of the wet tissue carefully to avoid unwanted blotches of dye everywhere in your craft room.

First I cut various sizes of stars and circles in multiple layers of tissue, and put them into a container to keep them away from my water! Then I had a go at placing them onto pieces of watercolour card and spraying them, then removing them with tweezers after a few moments, but the result was a bit pale, watery and the shapes were quite indistinct. I finally decided to use a waterbrush to apply water directly to the shape before removing it, and that gave me a much brighter colour, with a definite shape.

Above are some of the scraps, some of which I've gone round with a black fineliner pen, and I'll use these for backgrounds for other projects. I really liked how some of the shapes had white areas in them, so I might try scrunching up some of the tissue shapes to see if I can enhance that effect in the future.

I used the main square piece of watercolour card for a background for my Clarity Stamp Challenge piece for the February 2017 theme, Flower Power. I thought the brightly coloured circles were reminiscent of the swinging 60s, and I used the Clarity Stamp alium flower stamps to enhance the circle theme, stamping using archival black ink, and stamping using versamark ink with white and coloured embossing for some variation of texture on the finished piece. Finally, I edged the square with a black sharpie pen, and matted onto yellow card for contrast. I added the Spring sentiment (one of the Clarity NDC club stamps) and coloured the lineart with some green pencils to finish the card, which will be sent for one of my upcoming spring birthdays.

Thanks for visiting, and if you'd like to leave me a comment that would be really appreciated!

Susan x

Crochet Blanket project

Just  short post to celebrate the completion of a long project, to make a kingsize blanket for our bed. I started it back in April last year, from a pattern in the "Crochet in no time" book by Melody Griffiths. The book promised the project could be completed in a day, and honestly, if you did a small blanket of the proportions in the original pattern, it probably would only take a day!

The project is comprised of large "granny squares, with quite a simple pattern (easy to remember after doing so many) which incorporates a bobble type stitch, and which starts with a circle of treble stitches around a magic ring.

The squares are joined together with a zig-zag crochet pattern, but I have modified the pattern slightly for the corner areas between the squares, and I also added a wide border around the finished blanket, finished with a picot edging.

Now I just need to decide what to do with the left-over yarn!

Thanks for visiting, Susan x