Woven Cane

When we visited my sister yesterday I noticed that she was working on a chair seat that she was redoing with woven cane. In the bin beside it was the old piece, which had evidently split down one side. I fished it out and asked if I could have it and she readily agreed – my motto plays out every day: “One person’s rubbish is another person’s treasure”!! I knew I could do something with it – it’s a very decorative pattern with loads of potential, and definitely too good to throw away.

My original plan was to use it as a stencil, and also to press into gesso or Polyfilla (joint compound) to create a texture, and I still intend doing this, but then I thought I could get some mileage out of it as a digital image, so I started off by scanning it, and then created a texture overlay in Serif PhotoPlus. This file has now been uploaded to my SkyDrive – link in my sidebar – in my Texture Overlays folder (big surprise, that! Shoshi’s nothing if not logical…). If you want to download it and use it in any digital imaging projects, please feel free.

Then I added it to a couple of backgrounds in Serif CraftArtist. I like the pale, washed out greyscale-on-white one but I ended up adjusting the colour balance in PhotoPlus because I wanted it a more beigey-brown colour – I decided I would make a thank you card for my sister, using her woven cane.

I printed these digital images out, together with a sheet of 3-inch square pictures of the piece. These squares have had their background removed, and blended with the beige texture background. The remaining squares can be used in other projects.

Here is the card I made, using the beige texture background.

I cut out one of the smaller squares out, and cut around the edges of the printed design, and inked the edge with a small amount of Walnut Stain distress ink to hide the cut white edges.

I cut the beige background piece in half to A5, and printed the “Thank You” sentiment onto it. I trimmed it down by 1/8 in all round, and then distressed the edges with Walnut Stain distress ink. I took a sheet of plain white card for the card base, and distressed the edges with Old Paper distress ink, and then matted and layered the texture piece and the small square, which I added with foam pads. Finally I added a couple of leaves that I’d made from my stash, and a purchased butterfly embellishment as a finishing touch, and a small splash of colour.