My Purchases at the Craft Show

After having a day’s rest, I was finally able to unpack my box of goodies from the Craft Show on Thursday. Please see my previous post for details of that, and it will make sense of this post, hopefully!

I mentioned that I got some Really Useful Boxes. These are such a clever invention! Somebody has really thought about this. They are lightweight and strong, transparent (so you can see what’s inside them), many different sizes and shapes, stackable, and have clever locking handles that keep the lids on. They are infinitely versatile and definitely Really Useful! I was delighted to find a stand at the show that had them, and decided to buy a few to start me off. I’ve had a shopping basket open online for them for a couple of weeks but preferred to see them in the flesh first.

I bought 2 long thin ones which are designed for standard rolls of paper.

I am highly delighted to discover that they fit exactly into my old wooden shelving system. If I want to get other boxes, say twice the height and half the length, I know they will fit too. I have separated my rolls of paper into gift wrapping paper, and art paper. So great to have my paper rolls organised at last, and not collapsing all over the place any more!

Then I got 2 smaller, more square-shaped ones, for general storage.

Eventually I want to get rid of this old computer desk as I no longer need it, and it sticks right out into the room. It is piled high, mostly with boxes of mixed media stuff, and I hope one day to get more organised and store this stuff better (more Really Useful Boxes??)

I’ve had my reserve supply of glues and double-sided tapes, foam tape, foam pads, etc. rammed into a cardboard box (like most of the stuff in my somewhat chaotic ARTHaven!) and decided to get a box for those.

At the show, I also bought some more Pinflair gel glue and photo glue as I get through a lot of this, and some more double-sided tape.

The other box, the same size, I bought with 2 organiser trays. One tray goes in the bottom, and the other sits at the top, with a flange around it which rests on top of the box, and the lid holds it in place. This one I have filled with all my Stickles, alcohol inks, Distress Stains, glitters, Rub ’n’ Buff, etc.

I stocked up on quite a few Distress Stains that I was missing, and have yet to put labels on the lids of these.

I bought a few smaller ones for pens, brushes and pencils, which are on the shelf above my main work table, in easy reach.

It will be really nice not to have that heap of stuff in that corner, which kept collapsing every time I tried to reach for anything!

Finally, I bought a really dinky little one to keep Sheba’s accessories in – her spare blades, blade holders, embossing tools, etc.

For some time now I have been following Colouricious on Youtube – they produce high quality videos of workshops and interviews with textile artists, all of which are so inspiring. I was delighted to see that Jamie Malden was at the show with a Colouricious stand, complete with her famous Indian woodblocks for fabric printing, so I treated myself to some! They also print well on paper, I am told.

They are hand carved in Indian hardwood and make a beautiful impression. You can see them on the Colouricious website.

Jamie loves to embellish her printed fabrics with machine embroidery. Years ago I tried my hand at free machine embroidery but then got into other things and never really followed it through, but I am keen to try again, so I picked up a few gorgeous shiny rayon and metallic threads at the show, along with a new, slimline embroidery hoop.

Finally, on Stef Francis’ stand, I bought a few things for mixed media art and creative embroidery – she sells amazing silk products, both dyed and undyed, including silk cocoons and silk carrier rods. These latter are formed during the silk spinning process (see my previous blog post for details) and they can be used to create amazing effects in one’s work. I love it when things that would otherwise be considered rubbish and thrown away are turned into something beautiful!

These silk carrier rods are in the bag in the centre, with the cocoons on the right. At the back on the left is a sheet of mulberry bark (bleached – it is a buff colour naturally) which can be teased out – like the rods, it is softer when damp – and dyed, and used for backgrounds and textures, and as a substrate for embroidery.

At the front is a skein of sari ribbon, created from strips of sari fabric from remnants left over in the manufacturing process – mixed fibres, gorgeous rich colours with the odd splash of metallic fibre – no two skeins are alike! Good enough to eat!

I love shopping at craft shows, because you never know what you are going to find, and what ideas are going to inspire you. I always go armed with a list – things to stock up on, like glues, cardstock etc., and I take a list of colours of things that I have got, and what gaps need filling (e.g. Distress Inks) so that over the past few shows, I have now managed to get the complete set of Distress Inks, re-inkers and Distress Stains, which are all bread-and-butter materials which one can’t do without! Last year on one stand was a huge bin full of Stickles, and I bought loads of them in different colours. Most stands have excellent offers, with good reductions when you buy in quantity, and of course, at the shows there is no postage and packing to pay. There are great bargains to be had, with many things being sold at special show prices.

It is also lovely to be able to handle the things “in the flesh” – now that our local craft shop has closed (not that I was able to get to it very often) I have to do nearly all my shopping online, and it is not always easy to judge the quality of things unless you can see them and feel them.

For someone virtually housebound unless my hubby takes me, it is also the most tremendously enjoyable day out for me! I just love mingling with all the “crafty” people, exchanging ideas, chatting, having a good laugh, learning so much from the demonstrators, and just being caught up in the general atmosphere of the show. In my experience, most crafters are friendly and generous with their ideas and their time, and it’s great to spend time with them.

We only have 2 shows a year in Exeter, and it is unlikely that I shall ever make any of the big ones like the NEC or Ally Pally, but I value our local ones so much! Roll on September!!

Craft 4 Crafters Show

On Thursday my hubby took me over to Exeter for the day, so that I could attend the annual Craft 4 Crafters show at Westpoint, the exhibition centre and county showground. Of the two craft shows, this is the better one; Creative Stitches and Hobbycrafts is very good, and I wouldn’t miss it, but I think the quality of creativity is higher at Craft 4 Crafters, with more interesting exhibitors, although some appear at both shows.

Just as the Creative Stitches show back in September was made special by my meeting up with my friend Wendy, Thursday’s show was equally special because I met two different lots of friends! Lucy from the Black Cat Forum had said she was going on the same day, and we bumped into each other for a chat, and I also met a friend from Bristol and her husband – she is a fellow M.E. sufferer and we first met at the Naidex mobility show in Birmingham about 3 years ago. It was a lovely surprise to bump into them, and we arranged to meet up at lunch time, and we had a great time.

As usual I took quite a few photos, but this year most of them were taken at Stef Francis’ stand. Stef started her unique silk and fibre business about twenty years ago when doing a City and Guilds course and could not find the colours she wanted, so she created them herself, and the business grew from there. She has a vast selection of many different fibres and silks for the creative embroiderer and textile artist, and her website is well worth a visit – be prepared to drool!!!

Here is a general view of the display wall on the stand, showing the various projects that Stef has made up, to show what can be done with the products she sells.

These are a couple of the necklaces she makes, made from silk cocoons and silk carrier rods. I fell in love with the Harlequin necklace!

This is what she calls her “Sushi” bag, also made from silk carrier rods.

These exquisite, tiny purses are made from the shells of walnuts, covered with fabric and embellished with embroidery, beadwork and tassels.

I was particularly taken with this richly textured embroidered panel which has made full use of the potential of the silk carrier rods, both in their entirety, and cut and unravelled and rolled again. The photograph does not do this piece justice; it shimmered with metallic thread as well as the natural sheen of the silk.

Here is a selection of dyed silk carrier rods for sale on the stand. These dimensional pieces are formed during the industrial spinning of silk. Fibres flying from the spinning machine tend to wrap themselves around the rods of the machine, and periodically they have to be slit and removed, so as not to impede the operation of the machine. They are quite hard as they still contain the gum from the silkworms, used in the formation of the cocoons, but they soften somewhat when dampened, and can be separated out, pieces cut off, and then rolled again in the shapes you can see in the embroidered panel above. Like all silk, they take dyes extremely well, and in the photo below you can see the richness of the colours Stef has given them. She also sells them in their natural state.

As well as selling many forms of silk, Stef also supplies bamboo fibre, which is very soft and fine, and easy to work with. You can see from this picture that like silk, it takes dye well.

Here is the display of threads of all types and colours on Stef’s stand. Drool-worthy or not?!!

When I could finally tear myself away, there was plenty more to see. At the back of the hall was a display of quilts. Here are a few of them.

After visiting my friend Lucy from the Black Cat forum a while back, I was keen to start collecting Really Useful Boxes for my ARTHaven. She has loads of them and I was very impressed with them! They are really a modular storage system – the boxes will stack, and the various sizes can mix and match and stack together, and you can get organiser trays to go inside them. I started a shopping basket on a website and it’s been open ever since – I decided to have a look at the show, and low and behold, there they were, so I bought a few to start me off.

The eggcraft ladies were at the show again, but told me that there weren’t many new ones this time that I hadn’t already photographed! This exquisite little carriage and pair was a new one, though.

I was delighted to find that Colouricious had a stand at the show this year. I am a subscriber to their Youtube channel; they regularly produce high quality videos with interviews with textile artists and workshops. Jamie Malden was there, demonstrating her famous Indian woodblock printing technique, and I succumbed and bought some of the woodblocks! I am assured that they work equally well on paper. They are hand-carved from Indian hardwood and are very detailed and high quality. It was lovely to meet Jamie in the flesh, having seen her often on the videos!

It is in association with this that I am keen to try my hand again at free machine embroidery. I did some many years ago but never pursued it, as I got caught up with other things at the time. Once you have printed your fabric, it just shouts to be embellished in so many ways! I bought a “starter” selection of various machine embroidery threads and a new embroidery hoop.

One thing I did this year, for the first time, was to attend a workshop. Alison from Ali Crafts was there with her husband (I bought some Distress Stains from him later on) was doing several workshops, and I opted to do her Tim Holtz Stamps and Stains workshop, working with Distress Stains and rubber stamps. It was tremendous fun, and this is the card I came away with:

The piece at the top is my practice piece, which I liked so much that I am going to make it into another card.

We started by swiping a piece of white ribbon with the Distress Stain of our choice (in my case, Dusty Concord). This way, you can make a matching ribbon for any project! Using the same Distress Stain, I then swiped across a piece of white card. I went over the bottom part again so that it was darker. She then produced a clock face mask and we used a Cut & Dry inking pad to go over this with Distress Ink in the same colour. We then added a texture stamp, and the bird stamp, and trimmed some card for matting and layering, adding half a small paper doily as an embellishment. I opted to colour mine with Barn Door Distress Stain, and finally assembled the whole thing onto black card.

The “sunflowers” in the practice piece were created by smacking the Distress Stain bottle down hard onto the card – it makes a fabulous spatter pattern once the pad is fully primed! Adding a texture stamp at the bottom looked like foliage. Again, I used Dusty Concord and Barn Door Distress Stains for this. (The mottled background was created by spattering water from my hand onto the Dusty Concord Distress Stain before I did the “flowers.”)

Finally, I can never visit a craft show without photographing the glitter! I will end up with a whole folder-full of glitter photos at this rate – all more or less the same!! Unfortunately the photo really doesn’t do them justice – you can imagine how very glittery such large quantities of bulk glitter would be! I bought a few little packets, including the black one at the back, which was absolutely gorgeous…

I shall do a separate post with pictures of the things I bought.

I had such a wonderful day! My longsuffering hubby was happy to take me, and spent the day with his brother, catching up on a few watercolour projects he’s working on, and they had lunch together. We had a meal in our local pub before coming home, and then I crashed out and have been pretty well worn out since then! It was worth it in spades, though. Spades full of glitter!!

Testing Sheba

After rather a rocky start to the day, I began to feel better in the afternoon, so I decided to do some test cuts with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine. I have got various different types of card and thought it would be helpful to test each one, and file away a sample, with a note on each, of what settings I used, and any other useful information.

It was quite straightforward to do, because I didn’t need to have Sheba connected to the computer in order to do this. You just have to set the cutter offline and press the Test button, after setting the origin, and repeat the test using different settings until you get the desired result.

Having taken advice from my friends on the Black Cat Forum, I’ve decided (at least for now) to leave my blade at setting 3 in the click holder (so that the blade tip extends by about a millimetre), and simply adjust the force for different media. Today, I just tested some cardstock samples – I have yet to test my heavy watercolour paper (which is excellent for making paper flowers as it does not disintegrate when wet with ink), acetate, and the dark blue card that I had so much trouble with at the beginning (on top of the orange card in the photo) – I think all these media will do better with the 60 degree Plus blade.

I am particularly pleased with how my Core’dinations papers cut – recently I bought some Tim Holtz Kraft Core and Distress Core’dinations which cut beautifully with the Cricut, so I wasn’t expecting anything less from Sheba. My Tim Holtz Idea-ology papers also cut very well.

My plain 12 x 12 cardstock that I got from an online paper mill also cut well. I was very disappointed last year when they stopped supplying 12 x 12 as it was an excellent source of good quality card in the larger-than-A4 size that I often need, but recently someone on the Black Cat Forum recommended American Crafts 12 x 12 cardstock at 216 gsm which comes in several ranges of gorgeous colours – primaries, pastels, earth tones, etc. and, I am reliably informed, it cuts extremely well. I rather doubt if this supply will dry up any time soon, so at least I’ve now got a reliable source of good quality everyday 12 x12 cardstock for all sorts of projects.

I am waiting for Lidl’s to bring back their supply of slightly-larger-than A4 cardstock which forum members also rave about – it’s very cheap, lovely colours, and cuts well.

One of my cards cut surprisingly well. Last year, I bought some unbranded, quite firm black cardstock from a craft show, and it cut like butter! Beautiful clean cuts. This will be great for cutting designs and putting silver or gold behind, and intricate cuts, too. Very pleasing!

Our local copyshop supplies a satin-finished white A4 card, and I bought a ream of this a while back. When I first tested Sheba, this cut very badly, but it was after I’d blunted my blade by using the wrong settings and cutting into my mat, so I was keen to try again with the new blade, but again I was disappointed. Dawn (owner of the Black Cat Forum and inventor and supplier of the Black Cat machines) sent me some basic white card for experimenting with, which at first glance I thought was the same, but it is not quite so heavy. This card cut 100 per cent better than the copyshop card, which I am not going to use with Sheba as the quality clearly isn’t good enough. It will be good for printing backgrounds (it prints well) and for cards bases with other, better stuff on top.

Mirror card cuts well, too. I tried it from the front and from the back. I found the shiny surface tended to lift glue off Sheba’s mat, so I am going to cut it always from the front – I wasn’t sure how the cut edges of the silver foil would look but it’s fine.

I am pleased with this afternoon’s session, as I now have a useful resource to turn to when working on projects. This will be added to in future as I add more papers and cards to my supply, and once I get going with different blades etc.

The result of all this is a whole pile of little rectangles cut in various colours of card, which look too pretty to throw out. Anybody want some home-made confetti?

WOYWW 138

I haven’t been around much since Christmas because I’ve been quite poorly with my M.E. and haven’t been able to do much. What spare energy I have had, has been used trying to get to grips with Sheba, my new Black Cat Cougar cutter. As you will see from my last blog post, I’ve finally started to see the light at the end of the tunnel and managed to cut my first successful piece.

This is my desk for this week’s WOYWW. (If you don’t know what WOYWW is, click on the link in my sidebar, which will take you to Julia’s website – she organises this weekly hop around our various studios and craft rooms so we can be thoroughly nosey and check up on how messy we are all being!!)

As you can see, there isn’t much happening! At the back is the card I made with Sheba – I’m really pleased with how it turned out! On the left, the white lump is the defunct drive from my NAS drive, all wrapped up in layers of foam rubber, getting ready to be sent back to Seagate for a replacement under warranty. You wouldn’t believe the trouble I’ve had over this – first of all working through all the troubleshooting to find out what was wrong, and then all the procedure for sending it back – they certainly don’t make it easy! The stipulations for packing are beyond belief, especially as the wretched thing is broken!!!

On the right, is my little face mould that I bought on Ebay a while back – it’s a Sculpey mould as far as I remember – and has lots of different sized faces on it. In an idle moment yesterday, I filled them all with air-dry clay and they are hardening. When they are done they will go in a box ready for use – I’ve got a mixed media project starting to gel in my mind that I want to try with one of them. I bought some cheap canvases in Lidl the other day which will do.

On the brown table is a heap of stuff (as usual) – paperwork demanding attention, and stuff to put away. this always gets neglected when I’m poorly because I’m too brainfogged to tackle it, and haven’t the energy to use up on such boring pursuits as tidying up!

I’m making a real effort to join in WOYWW this week, as I haven’t made a very good start to 2012, have I!

Hope you all have a great week and produce lots of lovely creative stuff.

Sheba’s Coming of Age

I know I’ve been a bit neglectful of my blog of late – since Christmas I have been quite poorly with my M.E. and haven’t been able to do a lot. When I have had any energy I’ve had to catch up with various domestic chores and other necessary things, and if I’ve had any energy left, I’ve been trying to get Sheba up and running.

I must say I’ve had some problems with her! It’s not her fault – it was my silly fault trying to cut something from some very hard, dense card I have got (the navy blue card I made my hubby’s Silver Wedding card from) – and I ended up increasing the cutting force so much that I ended up cutting into the surface of my mat and blunting the blade! After that I was having no end of trouble trying to get a decent cut, and everyone on the Black Cat Forum, bless them all, were so brilliant, patient and helpful, and suggested it was probably a blunt blade, especially as there’s quite a visible impression of what I was trying to cut in my mat! They suggested I use some branded card so they would know what we were dealing with, so I ordered some absolutely fabulous cardstock from American Crafts – it’s 12 x 12, gorgeous colours, and a decent thickness (216 gsm/80 lb). I also ordered some Conqueror iridescent card from Dawn (who supplies the Black Cat cutters and runs the forum) and this came this morning – also totally gorgeous, but I haven’t tried that yet. I also ordered a couple of replacement 60-degree blades for Sheba.

Today I was feeling a bit better so decided to settle down and try and get to grips with Sheba. Yesterday, somebody on the Black Cat Forum posted the most fantastic summary, all in one place, of the various settings on the machines, what can be left alone, and what should be adjusted according to your project, and it was so helpful that I could feel the pieces starting to fall into place in my mind.

A little while ago I was following an excellent tutorial on the Inkscape Cutting Design forum which I have also signed up for (I never thought I’d say it, but I am actually learning Inkscape – after I’d given it up as incomprehensible last year!!) – Carolyn, who runs that forum, has done some very good tutorials for Inkscape, and I followed this one on spirals. I liked it so much that I decided to design a birthday card using this technique, with some stencilled text cut out beneath the spiral design.

Again, I had a bit of a struggle doing the text as I wanted to use Cairo font which is quite heavy, and the small pieces between and inside the letters were tending to get torn because it wasn’t cutting properly. Someone on the forum told me an easy way to create a stencil effect, creating a tall narrow rectangle and using path>difference in Inkscape – easy-peasy compared with what I was trying to do, manipulating nodes on each letter!

Now that Sheba is cutting properly, the letters really weren’t a problem. Being a bit wary of increasing the force too much, some of the corners didn’t pop out as well as they might, but I was able to get all the cut pieces out in the end, with very fine scissors and a craft knife, but most of it cut just fine.

Today I’ve finally been able to get Sheba to do a decent cut, and this is the result.

The cardstock is some of the American Crafts cardstock, and I sprayed the back of the cut design with some Crafter’s Companion Stick & Stay adhesive, and then applied a piece of dull silver card to show through the cut part (this is the same card I used on my hubby’s Silver Wedding card). As a final touch I inked around the edges with Chipped Sapphire Distress Ink.

All that remains to be done now is to make a card insert so that the back of the silver card is covered up, and it also looks much nicer.

I’ve uploaded the cut file (svg) of this card to my Skydrive.

Phew! I finally feel as if I am getting to grips with Sheba!

New Storage in my ARTHaven

The paper storage in my ARTHaven has been getting in an increasingly sorry state over the past months. I had some cardboard storage units which were supposed to be used with their compartments vertically, to store ring binders in, and when I converted my old office into my ARTHaven, I thought they would do turned around for paper and card storage. However, they were not designed for this, and are not strong enough. This is what’s happened to them.

Pretty ghastly, isn’t it. I decided something needed to be done, and I couldn’t afford the lovely wooden storage units some people have, and anyway I’m pretty limited for space (when I first converted my ARTHaven I thought “What a lovely lot of SPACE!!!” Funny how it diminishes with time, isn’t it.) I’ve been doing some research online over the past few months and eventually decided to go for wire mesh cube storage. The parcel arrived yesterday morning. Here are the panels straight out of the box.

Included in the pack were two different sorts of connectors – corner connectors and small double connectors for other joins.

The corner connectors enable you to join several panels into a corner in all directions, and click into place on the panels, resulting in quite a rigid structure.

This is the first panel with four corner connectors on it.

The first three panels assembled.

Two cubes assembled.

Four cubes with extra panels inserted as shelves. I attached these with twist ties, but if this proves not strong enough, I shall use cable ties.

I bought a kit with enough panels to make 12 cubes with no shelves, and using some of the panels as shelves, I was able to make up this unit.

If I want to buy further panels and connectors, I can do this on an individual basis, but for the moment I think this is adequate.

My hubby has attached it to the wall for me so that it won’t tip forward on top of me! Unfortunately the book shelves that it rests on are not as deep as the cubes, but it works OK. Here it is with my paper put in. There’s now much more room for expansion!

The higher part is pretty high up, and to access it easily, I will have to use my small stepladder, so I’ve used it to store stuff I don’t use very often. I think this is going to be a highly satisfactory arrangement.

Silver Wedding Card–In Retrospect

Looking back over my blog posts of the last year, I realised that I never did a post about the silver wedding card I made for my hubby – it was a very busy year anyway, and also, I got so carried away with his present that it got overlooked. I thought you might like to see what I did.

I designed and made my own wedding dress, and after 25 years, there were still scraps of fabric in my bits box, so I decided to incorporate these into the design, along with some embroidery to mirror that on my dress.

Here’s a picture of me on our wedding day with my dad, to show the dress.

(You can see the rest of the wedding photos here.)

The dress was made of white moiré taffeta with pale blue satin accents. The design was inspired by a variety of influences, but mainly Russian. My father made a wire frame for me to construct the headdress around. The detachable collar was inspired by Thai dancers’ costumes, and the embroidery, worked in several shades of blue pure silk floss, incorporated Indian shi-sha mirrors. The band around the waist was smocked with the blue silk floss, and the blue satin “straps,” also embroidered, were attached at the waist only. Under the skirt was a hooped crinoline petticoat with several layers of net, and the sleeves were also puffed up with ruched net attached to the sleeve linings. There was further embroidery in the blue silk floss over the shoulders and at the wrists, and the hem of the dress was finished with a narrow silver braid. The veil was plain white net with tiny silver sequins sewn onto it.

Here are the materials I selected to make the card.

The pieces for the front of the card I cut with Jiminy Cricut, using some dark blue cardstock and silver mirror card, cutting an oval aperture for the embroidery, our initials in two entwined hearts and, of course, the number 25.

I matted and layered the component pieces for the hearts, initials and numbers to form the embellishments for the card.

You can see on the silver mirror card for the heart piece that I have hand-embossed the outlines where they cross, to give the impression of two pieces interlocking.

Here is the heart motif attached to the matted and layered aperture of the card.

These are the materials for the embroidery. You can see the central motif in progress.

You can see that I have outlined the central white moiré taffeta shape with chain stitch worked in silver, onto a background of pale blue satin. On the right you can see some Indian shi-sha mirrors waiting to be attached. For this project I used pure silk floss in three shades of blue. This was given to me by someone who got a huge quantity from a convent which was closing down. It is fabulous with a wonderful sheen to it, but absolute murder to work with as the fine silk fibres catch on everything, including the slightest roughness on one’s skin. Sewing down the small mirror fragments with their rough edges was very difficult – I had to cover the edge with a fingernail as I pulled the thread through each time, and there was a risk of the thread breaking.

I then worked three lines of chain stitch in the three shades of blue silk floss to attach the lace to the moiré taffeta for the background, trimming back the taffeta under the lace.

This piece was then laid over a piece of dull silver card and attached around the edges with double-sided tape.

The embroidered motif was attached with chain stitch in silver thread.

The final touch was to add a fringe of small tear-drop shaped silver beads along the border of chain stitch silk embroidery.

Here is the completed card, with the embellishments attached to the front and the embroidery in the aperture. The whole thing was matted and layered onto a sheet of the dull silver card. I stuck on a matching piece for the back of the card, and made a card insert with a verse.

Here is the card with the shadow box I made as a present for my hubby, showing them to have the same colour scheme.

I have made a video slideshow of the construction of this card rather than a video as such, because watching someone doing all that embroidery would be like watching paint dry!