Valentine Card–Kitty Squad

This project was worked in conjunction with an art journal page on a similar theme. Please see the next post for details.

Towards the end of 2014 I bought the Stampotique Originals stamp “Kitty Squad” but t was not until June 2015 that I g0t around to using them, because of everything that was going on with my health. I got as far as stamping the kitties out numerous times, and then cutting them out.

See this blog post for details. I had intended to make my hubby a Valentine card using these kitties last year, and the idea I had brewing never came to fruition, but it never went away, so I decided to make the card for him this year instead.

The stamp with the cut-out kitties.

The first thing to do was to cut the stamp into four separate kitties.

The cut out stamped kitties were used as masks. I began by laying them a piece of watercolour paper and drawing around them lightly with a pencil to indicate their position. (I have a large quantity of scrap watercolour paper that I rescued from my hubby’s rubbish bin – he had only painted on one side and these were his “rejects”! – as you know, I never throw stuff away if it can be used!)

Using my stamp positioner, I stamped each kitty into the pencilled outline until they filled the page.

I then applied Zig Two-Way Glue to the backs of the masks. This glue is brilliant. If you stick things down with it while it is still wet, the bond is permanent, but if you leave the glue to dry, it is temporary and repositionable, like the glue on Post-It Notes. This is what I did with the masks.

Once they were all down, I prepared to spray the piece with Dylusions spray inks. I masked off the surrounding area with newspaper because these spray inks make such a mess!

I spritzed the piece with water first, and then sprayed it from top to bottom with rainbow colours.

It was really hard to get an accurate result with the sprays, so I removed the top from each spray bottle in turn and applied more ink with a brush, diluting it down with a little water, until I got the result I wanted. This is actually a much more controlled way of using these inks, and while it is often best to use them as intended, as a spray, there are times when painting them on may suit one’s needs better.

Now it was time to remove the masks. I had hoped to save these to use again, but the whole thing had got very wet, and they disintegrated when I removed them. There was also a certain amount of ink bleed around the edges of the masks.

My original plan was to replace the masks permanently, but in a different place from the original, so that the different coloured kitties would show up agains the background, so instead, I coloured each white kitty image with Derwent Inktense pencils and blended them with a wet brush. The ink bleed created a bit of a shadow around each one, so in the end I was quite happy with it.

This is the result.

I drew a doodled cat onto white card and added a few touches of colour with Inktense pencils. I cut it out, and applied it to the card with regular matt gel medium. I also made the text pieces from scrap card, hand-written with a permanent black drawing pen and coloured slightly with Inktense pencils which I blended with a wet brush. These were also applied with regular matt gel medium.

Here is the completed card.

The piece was mounted on a sheet of red A4 card folded in half, and matted with a piece of marbled yellow paper from my stash

I made an insert from a sheet of A5 card trimmed by 1/4 inch all round. It looked a bit stark, so I inked the edges with distress inks.

To give a softer effect with the Fossilised Amber, I used an Inkylicious Ink Duster, and then I used a home-made ink blender for the Abandoned Coral on the edges.

To complete the card insert, I took one of the Kitty Squad masks I made, and painted it with Inktense pencils, and stuck it down with regular matt gel medium. I drew the lines for the heart “balloons” with a permanent black drawing pen, and then stuck down the red sequin hearts with Pinflair gel glue. The text was written by hand, using a sanguine drawing pen, adding the shadow with a dark sepia pen.

Here is the completed card insert.

Well, I finished it in the nick of time! This was a project that should have been made last year, and at last it is done. I don’t think I’ve ever had a project so long in embryo! I hope my hubby likes it.

WOYWW 349

I know we always say this, but I can’t believe another week has gone by – it has gone so quickly! I am delighted to report that Mr. Mojo and Mrs. Muse are well and truly back, and I am enjoying their presence immensely, and have forgiven them completely for bunking off as they did.

Here is my desk as it was late Tuesday night after I dumped everything on it – I’d been doing some painting downstairs.

A quick tour. On the far left you can see a demolished decorative carrier bag that my hubby had receive a gift in – it is made from gorgeous black and gold paper in a geometric design with black side panels and some very nice black gros-grain ribbon handles, all of which I shall be able to use in projects. Next, my regular matt gel medium. In front of my paint brush tin, the two boxes with my drawing pens (Turkish Delight) and coloured pencils (cigars). Just peeping out, to the right of the boxes, is one of my Fun Cats that I was working on last night, with the original drawing on top – scroll down to the previous post for details about this.

Just above the cats are some new Perfect Pearls. I shall be doing a blog post about these and my other new stash in a few days. White acrylic paint to the right of these, and some general detritus from the art journal project – teabags, scraps of paper etc. For once, a clean jar of paint water lol!

Sitting on top of that is my completed art journal page on a tea theme – again, scroll down to the post before the cat one to see details.

To the left of the art journal is a pile of new stash – I am grateful to our own WOYWW-er Diana Taylor for her info on the sisal fibre that’s at the bottom, and the pink pack next in the pile which contains a lovely flower stamp set she recommended. On the top are a couple of clear stamp sets that I got on Ebay this week – the lower one is smaller than I expected, but will still be useful.

Talking of new stash, I have succumbed completely to a totally irresistable temptation to buy some absolutely gorgeous new flower stamps – they are on their way! (There goes my Christmas money…) Details to follow later.

I’ve had an incredibly busy week, including dealing with various things that have gone wrong in the house, and several outings. This week seems to be a bit quieter which is good because I’ve been able to have a rest! Next week I’ve got the dreaded dentist, and going back to the chemo unit to have my port flushed, before which I am hoping to do some more baking for the chemo-ites.

I have joined a church craft group called KnitterNatter (you can imagine which activity occupies the lion’s share of the evening!!) which meets fortnightly on a Thursday evening. Next meeting is tomorrow. I have decided to be good and devote the time to working on various UFOs I have. They all take up far too much room in the studio and it’s high time I got to work on them. More details later.

Happy WOYWW everybody, and have a great week full of inspiration and productivity.

Fun Cats

Last night I drew some funky cats and scanned them into the computer. I printed out several copies on card so that I could colour them in different ways.

The first one I have coloured using Inktense pencils – lovely to use as they are thick and slightly waxy to use, and then you can blend the colours with a wet brush. They become set once dry, so you can add more and wet them without reactivating the previous ones.

I am planning on colouring the other ones using acrylics, Sharpies, coloured pencils or watercolours, and perhaps some Perfect Pearls, as the fancy takes me, and maybe adding some Zentangle and doodles. Lots of scope!

Last year I began a project using my then new Kitty Squad stamp, but never completed it because of everything else that was going on last year – I had hoped to make a Valentine card for my hubby but never managed it because I was under a lot of stress at the time in the run-up to when my operation should have taken place. I still have the bits I made for that project, and I am hoping to do it for him this year instead. Having practised drawing the funky cats, I will be incorporating one into his card, and using the Kitty Squad stamp as a background. Watch this space.

The Cup that Cheers–Finished Project

I have now finished my journal page on the theme of tea.

This is the previous photo I took, after applying the painted teabags to the page:

Having the chance to think about it a bit, I thought it needed a few finishing touches, such as darkening the edges of the pages, and adding a bit of shadow here and there to emphasise the elements against the background.

I used my Inktense pencils to add some shadow around the teabags, and a little around the tea cup. I also felt that the text pieces were too bright, so I added a bit more colour with the Inktense pencils, and then darkened them down a bit with a dark grey one.

I went around the border with my sepia pen, adding some small circles and ovals, and then went over them with an Inktense pencil in a dark redding-brown colour, blending it out with water.

I think these touches bring the design together and give it a bit more coherence. Here is the finished result.

To recap, this project uses teabags and real tea, applied onto a background painted with acrylics. I created the “Tea” text using real tea from the teabags, embedded in acrylic polymer and cut to size, and then applied with gel medium. The teabags were layered and inked, and the tea branch was painted with acrylics. I added copper and gold machine embroidery to the teabags and then applied them to the page using gel medium. The water droplets were stamped using archival ink, with the catchlights added with a white gel pen.

The text pieces were hand-written on some scrap paper that had been sprayed with home-made glimmer mist (distress ink and Perfect Pearls in water) and the steam from the tea cup was made from a swirl stamped with sticky embossing powder with gold glitter added. The cup was made from a round teabag, inked, and stamped with another water droplets stamp, and some gilding wax added. The saucer was formed from another teabag, cut on the diagonal. The handle was also made from a teabag on the diagonal, rolled up and applied, like the rest, with gel medium. The tablecloth was a piece of transparent plastic chicken packaging painted with acrylics and stuck down with Pinflair gel glue, with a little gilding wax added.

I think that just about covers it. Time to put my feet up with a cuppa.

Delicious Death Gliders

A foodie post for you.

Over the past couple of days I have been making Rugelach. These are small Jewish sweet pastries filled with dried fruit and cinnamon. Having finished eating the second batch of mince pies I made, I thought I would make these for a change. It is several years since I last made them and I am pleased to say that they are as delicious as I remember!

When I first made them, many years ago, my hubby and I had been watching Stargate SG-1, a sci-fi series we both enjoy, in which the evil aliens fly around in their small fighter planes known as death gliders:

and my hubby came in the kitchen and saw all the Rugelach laid out and said, “They look just like death gliders!” The name has stuck!

They are a lot more of a fiddle to make than mince pies but well worth the effort. On previous occasions I was able to get a luxury dried fruit mix but our local supermarket doesn’t seem to stock this any longer – it may be a seasonal Christmas thing, and I will have to see if I can source it from a more specialist delicatessen or wholefood shop. I did get some “Island Mix” which has a variety of dried fruits in it, and this worked OK, but I don’t think the flavour is quite as intense, and the pieces were a lot harder and more difficult to prepare.

The pastry is made from unsalted butter, self-raising flour and cream cheese, which results in a lovely soft, light result.

It is very pliable and sticky when first made, and needs to be put in the fridge overnight to harden slightly. I made double quantities and wrapped the two portions separately in kitchen foil.

I made them in two batches over a couple of days because of being busy with other things, and also I got pretty tired doing all this!

Here are the filling ingredients ready to mix.

The completed filling.

I remember from previous occasions that if I didn’t cut up the dried fruit, it was much too lumpy to be used. I had used my mini-Moulinex chopper/blender for this, but this new dried fruit was very hard, and became extremely sticky once you started chopping it, and I found the little machine was struggling, and the motor was overheating, so I stopped using it, and cut up the fruit by hand instead, on a board with a large sharp knife. This was pretty hard work and took ages!

The next picture shows the pastry being rolled for the first batch.

Divided into four portions, each of these is rolled out into a disc measuring about 9 inches. My rolling pin is still missing… So out comes the mulled wine bottle again – it makes a very adequate rolling pin!

Each pastry disc is then cut into 8 equal wedges.

The wedges are spread with honey and the filling laid on top.

Finally, they are rolled up and formed into the death glider shape, brushed with egg white and dusted with sugar, ready for the oven.

Baked until golden brown. In total I have made 64.

Deeeelicious! – especially served warm.

My diet? Oh dear… Well, I shall just have to ration myself! They are just toooo yummy.

WOYWW 348–Machine Embroidery

Further progress on my art journal page “The Cup that Cheers.”

For full details, please see my previous post. The picture below shows my main work area with the album. The blue clips are holding down the piece of chicken packaging which was inadequately secured with gel medium – I have now stuck this down with Pinflair gel glue.

The motif on the left-hand page is made from layered teabags on which I have painted a branch of a tea bush with acrylics. This has been machine embroidered with metallic threads and stuck down with gel medium.

This is a more general view of the main work zone. You can see that it has got really untidy again, but this time I don’t mind – this is the sort of untidiness that comes from a busy creative time, and not from the space being used as a dumping ground.

Over in the opposite corner is my sewing machine, which was in use yesterday, doing the machine embroidery on the teabag motif on my journal page.

To the right of the machine you can see the general detritus left from late last night when I finished the machine embroidery.

I am now feeling a lot more confident with my new sewing machine, and as long as I don’t leave it so long as before, until I use it again, I think I have broken the back of it at last, and can move ahead positively and start introducing more textile art into my mixed media work.

Last week I attended a church craft evening, called “Knitter Natter” lol – at least as much of the latter went on as the former! I took along some of my Florabunda prints to paint, and managed to do quite a bit of the first one. Later the next day I completed some more, and now have 6 more to add to my collection, ready to make up into cards – some with Perfect Pearls and some with watercolours.

The group is meeting fortnightly. I have decided I really should use the time to tackle some of my many UFOs (UnFinished Objects), some of which have been hanging around for more than 30 years. Now there’s an admission…

It is soooo good to have Mr. Mojo and Mrs. Muse back! I have forbidden them, in no uncertain terms, from taking any more holidays. If they do, I shall send Interpol after them.

Happy WOYWW everybody. A busy day today so not sure how many desks I’ll get to visit. Out for lunch with the Allerton Three (us three girls who met in hospital, having a fun girls’ lunch out, with plenty of laughter no doubt!).

The Cup that Cheers–Machine Embroidery

Today I got my new sewing machine going again. I say “new” but it is in fact now nearly two years old! What with one thing and another I’ve never really got to grips with it yet, and apart from a bit of basic sewing last year, it has sat there gathering dust in the corner of my ARTHaven.

My lack of confidence in this very complex and modern machine (compared with my old one which died aged 40 years!) has held me back somewhat in my creativity. One of my plans for last year was to get more into textile art in my mixed media work, and had I not been ill, maybe I would have bitten this bullet sooner, but yesterday I felt I could not hold off any longer and I just had to get on with it, because the machine was becoming the elephant in the room.

As before, I struggled with it, and had to get the book out for even such a basic task as threading the machine! I wasn’t prepared to give up this time, though, and forged ahead. Time to start investigating the fancy stitches!

On a piece of scrap cotton sheeting, I sewed a few samples of the fancy stitches, making a note of their number and any stitch length and width settings.

I had one epic fail with one of the cross-stitch samples – this stitch obviously does not respond well to being done with too small a stitch length/width and before I knew what was happening it was sewing on the spot, and the machine jammed, with a piece of heavily sewn fabric being trapped under the needle plate. I spent a long time sorting this out, and could not pull it back through the hole. I was anxious not to lose the piece in the workings of the machine and after I had managed to cut away the main piece of fabric, with great difficulty I managed to unscrew the needle plate in its two sections, and remove it. Part of the problem was that the upper part of the machine made it impossible to get the length of the screwdriver underneath, so in the end I resorted to using a coin to remove the screws, which did the trick very well.

Once the needle plate had been removed, it was a simple matter to cut the offending lump off the back. Further problems arose when I screwed the needle plate back on – the needle would not go down! Off it came again, and I replaced it again, and this time the needle did go down, but it was making a slight noise as if something was rubbing. Removing the plate again and testing the needle without it, it ran smoothly, so obviously the positioning of the plate, even with the screw holes determining its location, was critical. I took more care replacing it this time, and after this all was well.

The result of all this was several hours of wasted time as far as actual sewing was concerned.

I replaced the regular needle with a “metallic” needle (yes, I know, all needles are metallic! – but these are specifically designed for use with metallic threads, having a somewhat larger eye), and threaded the machine up with gold thread, with the existing white bobbin thread, and began to experiment with a practice piece.

I selected three fresh teabags and tacked them onto a piece of scrap cotton. I put this piece in my machine embroidery hoop but this proved unnecessary in the end.

Here is the practice piece with some fancy stitching around the edges, and some free machine embroidery inside. Unfortunately, as usual, the gold hardly shows up on the photo, but it is quite sparkly. I shall keep this piece to use in another project sometime.

To do this I used the free quilting foot, which has a spring assembly which makes the foot go up and down when you sew. The machine’s feed dogs are lowered and you guide the fabric under the needle in any direction you choose, and determine the stitch length yourself. This does require some practice but I think I am gradually improving! It is many, many years since I did free machine embroidery and had forgotten everything about it. My machine has a sewing speed control – a sort of speed limiter – and I set this to medium – slow was far too slow, and fast made me think I might let the machine run away with me if I wasn’t careful!

I then felt confident enough to move on to my painted teabags. I tacked them onto a piece of tea-dyed fabric before beginning stitching. I started with the free embroidery first, since the machine was already set up for this, and used the gold thread that was already in the machine.

I then re-threaded the machine with copper metallic thread, raised the feed dogs again, and replaced the foot with the fancy stitches “monogram” foot. Unfortunately the copper thread doesn’t show up as well as I’d hoped. I used a Greek key stitch instead of the leaf one I’d used on the practice piece because I thought it might be a bit bolder.

I cut the teabags out of the backing fabric with a pair of fine sharp scissors.

I darkened the edges somewhat with some Antiqued Bronze distress stain.

Here is the piece stuck down onto the page using regular matt gel medium. You can see that the copper thread doesn’t show up much. Actually in the photo none of the machine embroidery is making much impact, but in real life this is quite sparkly and does add something to the design.

While I was working on the page I noticed that the piece of chicken packaging was lifting. It is very stiff and on a flexible page, the gel medium was proving inadequate to hold it in place, so I removed it completely, and re-stuck it with Pinflair gel adhesive. The clips are to hold it firmly in place until the glue has fully set.

Another finishing touch was to add catchlights to the water droplets on the left-hand page and on the droplet coming from the tea cup on the right-hand page, using my Uniball white marker pen. I also added a little touch with this pen, to the petals of the flowers on the painted tea branch, to brighten them and make them stand out a bit more.

I am still debating whether to add a border, and I think I may need a little shading around the teabags to give them a bit more emphasis against the background.

Progress on The Cup that Cheers

Today I made further progress on my art journal page on the theme of tea.

I finished the last session by painting the piece of chicken packaging with white acrylic, and today I applied some red acrylic with a palette knife, so that it coloured only the raised parts.

I started a new scratch paper today with paint from my palette. Here is the start of it.

I have been thinking a lot about what to do about the three overlapping teabags on the left-hand page, and have decided not to use them as they are. I layered up three fresh ones and stuck them together with regular matt gel medium.

I searched for some images of tea plants on the Internet and painted the branch of a tea bush on the three overlapping teabags.

I then layered the painted teabags on top of the original three and stuck them together with regular matt gel medium.

Further progress on my scratch paper.

The layered and painted teabags looked a bit pale so I added some Tea Dye and Vintage Photo distress inks to the top layer to darken it a bit.

A mock-up showing the painted teabags in place on the left-hand page.

The chicken packaging applied to the right-hand page with regular matt gel medium. It looked too stark and white so before sticking it down, I brushed it with several layers of brown acrylic paint well diluted with water to form a wash. I trhen cut out the top section to fit around the saucer.

Using a small square of paper that had been sprayed with inks and Perfect Pearls and had been in my backgrounds folder for ages, I wrote the words of the text using my sepia Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen, and cut them out. I inked the edges with Tea Dye distress ink and a home-made blending pad. Here is a mock-up of the placing of the text pieces.

The final picture for today. I stuck down the text pieces with regular matt gel medium, and outlined them with the sepia pen. I also cut three “tea” words from the acrylic film piece and stuck them down with the same gel medium. When they were dry, I outlined them with a Uniball gold pen. I applied some copper and gold gilding wax to the cup and its handle, and a little onto the chicken packaging, but not enough to obscure the red paint. The teabags are still not stuck down because I am still toying with the idea of adding some machine embroidery to them.

This is definitely the look I am after. I am pleased with the way the textures have worked, using the teabags to create the cup and saucer, and the chicken packaging to represent a red and white tablecloth, and the fact that there are many media in this project, including some real tea!

I shall think some more about the embroidery on the teabags, and also whether I need to add a border to the page. Watch this space.