12 Tags Of Christmas Project

I have started a facebook page for the upcoming Tim Holtz’s 12 Tags of Christmas
event which starts in 2 days time! The purpose of the page is so that Tim fans
can make and share artwork inspired by the techniques posted on his blog and
discuss possible product alternatives if you dont have them.

The link is:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/12-Tags-Of-Christmas-2011/169976003099169

Hope to see you there

Trish

New Blog Home

I have started off a new blog with the same name over on WordPress, the link of the blog is here: http://lostmusejournals.wordpress.com/

As I type I have just finished moving all my tumblr blog posts over to the new wordpress blog, I preserved the same date and time stamps, art images and my blurbs and mumblings in the format they were originally posted.

When I first started dipping my toes back into the creative waters in April this year, Tumblr suited my needs as I needed a place where I could upload my dabblings with the minimum amount of fuss.

The time has come for me to move onto a proper blogging platform again, wordpress has always been my favourite blogging software so I registered the ‘lost muse journals’ yesterday and got to work.

Thanks for following me so far.

New Stuff Added

Just added some new stuff to my new blog, the url if you havent found it is:

http://trishbee.tumblr.com/

You can also find me on facebook here:

http://www.facebook.com/trishbeeuk

Lost Muse Journals

You can join my network blog page to read all the latest posts via your facebook account, just click on the follow button on the link below:

http://networkedblogs.com/blog/lost_muse_journals/

New Blog Up & Running

I just wanted to let all blog visitors know that I have started a new blog up today rather than continue posting on this one I decided it was time for a change. You can see me reasons for this if you read the first blog post on the new blog..

The link to visit it is below:

http://trishbee.tumblr.com/

Fabric Stamping & Stencilling

Two blog posts in as many as 2 days! Put the flags up! Its a record!

Ive been playing with some of the fabric backgrounds I made yesterday, Ive stamped and stencilled on some of them using fabric paints. I used Crafters Workshop stencils which are a dream to use! I must buy more!!

For those of you who havent used these fab templates, you really must! You can see the entire range along with some ideas for using them on their website below:

http://www.thecraftersworkshop.com/

You can see what I did below, just click on the links to see bigger pixs:

Custom Fabrics With Fabric Transfer Paints

I recently bought a set of transfer paints for fabric after seeing a fab video on youtube on how to convert hand painted backgrounds into printed fabric!

You can view the short teaser video I saw on Colouricious’s Youtube Channel here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Colouricious#p/u/7/z0r8QCIuHaM

Being a bit of a background junkie these paints appealled to me so I immediately wanted some!

The paints I used are by a UK company called Colourcraft who make a vast range of inks, paints and dyes for textiles and papercrafts.

You can read more about the company’s range of transfer inks here:

http://www.colourcraftltd.com/default_p.asp?RangeID=145#

and

http://www.thetextiledirectory.com/shopping/listingresult/Shopping-for-Textile-Art-+-Craft-Supplies/Art-+-Multimedia-Materials/Colourcraft-Colours-+-Adhesives-Ltd/

I got my transfer paints from Rainbow Silks, they have a set of 12 paints for only £12.25, which is very good value I think. They are actually cheaper on the Colourcraft website but they dont have an online shopping cart so I couldnt check out my order without using the phone and I cant hear on the phone (I’m deaf) so that was out of the question! So I had to get mine from Rainbow Silks, the url for the paints I bought is:

http://www.rainbowsilks.co.uk/ProductDetails.cfm?SubCatId=62&Code=COLFTP28SET

Today was the first time I’d sat down and played with the paints and I was really impressed!

The paints themselves are nice and gooey, kinda like acrylic paints in consitency, when I first used them I was a bit dissapointed by the colours in the pots, they were supposed to be BRIGHT and they sure didnt look bright. The golden yellow looked more like yukky light brown, so as you can imagine I was preparing myself to be let down by these paints and told myself not to  get my hopes up too high.

I painted some splodges of paint onto A6 sheets of drawing paper, the instructions say use cartridge paper, I found ordinary printing/copier paper and drawing paper works well.

The paints themselves are fast drying, I only needed to get the heat gun out to speed up the thicker areas of paint I had applied.

Once dried, I used the iron on the hottest setting, and pressed the backgrounds onto the fabric until the paints transfered.

Wow! Instant printed fabrics!!

I was impressed, and that mucky old brown did indeed turn out to be a nice bright yellow afterall!!

The beauty of these paints is that you can use the painted backgrounds many times to transfer onto the fabric, you just get a slightly paler version of it each time. Also if you use a LOT of paint you get a nice brighter colour effect too. The hotter the iron, the better the paints transfer onto the fabric.

You can only transfer onto manmade fabrics such as evolon, lutradur, polyester, organza etc, but Colourcraft have a medium called ‘transfix’ which enables you to use these paints with natural fabrics such as silks and cottons too!

When your background will no longer transfer paint onto your fabric you still have a nice handmade background which you could use in cards or artist trading cards! So all is not lost

Heres my pictures below of the painted backgrounds I did on drawing paper, as you can see the colours arent all that nice on the paper:

These are the fabric versions of the painted backgrounds which I ironed onto white fabric:

Below are some postcard sized sheets of vilene which I also transfered some of the paints onto to see what they would look like:

I had a lotta fun playing with these paints and must experiment some more! In the meantime Ive got some nice new painted fabrics to embellish

Various Fabric Postcards

I finished these textile art postcards off last week and uploaded them onto my facebook page but forgot to upload them onto my wordpress blog!

Here they are, better late than never huh

Im really addicted to working with postcards with the sewing machine as they are a perfect size to experiment and play on – they arent too small and not too big

As usual, you can click on the images to see a bigger version:

Fused felting wool and fibers fused together on a sheet of iron on bondaweb to create a piece of handmade fabric.

Angelina film & fibers fused onto a sheet of black painted lutradur and the over stitched.

Pink felting wool fused onto a sheet of organza using bondaweb, I attached the fibers, yarns and ribbons using top stitching.

Felted Leaf Postcard, Im addicted to sewing with yellow cotton!!! Its so bright

Another piece of handmade fabric I made using felting wool and fibers fused together with bondaweb then embellished with stitches.

Black painted Lutradur, angelina fibers and ordinary fibers and yarn sewn with nice bright yellow thread Flower attached with brads (above and below)

Below is one of them stuffed art quilts I made using the instructions on Teesha Moore’s YouTube video, I decided to do mine on the sewing machine. I WAS going to make it into a large binder cover…BUT the cat stole it from me! I actually managed to take a picture off it after the cat finally got up off it….

So it WAS an art quilt but it ended up being a cat bed!!

Fabric Flower Charm

This is a fabric flower charm I created using fused angelina fibers on lutradur & skeleton leaves all sewn together:

Distressed Burned Fabric Postcards

These fabric Postcard where created using layers of fabric scraps trapped under organza and then free motion  machine sewed over the top then I burned the organza off using a pyrography iron to distress them:

Various Projects Using Handmade Fabrics

I recently created some handmade fabric by ironing and fusing together layers of merino wool rovings, fibers, silk flowers and organza, I fused them together using iron on heat n bond adhesive.

Once cooled I sewed over the top with my machine to create random shapes and scribbles.

You can see the progress the fabric piece took in the photos below along with the finished projects:

Step One – With Yellow Sewing:

Step 2 – With Red Stitching On Flowers

Fabric Piece Converted Into 2 Fabric Postcards:

One Key Charm:

Scraps Used To Create Another Postcard:

Abstract Leaf Fabric Postcard

Another project Ive just finished up using my sewing machine, I created this using some left over bits from a piece of handmade fabric I created:

Fabric Coasters

Heres a couple of abstract quilted fabric coasters I made with my sewing machine, as you can see they are leafy themed

Lutradur & Angelina Fabric Piece

Yesterday I managed to do some more sewing on my new machine, Ive been feeling really ill for the last few days and have been unable to do any sewing so when I finally sat down in front of the machine yesterday I was raring to go and get stuck in!

I finished off a piece I began working on before my health threw a wobbler, this is a sheet of layered fabric I created by sewing together a layer of painted Lutradur, pressed Angelina Fibers, Skeleton Leaves and some tiny snippings of yarns and threads.  I used a sheet of fusable webbing to press the layers together so I could sew them with ease.

Here is what the Angelina & Lutradur piece looked like before I added the flowers and further embellishments, its very shiny and sparkly and doesnt photograph very well:

Below is the finished piece, I hand sewed the silk flowers on using a nice variegated pearl cotton and added further machine stitches using yellow thread for contrast and then sewed it onto a layer of dark blue felt. I know the border is wonky – its intentional (so I keep saying) Im thinking of putting some eyelets into it and converting it into a wall hanger.

Heres the finished piece:

Red Nature Quilt

Ive just spent a couple of hours with the Mega Beast (aka the sewing machine) as it needs taming and showing who the boss is

I mainly played around with different stitches on different types of fabric to see what they looked like. Also I experimented with trying to get the needle to sew where I wanted it to and make it turn round corners and so on…

This is a red nature themed art quilt which Ive just finished making tonight, it consists of various layers of organza, felt, fabric and a skeleton leaf all sewn together to make a quilt. I wanted to use up all the red thread in the machine so I could thread it with a new colour so this ended up being a red colour scheme.

You can see it below (click for full size):

This is what the back looks like:

You’ll be please to know that Ive successfully changed the threads on the machine….with no instructions!!

My First Mini Crazy Quilt

This evening I overcame a lifetime of phobia and fear and managed to thread my brand new Singer sewing machine Of course I also had a little play with scraps of fabric to make a mini 4″ square crazy quilt

I stumbled across this technique online while browsing called Crazy Quilting and immediately fell in love with it…

Ok so the red cotton doesnt exactly go with the fabric and I know one of the fabric patches is the WRONG way round and the edges arent exactly neat…but Im thrilled to bits with it cos its the first thing Ive ever made on it.

Have a peek at it below and dont laugh!!

You can read more about Crazy Quilting here:

http://www.caron-net.com/classes/classmayfiles/clasmay1.html

and here:

http://www.art-e-zine.co.uk/pwinter.html

Lots of eye candy here:

http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=&rlz=1B3GGLL_en-GBGB369GB369&q=crazy+quilting&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=FR_jS86yEtCbsAa6yvSrBA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CDwQsAQwAw

Rubber Stamps On Ebay

Ive just listed some unmounted and wood mounted rubber stamps on ebay, you can find them on the following url:

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/pennylessartist/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p4340

Discount Code For Paper Mill Website

Spotted this code in the Daily Mirror for 10% off plus free delivery if you spend over £30 on anything from The Papermill before the end of May. The promo code is: DMPROMO

Url: http://papermilldirect.co.uk/

Worth looking at is their huge boxes of A4 card:
http://papermilldirect.co.uk/a4-a5-pick-n-mix-mega-value-designer-card-and-paper-box

Also available in A5:
http://papermilldirect.co.uk/shop/page-product_list/dimensions-a5

Go look and see if you can find any goodies…

First Handmade Art Quilt

Ive just finished off making my first art quilt using both my mini stitch machine and my embellisher.

Ive had my ministitch for a while, I got it free with a magazine subscription but never used it until now. Im contemplating buying a full sized sewing machine and thought if Im going to buy a full sized one I might as well get the mini one out of the box and see how I go.

I still have nightmares from my sewing classes at school where the teacher would continually ridicule me for not being able to thread a sewing machine up properly. So being mentally scarred for life, I was very hesitent at using the ministitch which is why its been locked away in its box since it arrived, mocking me in silence, telling me I’ll never use it.

Well this evening I conquered my fears and rose to the challenge and got the beast out of the box, its one of these types below incase your wondering, it may only be small but its damn scary lemme tell ya

Anyway I did a test run first with a sheet of Indian silk paper I had, I had previously painted it with gouache paint just to see how it took the colour, as you can see it took to it beautifully. I wanted to recreate the freemotion style of machine sewing which is what I did for this test piece:

Okay so that wasnt so bad, it wasnt so painful as I thought it would be, I was pratically quaking at the knees…thankfully it came already threaded up so god help me when it runs out of thread!!!

Encouraged I decided to finish off a needle felted piece I had been working on.

Star Quilt How To:

The main square in the center of the quilt is actually a recyled baby wipe which I had kept aside after a painting session, Id applied too much ink to a canvas so I used a baby wipe to mop up the excess and left it out to air dry.

Once it had dried, the baby wipe looked like a piece of wonderful hand painted fabric! I knew I just had to use it so I did

I decided to fuse a sheet of red organza to the baby wipe with my embellisher machine, I love using organza with the felting machine as it makes the fabric take on a lovely distressed yet shiny texture.

Once I had fused the organza and babywipe together I drew a star shape onto a sheet of yellow felt using a marker pen and then cut it out and fused that over the top to create a centrepiece.

Next I used metallic gold wool to sew an outline all around the edges of the star to make it kinda pop off the babywipe.

Then came the nerve wrecking part, using the beast to sew the freemotion stitches onto the actual babywipe. I zoomed around the piece until I was happy with how it looked and then stopped.

To finish the quilt off I used a sheet of wadding behind the babywipe to give it a little padding and then layered it onto a sheet of navy blue felt. Then I got the beast out again and sewed the baby wipe onto the felt to give it a nice border.

To finish it off I added a simple border on the navy fabric using the beast and my work was complete.

Not only did I make my first ever art quilt I also managed to conquer my fears too Im submitting this piece for Jan’s Red Rubber Paper and Ink Challenge where you have to create a piece of art using either recycling or upcycling.

Star Quilt Close Ups:

Close Up Of The Fused Organza and Baby Wipe – I love the texture

Inkadinks Colour Wash Sprays

Today I got my pack of Brights Inkadinks from Imagination Crafts in the post, they are a brand new type of  water based ink which you can use for watercolouring with or mixing with mica powders.

Imaginations Crafts have a tutorial on their blog on how to use these inks: http://allpinkgirl.blogspot.com/2010/01/inkadinks-tutorial-and-colour-charts.html

They cost £10.99 a set, with free postage and paypal too And are available in Brights, Sunset and Vintage sets of 6 little bottles which are about the same size as inkpad re-inkers and they have a lovely fine tipped nozzle so you dont use too much at once.  They come with a technique sheet giving you hints and tips on how to use them too.

I bought mine with the sole intention of making them into colourwash sprays as I am starting to run out of the really bright colours. Id never used the Inkadinks before so I didnt know what to expect.

In their instructions they said use 20 drops of ink to make a spray bottle. I found that was far too light for my liking; the ink was more of a pastel shade and I wanted nice and BRIGHT!

I kept adding ink until I got the shade I wanted, I used less than a quarter of ink out of the bottle to get the desired shade I was after,  I was really  impressed by that because it means I could have 4 bottles of spray ink out of each dinky ink bottle Talk about value huh

The inks are very strong and go a long way,  I made 2 bottles of each colour, one using a normal ‘straight mix’ and the another using a distressed version by mixing in some walnut ink to get a heritage effect.

Heres all my spray bottles and inks below, as you can see some of my colourwash bottles are nearly empty, thats cos I had fun playing with them Do I like em? Yep I do, I love them. I want the other 2 sets now!

Heres the colour chart of the original straight colours I mixed, the inks have been sprayed onto watercolour paper and as you can see they are quite strong shades:

Heres how lovely the inks flow together and blend to make a wash background:

Heres some colourwash backgrounds I created just to test them out I used a small 6×6 Crafters Workshop template (swirls design) to create the effect of batik resist fabric on the watercolour paper. I enjoyed making a mess and had nice inky fingers to show for it..

Just to prove I do actually know how to use the stencil masks I did some proper versions: