WOYWW #504: A handmade, fabric covered book

Well, my desk is not exactly tidy (or clean) but at least it's now serviceable. I had a little tidy up, which involved sweeping everything off my desk onto the floor - in one elegant, swift movement. Job done - for now. Stage two will involve tidying the floor, but I haven't got to that point yet. Here's my newly reclaimed work surface with my latest project in progress:

Why am I showing you all this? Well, it's all for WOYWW, where we share our work surfaces, some tidy and neat and some shamelessly messy. Mine usually falls in the latter category. 

So what's on my desk today? I bought some cheap foolscap size file folders on Amazon, cut them down to size and stuck the pages together along the folds back-to-back with some masking tape to form a flipable booklet. You can see it lying on my desk on the left. I gessoed the pages to make them withstand wet media. Then I made a cover for it using the Tim Holtz fabric I'd bought recently. 

(If anyone needs a tutorial on this binding method, I keep going back to this blog post by Wendy Burgess. This is the same method I used to bind my 2016 Life Book as well.) 

This is how my book turned out in the end. The pages lie completely flat when it's open. 

The next step will be to fill the pages but I haven't decided what to do with the book yet. I'll put it aside for now, waiting for inspiration. Perhaps I'll turn it into a photo album.

How's that for short 'n sweet today? I'll be over catching up soon with everyone! Happy #504!

WOYWW #401: Bits 'n Pieces

Hello again for another round of WOYWW, #401 to be exact! It will be easy to remember the sequence for a while now. I haven't got much sitting on my desk at the moment other than Oreo, but I do have some bits 'n pieces of art to show you further down this post. Keeping to the rules though, here's a shot of my desk shown from a different angle than usual. I remembered that I took a similar shot when I first introduced Oreo back in November 2015 - here are the two photos side by side.

Art-wise, I have three projects to share with you today. Remember this stencilled piece of fabric I did a while ago? 

I decided to turn it into a pencil pouch. I didn't bother with a zip - I just stitched down the sides and made a fold-over flap. It was done in a messy fashion. I could say I made it messy on purpose, but the truth is, that's the only way I can sew, LOL! This is what it looks like, front, back and inside:

I've also got this "accidental" landscape which was cut from a piece of cardboard I used as my underlay to protect my work surface. It's tiny though- only about 2" X 2". I only realized it looked a bit like a landscape after I'd cut it. I would never be able to paint something like this on purpose! 

And finally, let me show you my "erosion bundles". I came across this concept on Evelyn Flint's blog and was captivated immediately! This is how it works: you collect some pieces of paper, fabric, ribbon, lace or any other bits and bobs you want to distress in a bundle and put them out in your garden to weather for a few months. It helps if you include tea bags, coffee, paints, rusty metal or anything else to facilitate the process. I've made three small bundles and hung them on a tree at the bottom of our garden. I'll check them in a couple of months to see how they're shaping up. 

Thank you for visiting today! Don't forget to send healing thoughts and prayers to Shoshi, who's still in hospital recovering from major emergency surgery. Get well soon Shoshi! And of course Shaz too, who's in a similar situation! Hope you're both back on your feet again soon ladies - we're missing you!

WOYWW #391: Paint on fabric

Hello on the coldest morning in the UK this year! Brrrr, it's so chilly out there! There's frost everywhere I can see. On days like this, I'm so glad I don't have to go out to work, and I'm not even going to feel guilty about it. I used to dread having to scrape ice off the car and then stop every 50 meters because the windows kept misting up. I really don't miss that! I'm actually quite busy today with housework, and a Tesco delivery and an appointment at the opticians, which makes me wonder when on earth did I have the opportunity to do all these things when I worked full time? I certainly couldn't have taken part in WOYWW, as I am today! So let's get down to business, shall we?

The photo of my desk was taken a couple of days ago, while I was working on a super fun Wanderlust assignment. I posted the finished project last night, which you can find here. It's an art journal made from recycled greeting cards - there's even a video flip-through of it! I LOVE how it turned out!

Today, however, I want to share another project with you, that was inspired by Roxanne Padgett. She works on large pieces of fabric instead of paper with lots of layers of paint - exactly the kind of thing that appeals to me. I even bought her book, which is full of great ideas. Here's what I did on a piece of medium weight calico fabric. It's about 12" X 16" - large enough to make a pencil case out of it with some material still left over for other things.

I also bought an advent calendar for Oreo. We can open the first window tomorrow!

Here he is, in his new favourite place - on the top shelf in the airing cupboard. No, he didn't get up there by himself - I had to lift him up because he was dying to explore it - but he did come down on his own!

Thanks to everyone who visited today.

I always return visits to my blog if you leave a message and your WOYWW number!

WOYWW #373: Design your own fabric!

I can't believe it's that time of week again when we converge on the Stamping Ground to share a shot of our desk for WOYWW. Here's one I took this morning, followed by a shot of my outside table that is in stark contrast of the one I took last week, as the weather has turned cooler and wetter, but I think it's quite atmospheric:

On my work desk/dining table you can see the beginning of a background in my Inspiration Wednesday journal. There's also a new purchase in the shape of a pair of pinking shears. I refused to shell out £30 for a Fiskars one, so I bought a cheaper version on Amazon. They're pretty good - I can't fault them.

Also on my desk are some printed fabric swatches I ordered from Prinfab. You can design your own fabric and they will print it for you! You can also make your designs public and earn a commission if anyone orders it. I wanted to try this service so I ordered some 20 cm square pieces at 99p each with my own artwork on it. I'm pretty impressed with the quality! The colours are true to the original ones and the prints are nice and sharp. They also sent me a free sample pack of the available materials. Here are some close ups of the prints I received. I can cut these up and reuse them in tags, ATCs or on journal pages. Or I could sew them together to make quilts, pouches, bags, cushion covers, etc, which is something I still have to learn. The last two were digitally altered to make a seamless pattern based on parts of this piece.

I plan to use the smaller prints on ATCs. Perhaps I will stitch them on. They would look something like this:

I'm very excited about the possibilities of designing my own fabric! I have tried printing on fabric before, but I never got good results with my laser jet. Perhaps it would work better with an inkjet, but I doubt I would get such good quality prints as these. I would also like to learn more about fabric design as I find this field fascinating. I expect it's very similar to making digital paper, which I already dabbled in, so I have some ideas how it might work.

Thanks for visiting! Happy WOYWW! Somehow I managed to be the same number on the blog hop list as last week, #28! Oops, I almost forgot - here's an arty shot of Oreo in the garden:

WOYWW #287: Inktense pencils on textile

I'm linking up with the Stamping Ground again this week for What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday. As you can see from the photo below, I managed to keep my desk/dining table tidy ALL WEEK by making sure that I put away the stuff that I used for each project. It's a bit of extra work but I figured it's less painful this way than getting to the stage where it becomes unmanagable and having to spend half a day clearing everything away. I wonder how long I will be able to keep this up!

It occurred to me that I never shared the gift I made for Cindy in return for the (very useful!) desk organizer you can see on my desk. She received my gift a couple of weeks ago and made this touching video of opening the parcel. You can also see some stills on her website.

In the last couple of days I was busy trying a technique that I first saw on Peggy Gabrielson's website. She gessoed a piece of cotton fabric and painted a face on it with Derwent Inktense blocks, which she then used as a journal cover. It seemed a bit too ambitious for me to try this technique with a face so I drew some flowers instead using Inktense pencils. (These are currently £14.99 on Amazon UK for a set of 24, which is fantastic value, cheaper than the 12 pack!) Subconsciously, I think I was also inspired by this blog post by Beth Lee Browning.

Here's a photo of my simple drawing/painting on gessoed textile. You can see just how intense those colours are, though bear in mind that camera exaggerates a little bit.

Gessoed cotton material with Inktense pencils - later on, I added some white outlines as well.

I wasn't quite sure what to do with this piece of textile. In the end I decided to turn it into a tag and a mini book cover and used the leftovers for a journal page. Not one tiny piece of it got wasted! I added some white outlines to the flowers as well. You can see my creations below:

Tag/bookmark with faux stitching and sari ribbon

Close up of the tag - I love how the inktense colours mingled like watercolours!

Mini book cover

Gelli prints on inside pages!

I added a quote by Emily Dickinson inside the mini journal

I used all the cut-off pieces of the textile for a journal page

The Inktense pencils are really vibrant!

Thank you for visiting! If you're reading my blog post through WOYWW, please leave a comment and your number and I'll make sure to visit your blog in return!