Sunday 13 January 2008

Embellishing

Woopdeedoop! I've had a lovely day! I think DH thought I'd earned a day to myself so he's been making me cups of tea and butties and I've been playing on the embellisher! Yay! I had a shock yesterday when I was told my star swap at MixedMediaATC_UK is due on Tuesday so I thought I'd better set to.



First of all I combined carded wool, chiffon, net curtain, silver mesh fabric, angelina and mulberry bark on kunin felt and embellished it from both sides.



The first photo is a better indication of the actual whiteness of the piece and I will be cutting stars out of this to affix to the background postcard.

I then started on the background for which I decided to use a piece of kunin felt with glitter already on it. I remembered at this point that I should really be taking pics of the work in progress!

This is the starting point. I layered chiffon, organza, angelina and coloured scrim under wool and laid a piece of net over this to hold everything in place while I embellished it. The net was amazing! It made the whole process much easier as nothing caught on the foot and nothing fell off!

The next step was to continue the scrims, chiffons, organza etc together with fancy yarns over the entire surface and embellish through net.


Once all the fibres were anchored I removed the net and carried on blending the fibres and also embellished some silk scarf from the back. This photograph is not really giving an accurate picture as the resulting piece is much darker in colour and is lovely and sparkly. The overall tone is actually much more black than blue.


Now I have to cut out some stars and stitch or embellish them to the background.


After this I decided to have a play with the luscious pink wool that I bought from HollyEQQ last week.

I used a piece of cheap felt that came from a child's play pack from Wilkinson's and was surprised that it worked all right with the embellisher. So far I've used Cherry Hotlips and Lady Slipper wool, scrim, organza, chiffon, pink angelina, all held in place by a sheet of net and embellished all over in both directions to get rid of any obvious lines of hole marks.
After pulling away the net (which is now looking the worse for wear!) I am really pleased with the surface that's developing. I want it to be hot and zingy and it's certainly heading that way. I shall be adding some more wool to the surface as I want it to have a richness to the feel of it.
I also spent time in my painting studio this afternoon working on some mixed media for the rest of the stars swap. So altogether I've had a great day! (Must have been the 10 hours I slept last night! lol)

8 comments:

Mrs Moog said...

That sounds like a perfect day Julie and your embellished pieces are beautiful!
Good old hubby keeping you fed and watered so you could 'play' :)
Glad he's feeling better.
Lesley x

sharon young said...

Hi Julie
Sounds like a perfect creative day, well done your DH, brilliant.
Your embellished pieces are looking great, the pink one is definitely 'zingy'
I'm such a slow learner, I can't believe i never thought to remove the net on Ben's PC after we'd embellished it, still you live and learn! Thanks for such a detailed explanation of what you did, very helpful.
Thanks for your lovely comments on the mood board.

Dot said...

What a beautiful day you had Julie! So glad that your DH looked after you so you could play. Sounds like you had a lot of fun..The colors on the second piece just sing to to color loving heart!
By the way your package will be winging it's way to you tomorrow. But don't feel any pressure about your doll - I am a bit early with this one!

Sending hugs your way

Dot xx

Purple Missus said...

Wow, you did have a productive day. Looks like the long sleep did do you good :)
That Cherry Hot Lips is luscious, a gorgeous colour.

mrsnesbitt said...

Hi Julie, sorry to hear you have not been well, so sending you (((HUGS))).
I am teaching this afternoon!
Catch you soon.
Dxxx

The WestCountryBuddha said...

Every other person seems to have an embellisher! They certainly sound (and look) like fun and I'm glad you enjoyed your day. Had you anything in mind for your pieces, or do you want to leave them as they are?

Becky Mairi Farrell said...

Gorgeous work on the embellisher, and i have the finished postcard here (they arrived today) and it's truly amazing - think I'm going to be swapping that one to me ;) Now what I want to know is, how did you get the net off?

Veleta (Sammy) said...

I absolutely love your fushia pink... I llok forward to seeing what yu end up with it!