Saturday 4 October 2014

Handmade flower October tutorial for Off The Rails Scrapbooking.

In the past I have made some homemade flowers, a friend of mine asked if I could do a tutorial on how I made my bead decorated flower I had used on one my layouts she had seen. This is a similar flower I have just made using these materials: Chiffon material strips 7cm x30cm, cotton thread, fine embroidery needle, beads, brads for centre decoration.



Fold the strip of material and pin to make a strip 3.5 x 30cm. I threaded a long thin embroidery needle (a beading needle will do the job) with matching cotton thread, knotted one end and sewed approx 1/3 from the raw edges using a running thread .



By pulling the thread up tight, gathers the strip into a circle, ensure the raw edges are tucked through to the back to form a neatly gathered centre to the flower. Sew a few stitches to join the edges together to ensure the flower stays tightly gathered.



 

















I like to use small stitches to close the edges together to finish the circle neatly.

I selected an 'Antique Button- Brad' from Kaszazz and placed it in the centre spreading the bars out at the back of the flower to secure it in place.



I chose Beadz 1.8mm 'Black seed- rainbow' and using the Button Brad as a guide for my circle, pushed the needle from the back of the flower to the front, then individually threaded each bead onto a beading needle after placing the needle through to make a small stitch as shown in the picture below.




To ensure the beads sit evenly, I every so often thread my needle back through groups of bead again, a few at a time,  and again on completion of the circle before I push the needle through to the back to tighten the beads. I finish of by sewing a few stitches to secure the thread.

You could leave the flower as it is, or cut the folded edge by putting the scissors into the fold and cut the fold to seperate the flower into 2 layers then fray the edges to soften.



Thanks for joining us at Off the Rails Scrapbooking and my blog.


Wednesday 1 October 2014

All about the timing: Scrap It With Attitude DT Inspiration

Octobers Theme over at Scrap It With Attitude is 'More than three photos'. My trip to Switzerland was the perfect photo shoot for this theme as it seemed to take more than one push of the button and many photos to get that 'Perfect Snapshot' on a moving Bus/Train. I suppose you can say that "It's All About The Timing" as anything from people, trees, tunnels (oh my gosh the Swiss are great at making tunnels, they have had a lot of practise there seems to be one around each bend lol), posts even other buses, boats and trains seem to get in the way of a fantastic photo opportunity.



I prepared my piece of travel paper from Kaisercraft with white gesso before using my Tim Holtz 'Doily' stencil and moulding paste. When it was dry I used my water colour paint and added a range of different shades of green and brown to represent the natural elements that sometimes got in the way. I then sprayed Dylusions Ink Chopped pesto over my new stencil 'elongated hexagons' from Studio Calico and splattered some of the Pesto, White linen and London Blue Dylusions Ink over the page.



I found my camera stamps and used the words Click and Capture to stamp around the page and my date stamp to remind me when I was in this wonderful country.  I have a piece of cardboard from a box I tore up that makes fantastic lines like little tracks when you ink the edge with StazOn ink and use it as a stamp.
The small photos were placed behind a 'LA DE DAH' photo booth frame to show some of the great 'not' perfect shots taken in my attempt to get the perfect picture postcard photo. I inked the frame with 'black soot' distress ink from Tim Holtz and stamped a world stamp from Kaisercraft 'now boarding' with StazOn on the bottom of the frame.


The papers and paper elements I used to back and layer behind my main photo was from a selection from The Kaisercraft's 'Mister fox' collection, Secret Bird Society Collection 'Mystery' and 61/2 paper pad 'Now Boarding'. On the Snap-Shot tag I wrote some of the things that I'm sure purposefully (lol) jumped into my photo shots.



Other elements added were the wood veneer camera from Studio Calico (Inked with Tim Holtz Distriss Ink Spiced marmalade', my wording was done with an old fashion mini label maker and to finish off I used 'stormy sky' distress ink from Tim Holtz to soften and blend the edges of the page.

Hope you enjoyed my take on 'More than 3 photos' theme at Scrap It With Attitude, and hope you will join us in the challenge. I look forward in seeing your amazing take on the theme.