Secret Revealed

Now I know that Carol has received this I can share the secret project that i have been working on this last couple of weeks. A Padfolio for a swap on FAF that I was running extremely late on. Thankfully Carol has been vary gracious about the whole late thing.....

The front

A view from the back

Button and RicRac fastening detail

Oops I realised that I forgot to take some pictures if the inside, nevermind. I made this using the TimTex that I painted a while back and just added some seed stitching in a variegated embroidery thread.

The Padfolio is a great design by the very talented Sue Bleiweiss. If you'd like to make one for yourself Sue has very generously shared the pattern on the Fibre and Stitch website here. F & S is a great online publication if you don't already subscribe well what are you waiting for? lol

Fairy Magic

So after my rant yesterday (apologies for being so grumpy) and professing that I would do nothing but tidy this week so far I'm motivated to do anything else but tidy, funny how that works ;-)

Today I finished a fabric page for a swap that is so far past deadline I'm too embarrassed to confess when it was due. Anyway this page is for Judith (as far as I know Judith doesn't have a blog but I'm a huge fan of her work). Her theme was 'Magic'

I made the front of my page from a block which I found in my UFO box. I originally made about 5 blocks like this for a swap back in 2006 but after taking part in another block swap with the group and being disappointed with the blocks I had received I decided not to take part in the end. Anyway I thought this was the perfect theme for recycling one of the blocks.
I've kept the back of the page quite simple, using a rubber stamp to print the background and a stencil to paint the letters. Judith wanted some sparkle on her pages, you can't really tell from this picture but i over painted the letters with a glittered fabric paint so when you move the page around they really shimmer.

I hope that Judith likes her page and won't be too mad with the fact that it's so late!

The Frog Prince

Yesterday and this morning I have been working on my pages for the last round of the meandering book swap that has been taking place over on Fabric-olics. I have really enjoyed taking part in this swap and am sad that it is coming to an end.

On the flip side I am excited to think that my book will be on it's way back to me sometime in the next few weeks and as I didn't get time to make my own page in my book before sending it off I still have some work to do to complete the swap.

This time round I have had Ingrid's beautiful book to work on. The theme is fairy tales. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do, but somehow my mind got more focused as the deadline loomed, lol.

I decided to go with the Frog Prince. Here is my front page.I know it's immodest, but, I am just so pleased with the way this turned out. I almost don't want to give it away. My drawing skills are pitiful so I got Mark to sketch the picture onto muslin for me. I then painted both the frog and the background with my Inktense pencils. After letting it all dry I stitched round the frog to make him stand out a bit more.

I decided to go with the FiberArt Friends monthly theme of texture for building the background. So added a couple of layers of dyed cheesecloth and then got merry with buttons, ribbon, sequins and beads.I decided to keep the back page pretty simple. It's made from green satin overlayed with a gem covered organza. It's so light and shiny it was difficult to get a decent picture. I think the pages look great layed out together. I hope Ingrid likes what I have done!

Goddess Book

My sewing machine is still out of action and will definately need to go in for repair, but today I dragged my old machine out of the cupboard and set that up so I can at least get on with a few things.

So today I have been working on some pages for the fabric book round robin that I am in for Fabricolics. Actually this book should have been well on it's way by now so I'm playing catch up and am glad to have the pages done and be ready to send the book on to it's next destination.

The book for this round belongs to Jo-Ann and she chose 'Goddess' as her theme. I decided to make one page inspired by the Aphrodite postcards that I made the other week. So here is my goddess of love page.

For the second page I decide to go with an Earth Goddess. I think out of the two this one has turned out to be my favourite. I hope Jo-Ann likes my pages!
I'm not sure how much stitching I am going to be getting done over the coming week. My sister has asked me to make her wedding invites. I am going up to visit her next Saturday and have promised to take her a few samples to choose from, so I will be working on those this week.

Changing Leaves

Today I should be back at work, but I was so tired when the alarm went off this morning I just couldn't get going. Luckily we have flexi time at work and when I called in they agreed to giving me the day off yipee! I'm so excited to have another day at home to create this working lark certainly gets in the way, lol!

I should really get on with some housework as it's been woefully neglected the last few days, but who wants to spend a day off work cleaning? Yep you guessed it I'm going to be creating instead. Here is my first offering of the day, hopefully there will be more later. I have been taking part in a fabric book round robin on Fabricolics. Our group had some sad news just before christmas. You may remember a while back I worked on some flamingo pages (you can find them in the November archives) this book belonged to Geni sadly a few days after I posted it on to the next person in the robin we heard that Geni had passed away suddenly what a shock. Her work was lovely and she will be missed by the group.

This time round I have Lenna's book, the theme is changing leaves. Lenna has painted her pages with the most amazing leaf prints it seems such a shame to cover them up! The books I have had so far have all had 6 inch pages, Lenna has created hers with 4 inch pages, I wish I had chosen this size too as they are so nice to work on! Here are the pages I made to add to the book. For this first one I took a piece of autumn leaf print fabric and stitched down several layers of different coloured skeleton leaves. On top of this I added a couple of images which I stamped onto fabric scraps and then added some button embellishments. A while back I bought a heap of different yarns and haven't used any for a while so I decided to add some eyelash yarn round just 2 of the edges. Don't ask me why just 2 I don't really know other than I thought it might create a bit more interest than going round the whole page, anyway I think it worked out ok.

For the second page I took an artifical leaf that was given to me as part of a secret sister package recently and stitched that down to some leaf print background fabric. I then used the tiniest satin stitch I could get from my machine to stitch out all the leaf veins.