Usually for a postcard swap I tend to come up with one design and run with it for the whole swap sometime varying colours slightly. This time round I decided to go with totally different designs all round.
The only thing I had decided on before I started was that my colour was going to be red. I decided to make the backgrounds from my own dyed fabric which is what started me off playing with the microwave yesterday. 
A while back I sorted most of my stash of embellishments into boxes by colour so I grabbed the red box went rummaging and these are the results. 
When I sit down and think about it it really is quite scary the amount of stuff that I have managed to accumulate in such a short time, I probably have enough stuff to keep me going for a couple of years without ever needing to buy another thing. Still there is always some new 'must have' out there tempting me to buy, lol.
Some of these cards I like better than others but on the whole I think they have turned out quite well considering I didn't have any set ideas when I started out and just went with whatever appealed to me as I came across it in the 'box of red'.
I'm feeling a bit better today than I have been so I might venture out and about to get some fresh air for the first time since Wednesday. Hopefully I will get time to finish up some of the other things I started today. I'm particularly excited about the pages I have been working on for the last round of the fabric book swap that I have been taking part in and hope to them finished up tomorrow.
I think you can just about get that it's snowing from this, particularly if you look at the red post van.
The idea behind this one was to try and create some texture using just flat embellishments. I'm not sure if I've quite achieved the effect that I was after but it almost works. I covered a piece of 
Predictably the snow seems to have caused lots of travel problems, I guess it must have been a lot worse in other parts of the country, maybe it's as good a day as any to feel ill and be staying at home.
I haven't been able to get a great scan because of the button embellishment and the evenings aren't light enough for me to use my camera yet but you get the idea. I've used a cream Satin for the background and some stamped images. Finishing off by adding some net under the dress image and a button embellishment. These are definately going out in clear envelopes as they are so light I've no doubt that if I sent them nude they wouldn't make it to there destinations looking as bright and white!
I decided to try and use up some of the cute kitty motifs that were at the very edge of the fabric piece that I had. Some of these had half an ear or no mouth but I just couldn't see them go to waste!
On Tuesday night I went and visited my old quilt class. I didn't sign up this year as things were really up in the air on the home front and I wasn't one hundred percent sure that I would be able to attend every class. It was great to see everyone again and one of these ATc's went to my old teacher Anne Chapman, as it reminds me of her own fur friend, Muffin.
As for the rest well I have been searching around on some of the groups that I belong to and have found an open theme ATC swap to join :) 
On a more depressing note my sewing machine has decided that it doesn't want to switch on anymore so I think it will have to go in for repair. I'm hoping to get my old machine set up over the weeked to keep me ticking over and to stop me getting too far behind with my swap commitments.
Inside there are lots of inspirational ideas and also some fabric, some lovely inspirational paper images and some of the wonderful clay beads that Alma makes. The one thing that immediately caught my attention though was an article about paper applique. I thought immediately that it would fit very well with the Fiber Art Friends January challenge of combining paper and fabric. I haven't had much of a chance to experiment yet and already the monthe is nearly gone. 
Here is a postcard I made using Alma's idea for a paper applique flower. I cut the petal shapes from pages in a magazine and stitched them down. Adding some free stitched flowers to the background. 
Having recently refound my passion for kitties I decided to go with a sleeping cat. You can't really see all the stitching detail properly from this scan but I think it turned out pretty good. Very time comsuming but I think the effects you can get from varying the direction you stitch in is well worth it and no doubt the more you do it the faster you would get.
Rather than go for a traditional blue or green I decided to Jazz things up by going with my favourite colour of the moment, orange. As I'm not really a doll maker she turned out to be trickier to put together than I thought and some of the joining stitching isn't great but hopefully that will mostly get covered up with beading anyway. 
I used my InkTense pencils to draw out a simple face, as you can see I'm no artist but I think she has a cute kinda charm none the less.
These are some wonderful coasters made my my Nan from plastic canvas. My Nan was always a great knitter and seamstress but when she had a stroke and lost the use of her right arm she couldn't carry on with those arts. She was able to do some stitching over canvas for a while as the wools are nice and thick and the canvas sturdy. When she passed away a few months ago my aunt gave me a bag of stuff and these were in there. I just love all the bright colours. I have about 8 altogether and hope to figure out a way of using them eventually but for now I have an idea to use them as inspiration for another project. Here is a close up so you can see what I mean about the wonderful colours.
I decided to combine some cute kitty motifs with some left over thread snippets that I had from making my hand embroidered postcards that you might remember from a few posts ago too.
Basically I used a plain colour background fabric and fused on some bondweb. Over that I layed the leftover fibers and a layer of sheer and free stitched across these to secure the layers.
One of these is heading on it's way to 
I was looking through all my bits and pieces for some inspiration for this swap and came across some toppers that I bought in a bulk lot for card making a couple of years back. I hadn't got round to using them as when they arrived they were actually too busy for my liking but I dismantled a few and used the paper heart elements and also some paper roses for these cards. I like the way they turned out and the handmade paper was lovely to stitch on. I have loads of the toppers left so I might have a go at making a few postcards too.
Next month of course is B so far I have no idea what I will do for that. I want to try and stick with things that are slightly more unusual and therefore more of a challenge to translate into a postcard. Any suggestions gratefully received!
There are 6 people in the round robin so I have left the doll form pretty much naked so there is room for everyone to add to it. I didn't get time to go to the craft superstore so had to make do with a pack of felts designed for kids craft so the colours are a little bold, lol! It will be fun to see what the doll looks like when she comes back from here travels. 
Here are the results. I've made four hand stitched cards in the same way just using different coloured threads and yarns.
I stitched over a background of coarse hessian fabric. Lots of eyelets, some french knots and added a few beads here and there, you can't spot the beads in the pictures too well though.
As the eyelet stitching created quite a lot of bulk on the back as well as the front. I decided to mount them straight onto a card backing missing out the layer of Timtex that I usually add to the middle of my cards.
I had great fun making these and even though I was only covering a relatively small area each took several hours to stitch. It was a great excuse to sit in front of the TV and catch up with some of my favourite shows!
So here is is my cat fabric collection not the greatest picture as I just emptied it out on my (unmade, can't believe I'm showing that have I no shame!) bed to take a quick snap before the gang get here. I haven't counted them 
This first one I am calling 'Burning Sun' I used a scrap of fabric that I dyed in the microwave a while back for the background and stitched down the sun print which is cut from commercial fabric. I then used the long stitch technique similar to what I did for the roofs on my scrappy houses to stitch out the middle of the sun. I used a variegated yellow thread for this. I was going to add some beads to the background but I had some thread left on the needle so decided to go with french knots instead.
This last one is a bit different to the others. I've called it 'Wishing on a Star' As you can probably figure out I again randomly stitched the background and added some 
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.
