Have a Heart – February Component of the Month Reveal at Art Elements

This time I really have to say sorry. To Jenny as well as the rest of you who came here from Art Elements (where the component of the month is hosted) to my blog in the hope to see what gorgeous heart I got and what I created with it. I managed the creation part, but let alone have some time during the daylight hours to take pictures... didn't happen. The last weeks were quite full with work, more work, illness, did I mention work?, some family related things...

Somehow the part to take the pictures, edit and upload them seems to take way longer than anything else. Not that this is true. It is rather that I still need to buy a new cable for my digital camera (or rather finally buy a new one! If you follow my blog you know that I plan this for years now...). Until that I have to use my phone. It is not that I don't like the camera at my phone. I have a Huawei and the camera actually is quite good. But it makes too good pictures in the sense that it already changes the image. I hate that. I want to do my picture editing myself and don't want to first readjust my image before I change it again... arghs! I have to admit I just used the preinstalled app, maybe with a different camera app it wouldn't happen. 

Jenny asked us whether we had any preferences (colour, pendant or cabochon, ...). I just said that I would love to be surprised. So she send me this blue heart with the golden crackle. Now we come to my other dilemma (my blog post sounds rather grumbling, no? ;)). I like the heart and the crackle and the wire stitches to hold and mend the broken heart. I just don't do hearts. I can't explain it. Of course I knew this from the beginning and I chose to go along since I love challenges and I know that the only way to overcome this kind of hesitation with materials, shapes or colours is through using them.

Not that that it worked with yellow so far...

...but with pink!

I was tempted to incorporate the heart to a mixed media piece, I even had several perfect fitting backgrounds. But it felt wrong, it felt like the easy way and not a challenge so I used it as for was it was: A pendant.

I shredded an old chiffon neckerchief. On one side of the necklace I braided the fabric while on the other side I let three strands lose. Maybe I will braid them too in the future, not so sure about the rawness...but I like the look. 

I connected the fabric and the heart to a bronze chain. Bright gold was too golden for me (and I don't have real gold here just brass). To repeat the blue and to bring it all together, I added blueish beads to the bronze chain.

I am quite pleased with the organic look of the combination of fabric and how from the blue heart the blue beads seem to grow up. 

Only not so sure about the side with the open chiffon stripes...

So, thank you again Jenny for this heart. I got more comfortable to work with it while I tried different things and the next heart will hopefull be a little easier for me to work with (and as I said, I am not sure why hearts are so difficult for me even when I like them!).

If you are curious how the other hearts looked like and even more what the other contributors and guest at Art Elements created with theirs, please have a look at their blogs!

Guests: 

Rosantia Petkova

Shai Williams 

Sally Russick

Elaine Thornton

Art Elements team: 

Lindsay Starr

Laney Mead

Claire Fabian (you are here)

Sue Kennedy

Diana Ptaszynski

Caroline Dewison

Lesley Watt

Jennifer Cameron

Cooky Schock

Niky Sayers

Cathy Mendola

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Flowers - how to use your jeans fabric scraps!

I had a lot of jeans scraps lying around. I made a big pillow out of old jeans (still not finished or rather stuffed ^^) and had a lot of fabric leftovers. 

Perfect to sew glas beads on top and stitch some knots around it with coloured thread! (this is crochet thread, the same I use for my crochet earrings, I just love the bright colours!)

The come in all colours and sizes...

...and even some other fabric leftovers sneaked in ^^ Really fast and easy to make! 

Paint an octopus with your fingers in fabric

Is there any need for me to write something about it? Hey, octopus, tentacles, fabric paints, using only my fingers to paint...

...and being on formentera. 

See the rough effect created due to using my fingers as well as the fabric being a little bit elastic? Like it!

...lot of pictures had to be taken...

...even from my back ^^

Stamp it all on fabric!

What shall I write about this? It is really an easy project! I just used my beloved handcarved stamps to print patterns on fabric. Most of the time I just used fabric ink pads for stamps. I love them because you can use them with really fine structures without losing any of them! Normal fabric paint is way too thick to use it with fine structures. 

There are just a few things to consider: 

First of all you should use natural fibers with most of the fabric ink pads (I don't know whether there is one you could use for non organic fibers) like cotton, linen or also fabrics which are natural based like viscose. 

Second: Prewash your fabric without any conditioner. Most fabrics are treated, no matter if you buy clothes or fabric. Just washing it removes the stuff. But if you use some kind of conditioner, you'll bring some stuff back again on the fibers of your fabric and you don't want that! The fibers should be ready to react with the ink / colour!

Last but not least: The fabric ink pads are not too strong colours and they don't go over dark fabric. So try your colour with a little piece of fabric if you like the result! Have a look at the two pegasus prints. One on natural / creme fabric, the other one on red fabric (both cotton). I used the same blue ink pad for both prints! 

Okay... not just three things... I am thinking of some other stuff which is maybe useful for you to know if you want to print on fabric: If you print on rough fibers / textured fabric, your picture will have some "broken" lines. You could call the effect kind of vintage image but if you want perfect prints you need very smooth and tight woven fabric! 

This blue, white and black pattern on a blue fabric was a mixture of fabric paint leftovers and a fabric ink pad. The black and white is fabric paint and the blue is a fabric ink pad. I diluted the fabric paint a little bit with water therefor all used colours are a little bit translucent. I love the effect where you can see the overlapping pattern!

The rain drops are from a foam rubber stamp I made. I just used a scissor to cut out a drop silhouette and then  I cut the "light reflections" with a sharp exactor knife into it. I just made some cuts in the foam rubber, I didn't cut anything out! On the cuts there always will be a little bit more paint so you can see it in the print!

Have a closer look to see the effect! :)

Of course, I also tried my cell stamps...

...and two stamps I didn't show you before. Some steampunk inspired pattern...

...and a mermaid... sort of ^^

Just circles with foamed rubber!

Octopus, tentacles and lobsters!

I could image to stitch a spider web around the print...

...and of course some kind of ornaments!

Any ideas what I should do with fabrics like this?

The whole range of flowers!

I made quite a lot of them over the past weeks. Only one in time, but using up my fabric leftovers and over stuff. Some of them I can't show you, I forgot to take pictures before bringing them to the fair.

You can see, just simple layers of circles with some beads and stitching but it creates a great effect! 

The black and white threads are originally some kind of woven polyester fabric which I sew on like the other fabrics and just in the end I remove all open threads which are not fixed due to the stitching in the middle! An easy way to get the flowery effect I think!

Otherwise I use really all kind of fabric leftothers...

...from cotton to fake green gras stuff...

I add some contrast with the thread I use for stitching. It needs some contrast and to more highlight the organic structures created with the beads.

An example of the back. I use either the brooch pins or the clip pins which can be used either as brooch or as hairpin!

PS: I sew and glue the pins onto the back! ^^

CQJP 2012 - March - Contrast

All the blocks I'll make for the crazy quilt journal project (CQJP 2012) are for me training blocks.

I want to get more used to stitching and have something like a social dead line / pressure to work on this :)

This time I wondered how a lot of different stitches would look like if I used just one colour and a very colourful background.