WOYWW - 493

Sorry I was missing again last week.  I had forgotten how fast Wednesdays come round.  My desk is still a mess.  In fact the whole room is a mess.  Christmas is definitely in progress here with 50 cards completed (one or two still need envelopes).  Several of the ones completed are parchment designs so I will be cautious who those go to.

These three were started at Paul Church's workshop last Saturday at the Crafters Companion store at Evesham.  Those of you who went to the NEC may recognise the designs as being from the talented Linda Williams.  The blue one on the left is based on the design that was chosen for the Clarity Make and Take for the show.

This photo shows the class at Evesham with most of the Bromsgrove Parchers group taking part in the class.  We went mob-handed as you can see.  A really good day among friends.

Now I need to do the mass production fast ones to complete the pile.  I have done some using the fantastic new Fresh Cut Dies from Clarity, cutting the design from the centre of the card and, using double sided sticky paper and a variety of suitable backing papers, filling the blanks with the subtle glitter.  As usual, the glitter does not really show on the photos but it is there and does not shed either.

Fortunately, these are quite quick to do in a mass production system.  The pieces just fall out of the dies and once everything is cut, it is easy to assemble.  

Since I took the first photo on this post, my table has deteriorated dramatically as you can see, so some clearing up is required before tomorrow's attack.  In fact, the table is worse than this right now.

I have been through my card list and pruned it severely.  The cost of postage is too high to continue sending to everyone.  There are several whose current address is not in my book so, if they have not seen fit to tell me, then they have been dropped.  I have also been through my stash of almost completed cards and many of them will be finished off soon and donated to charity as I will never use them all. I am also sorting stamps etc and getting rid of anything that is not Clarity as I am just not using them.  I desperately need the space.  One day, I might actually get back into my craft room????

Time to finish now and get this posted before the dog groomer comes.  Hope to visit as many as possible of the Wednesday gang over at Stamping Ground, the home of our leader, Julia.  For anyone who has no idea what WOYWW is, it is a long running group who meet up every Wednesday to show what state our desks are in and what we are doing on them.  No special tidying up is allowed.  Just take a photo, and post it with a short explanation, and link in to Julia's post.  then you can go round and see what everyone else is doing.

Have a good week, everyone.

Mix up those plates.

All you Groovi addicts out there, some of you will have seen bits of this already.  I love just sitting and playing with a few plates to create a mixed up design.  This is one of those.  All it needs now is a suitably sized base card.

This is a mix of different designs and sizes from Linda Williams' beautiful plates, overlapping each other.  This is so easy to do with the lovely see through plates.  Once I had drawn it out, it sat around in my folder for ages.

Once I got back to it, I decided to keep the colours to a limited palette and fairly soft, with some gentle embossing.  Then, it was down to the perforating.  I used two different tools for that, the two needle fine, and the two needle split which is finer still.  With the split you have to be careful to only perforate VERY lightly otherwise you get the messy split.   I used the split tool for perforating within the circles, like the honeycomb pieces.  Everything else was done with the fine tool.

Then, I went round again with the single needle fine to ensure I had good holes to snip.  You cannot get good picot edging if your holes are not good.  All perforating should be done with the needle tools held perfectly upright.  Anything else and you will end up with oval holes instead of the desirable round ones.

WOYWW - 491

Two weeks running!  I will try to keep this up but I am making no promises.

My desk is tending to be my lap tray as often as not.  It is so convenient while I am doing my parching.  The only real disadvantage is what happens to all the tiny bits that I nip out.  They stick to my clothes, the carpet and the dog, and if you step on them with bare feet, it can be very painful.

These two Christmas trees are a design by the lovely Tina Cox and were a challenge from my parchment tutor.  (You might notice my head torch on the tray, which is essential for really close work, but I do have to be careful when in company as it totally blinds everyone.)

This butterfly was a serious challenge from my tutor, Pat White.  It was designed by Josie Davidson and is made up of three separate butterflies, all embossed and perforated.  I have just mounted it on a piece of the beautiful Shenandoah designer paper from Clarity.  It had to go into a mount to save it from the jaws of my parchment eating dog.  I did debate adding a touch of sparkle but then decided it was better left simple.

Over the last twelve months, I have been going to watercolour painting workshops with Matthew Palmer, who has given me so much confidence, after being told at school that I was rubbish at art.  Now I really love it.  A good teacher makes so much difference.  This one is a Stone Barn in New England, with lovely autumn colours.  I am hoping to get on his taster classes at the NEC, but that might depend on the motorway traffic.

Time to end now and keep things shortish.  If you wonder what this business of showing desks is all about, just call in on Julia at http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com where you will find out what it is all about.  Have a good week, everyone.

WOYWW #490

It is a long time since I joined in on Wednesday, so don't all collapse with shock.  This is not really my desk, just one that I share every two weeks with some good friends at Bromsgrove Parchers.

You can see my bit close to this end of the table.  The messy bit.   We meet to share our addiction to Groovi and everything to do with parchment craft, not to mention a lot of chat and sharing of ideas.

This year has been chaotic with a lot of driving up and down the country's motorways, from Kent to North Yorkshire, all to do with crafting apart from one trip to West Bay in Dorset to meet up with three school friends for our yearly get together.  

I do remember that Julia likes us to keep our posts short so I will end here and look forward to read in some of your posts this week.

Lots of perforations and snipping

This is a design I started work on over a year ago.  I did most of the work on the central flower sprays and then put it down.  I had completed the main tracery but used it as a backing for a different design.  More recently, I was gathering up all my parchment UFOs (Unfinished Objects) and came across the flowers, so decided to complete the whole thing.  The original design was by Julie Rocas and published in Parchment Craft Magazine in January 2012, but I did make the odd alteration.

I certainly made a better job of the tracery this time round, and managed to get much closer to the embossed lines.

I found it easier to snip from the centre outwards.  It seemed to hold the whole design together better and I succeeded in breaking the line only once.  The central medallion is slightly smaller than Julie's original and I used the central part of the nested scalloped circles from Groovi to create perfect circles.

This is the completed base layer.  Then it was a case of putting this somewhere safe while I went back to the flowers.

Four sprays of flowers with embossing and grid perforations on flowers and leaves, then each one needed to be perforated around and snipped free.  My choice of tools were the 2 needle fine and my trusty Pergamano Ringlocks.

To emboss the flowers and leaves, I used my favourite shaders, which I, personally, prefer to the ball tools in designs of this kind.

I backed the whole design on a piece of Clarity blue paper, which I thought set the white off perfectly, using tiny dots of Perga Glue.  Then I created a medallion to cover the central circle, embossing it and colouring with pencils, finishing with a multi faceted gem in the centre.  I also highlighted the embossing with a Wink of Stella pen to give subtle sparkle.

I hope you like what I have done and that Julie Rocas does not object to my slight alterations.  It was started mainly to challenge myself to create the base tracery section.

What a major performance!

2. I know it has been a long time since I actually blogged anything, but I had not anticipated such major trauma to get access to it.  Every time I logged in, it started to load but then got covered by totally unwanted adds for all sorts of things.  Now I have managed to get unwanted numbers that I can't get rid of, but at least I am apparently back in. 

This is a Groovi based design that I started a couple of weeks ago at parchment class with Pat White.  We were supposed to be doing our own design using the metal Pergamano grids, but mine had got mislaid during my tidying up, so I was allowed to use Groovi instead. I really enjoyed putting this together.  

I used the large octagon nested shapes to create the basic borders.  The rope twist edging is from one of the first border plates, and is a real favourite as it is so easy to emboss to add shape.  The balloons and large boat came from the Gentleman's Collection.  I drew the small sailing boat freehand as I needed one small enough to add perspective.  The other major plate I used was the landscape plate from the original Starter Kit, a real essential.

I added in the birds from the Groovi, plus some that I drew in myself.

I started the embossing on the rope twist, then I had a "bright idea", nearly a major disaster.  I thought I would use the small semi circle tool to decorate the inside border and snip it out.  Fortunately, I realised in time that would remove the whole border.  Instead, I embossed within the semi circles and reperforated the holes.

The colouring was a mix of the Pergamano pens, and blendable pencils with a little dorsing, both on the front and the back of the parchment.   I used shader tools to emboss the sails of the boats over several days.

When I worked on the hills, I added a few extra lines and shading to give it more perspective, using techniques I learned from painting classes with Matthew Palmer.  I firmly believe that everything you learn can be used to cross over different media.  In the same way, I use things I have learned from Barbara Gray and the Clarity team in my painting.