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You are welcome to copy any of my designs, as long as you do not take credit for them yourself. I am very happy for you to sell them. If I have used anyone else's design, I always try to give credit where it is due. If I have missed anything, please let me know and I will put things right.


This is intended to be mainly about my crafting stories, as a personal record of what I do. However, I interpret crafting quite widely, not just paper crafting but other things too. I have a butterfly mind and like to change from one thing to another depending on what I feel like on a given day - knitting, crochet, cross-stitch, cards, baking and several others, including my favourite right now, parchment, both traditional skills and Groovi, very relaxing and calming to do.

I have decided to put some structure into my blog so that each day will have something of a theme.
Monday- for Mindfulness; Tuesday - Tidy Up Day; Wednesday - What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday; Thursday - Technique and Tips; Friday - Finish Off Day; Saturday - Start Something New; Sunday - Anything Goes
These themes are not hard and fast and will be changed if I feel the need.

Sunday 26 August 2018

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.