Thursday and Friday mixed

This is the piece I finished off this morning.  It is a real mix of styles and techniques.  I started with the gridwork border with no real idea if what I was going to do in the centre.

The gridwork is adapted from one of Josie Davidson's designs from a recent workshop.  The original used the bold Groovi straight grid and tools.  Strangely, I find the bold things difficult to work with and certainly I find it hard to snip neatly. So I used the fine straight grid and fine single needle perforating tool.  That did mean the border was thinner than I wanted this time, so I added another row of squares to extend it slightly.  I re-perforated in sections and cut each section before going on to the next section.  This ensured that the holes were good and round and perfect to snip.  Remember that you cannot get good picot without good holes.

Then I had to decide what I was going to put in the centre.  Because I happened to have Tina Cox's embroidery plates next to me, I thought they might work.  I had to leave out the flowers at the edges of the stems, but it seemed to work. 

I chose not to do white work and coloured in a couple of the tiny sections.  That brought up a real problem, as I started colouring with a copper coloured gel pen, which was scratchy and kept running out after a couple of tiny squiggles.  In the end, feeling very frustrated, I used a copper colour Pergacolour pen which seemed to work and even picked up some of the sheen and sparkle left by the gel pen.

I don't find that gel pens work too well on parchment, but it may be due to the use of the tumble dryer sheet or other lubricant.  If I want white spots to show up and not disappear into the work, I now use the white Posca pen.

I also echoed the embroidery by doing a tiny bit in a corner of the card itself.  This was the first time I did this particular type of corner on card, and if doing it again, I would extend it a little further.  The more messy side of the card on the inside will be covered by the insert.

I missed blogging yesterday so this is why I have combined finishing a card together with a few tips that I worked out by doing this card.  Hope you all have a great weekend, even if we all have to put the heating back on again.