I joined in the Arty Farty Jigsaw swap on UKS for the first time - it turned out to have some rather challenging (for me!) themes, I did my best and this was the result.
Top left was my take on the Wizard of Oz - I had all sorts of ideas but ended up doing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'. It was all appliqued and embroidered on my sewing machine - turns out that a rainbow is really not so straight forward a shape to make up out of your head as I thought, lol!
Top middle is butterflies and time - I don't think the stamped background shows up very well - it's clocks. Butterflies are made from vellum and shrink plastic.
Top right is tattoo art - I was totally stumped with this one and settled on a bird theme (surprise surprise!) I like how it turned out.
Middle left is Women, again the background on the jigsaw piece doesn't show up well which is a shame. I saw the technique on Wendy Vecchi's blog - she rubbed distress ink pads onto the Tim craft sheet and then instead of squirting with ordinary water, she squirted with water with added perfect pearls and then inked up the stamp with that mixture. It's works really well for a very subtle finish that takes the blandness out of a plain background but without being too overpowering.
Middle is Birds (me!) and some more Wendy Vecchi stamps, Tim inks and perfect pearl squirting oh and a heap load of stickles on the birdie!
Middle right is Icons - I did the millenium wheel and hunted around until I found a penny that was issued in 2000, big printed Union Jack for the background, stamp of the wheel and a ticket from our flight on the wheel.
Bottom left is Scotland - more Wendy Vecchi stamped background, a map of Scotland on shrink, pretty castle picture, thistle pin and Robbie Burns verse.
Middle bottom is Favourite Book - impossible for me to choose one so I went with the one that I've probably re-read the most times which is The Eight by Katherine Neville. There is a lovely image done with shrink on there of chess pieces being moved by anonymous hands.
Bottom right - Paris and some nice stickers and transparencies and a bit of paper lace.
Looking forward to seeing what arrives back home now :D
I'm waiting for some fabric to arrive so I can start on a quilt each for the chicks - I wish it would hurry up! In the meantime, I decided to have a rootle around in my fabric drawer and I turned up some material that I took a huge dislike to after buying it (very persuasive shop assistant!). It has lived in the drawer since purchase and I realised that it either had to be re-homed or used, otherwise it would remain forever in the drawer. Crazy Mom has a Quilt-a-long for 9 patch squares going on and I thought maybe, just maybe I could cope with this fabric if I chopped it up so small! I did quite a bit of cutting tonight and have plenty of strips cut and I put together 8 blocks. I was determined to hate them but when they were done I found I rather liked them! The photo doesn't really do them any favours to be honest as it's with flash under electric light however, to prove I've been productive - here they are. Actually, looking at the photo they look absolutely ghastly - they look nothing like that IRL, lol! On the quilt a long the idea is that you make a 9 patch per day, so 7 per week - it started at the end of April so I have some catching up to do - I am determined to rid myself of these and several more disliked fabrics so that I can justify new investments :grin:
I have fabric ATCs to make a start on next - really excited about those :D
