Scrapping by Design

I made this fabric collage for a swap at Art for the Creative Mind (
AFTCM), a Yahoo group for mixed media artists.

My theme in this collage is “Inuit Girl.” The collage is an eight inch square.

For backing, I used a square of book board and covered it with an off-white fabric.

The Intuit girl in the picture is an image transfer, done using an image found at Graphics Fairy Blogspot, and transferred using glossy gel medium.

The Intuit words in the background are also done using the same image transfer technique. Thanks to AFTCM member Sue Cantin for providing me with the image file containing the words.

The dark brown fabric is made from scraps of brown leather. The “fur” is actually cut from an old wall hanging made from llama wool. I know that llamas are not native to the North, but I have no fur to use and wouldn’t use it if I did. I am not a believer in animals dying so I can have their fur for frivolous purposes.

I finished by adding a few flat, polished stones that resemble sea glass.

Every month, my swap group makes a holiday pennant. By December, we will have 12 made and ready to sew together to make a holiday banner.

I made this one in the month of June. They are all supposed to be vintage white, and the theme for June was Jingle Bells.

The pennants are all made with cotton fabric backed with iron-on interfacing.

For this one, I first used a Jingle Bells rubber stamp that I inked with red and green markers. I stamped it more or less all over the pennant.

I then did a gel medium image transfer. The vintage picture shows some people in a one-horse open sleigh. The horse has jingle bells on it.

I decorated with two types of white lace, plus a red button and a gold colored safety pin threaded with red and blue fiber.

I had some Christmas jingle bells and considered using them. I decided against this when I considered the extra postage costs that I would incur by adding that much bulk.

This is another pennant made for the banner series that we are making at Art for the Creative Mind. Every month, we create a winter-white colored pennant with a theme pertaining to Christmas or the winter holiday.

The theme this month was “Christmas music“.

I made all of my pennants back in January. They are fabric pennants backed with iron-on interfacing. I decorate them monthly as needed.

For this one, I created a digital image using Photoshop, and then did an image transfer using gel medium.

The background is sheet music with a Christmas song. The blue part is an image from Graphics Fairy Blogspot. It is Christmas ornaments — horn, flute and a few others.

I trimmed with bluish-white fibre along the top, and added some felt snowflakes which I filled with Diamond glitter glue.

In my stash, I found a silvery gray tassel and attached it at the bottom.

This Artist Trading Card (ATC) was made for a swap at Art Ventures. The theme is “off white” and the idea is to make a card that shows how off-white makes us feel.

For some strange reason, off-white makes me feel domestic.

The image is a computer print-out of a vintage woman holding cooking utensils.

I did an image transfer, and then sewed the transferred image onto quilting material. I used embroidery cotton and a blanket stitch to do this. Then I went along the edge of the quilting material with a simple running stitch — and glued the whole thing on to a piece of off-white card stock.

This pennant is the April addition of the all-year pennant swap underway at Art for the Creative Mind.

The 12 pennants are all to be vintage white or winter white. The specific theme for April was A Snowy Night.

I used a vintage image found at Graphics Fairy Blog, and did an image transfer onto a winter-white pennant made from fabric and backed with iron-on-interfacing.

I trimmed with lace and a tatted snowflake that my friend made.  A small red rhinestone added some colour to the project.

Near the bottom, I added a regular safety pin, but I strung some red beads along the pin part to complement the red rhinestone.

At Art for the Creative Mind, we are making and swapping a monthly pennant with a Vintage white theme. In December, we will have a dozen of them to string together to make a holiday or Christmas banner. This is the one I made for the month of March.

We had an optional theme, which was French royalty.

All of my pennants are made from off-white fabric which has iron-on interfacing for stiffness.

For this one, I used an image transfer of an image of a French queen. The image is courtesy of Graphics Fairy Blog. I centered it in a die cut fleur de lis and surrounded it with small rhinestones.I added some nice lace to the pennant, and trimmed with red ribbon and a couple of red rhinestones at the top.

t the bottom, I added two gold fleur de lis charms and some additional red ribbon.

The die cut fleur de lis is made from a Spellbinders die. Here is is at Amazon: Spellbinders S4-318 Nestabilities Fleur de Lis Squares Dies

Yesterday, I posted about the January Pennant for our Banner Swap at AFTCM.

This is the February pennant.  The pennant itself is made from cotton fabric with iron-on interfacing for stiffening.

As before, I used an image of a vintage girl and did an inkjet image transfer using gel medium.

I decorated with old fashioned tartan ribbon, which I love so much.

I added a little gold mesh to the bottom of the pennant, and I added a little glittery gold thread underneath the fabric flower The pearl button is actually a clip-on earring. I used wire cutters to remove the clip.

Since the optional theme for February was glitter, I added some dabs of clear glitter glue to represent snowflakes.  Also, I think the gold thread and the gold mesh at the bottom sort of represent glitter.

I know its not easy to think of making winter or holiday or Christmas banners, just now, but nevertheless, that is what I am doing. It will get even weirder in July!

At Art for the Creative Mind, we have commenced a year long swap project, in which we swap hand made pennants each month. At year end, we should have 12 spectacular pennants which we can attach together and make a pennant.

The pennants are to be done in winter white or vintage white. Each month has an optional theme. The optional theme for January was Vintage Winter.

I made all of my pennants from fabric and I applied iron-on interfacing to the back. I will decorate them month by month.

This is January’s. I did two similar ones because I had two partners. I used an inkjet image transfer with glossy gel medium at the transfer agent.  As you can see, the little girl is vintage, and is wearing winter white clothing. There is a sense of a holiday tree in the back ground.

I glued the image in place and trimmed with various laces, ribbons, heart-shaped buttons and pink rhinestones.  For the second, I made a flower using the same fabric as the pennant, and cut it using Tim Holtz Alterations Floral die.

I am making a second set of pennants for myself, so all in all, I plan on completing at least 24 of these this year.

This ATC (artist trading card) is made for a swap at Art Ventures swap group.The swap was to make an ATC that reflects how the color gray makes us feel.

I decided that gray makes me feel staid.

I made the card itself out of a nice, corrugated gray card stock.

For the layer, I painted mixed media paper with gray acrylic paint, applying it willy nilly, using an old credit card as a spreader.

While the paint was wet, I turned it upside down over a newspaper and allowed bits of newsprint to transfer onto the paint.

After that dried, I used a rubber stamp with circles, and heat embossed the circles using a pewter colored embossing powder. I figure pewter counts as gray.

The woman’s head is a die cut, cut from the same card stock as the base.

I wrote the word staid by hand, using a gray calligraphy pen.

I found the inspiration and the instructions for this mini album at The Scrapbook Fan Blog.

The mini album itself uses only one 12 by 12 sheet of cardstock or thick scrapbook paper, strategically folded. It makes seven pockets for tags.

I challenged myself to make this entire album using odds and sods from my stash.

The book itself is made from a Tim Holtz scrapbook paper, and decorated with the animals from the same TH series.

I created tags using some scrapbook paper that seemed to match the TH papers fairly well. I decorated the tag fronts with more of the animal pictures. On the back of the tags, I used stamped sentiments combined with black rub-ons.

For the front of the book, I did an image transfer using an image found in Cloth Paper Scissors magazine. I transferred it directly onto the scrapbook paper using Gold’s Gel Medium, then I stamped the word DREAM on the front using brown ink.

If found one of my calendars had tiny months for 2014 — so I cut them out, darkened them with Distress Ink, and attached them to the surface of each page.

I used a couple of round things in my stash. I think they are called boshers . I glued the boshers in place and tied the book shut with ordinary string.