Carduelis chloris

Birds is Helinä’s theme for the fabric book swap at Fibre Fever. I patched this greenfinch by hand, the pattern is from the book Patchwork Tiere by Ula Lenz.

Fly stitch on blue Gingham

Last week Sharon told us there’s a re-run of Take A Stitch Tuesday in the TAST facebook group. I told myself I already finished all stitches but one (140 threaded cable chain stitch), so no need to stitch along this time. But then I remembered the unfinished TAST samplers, should I add some stitches from time to time?

So that’s what I’m going to do. On this blue Gingham sampler with long tailed detached chain stitches and woven long tailed detached chain stitches I already planned to add some fly stitches. This TAST re-run gave me the push I needed, I added 8 fly stitches in lilac cotton a broder #16.

Quirky Dutch Summer week 3

The theme for the third Quirky Dutch Summer week is playing with shadow. It reminded me of a photo I took in my garden a few years ago. Our Hedera looked very bad that year and the sun was shining through, making a beautiful stained glass like shadow on our new tiles.

First I collaged a background in my red altered book. I took a photo before I added a watered down acrylic layer of paint.

I attached the photo at the left and doodled around. Then I added the letters, schaduw is Dutch for shadow. I wrote the story of this spread with a black permanent marker and added some white with a Sakura gelly roll pen. In the upper right corner I stamped a cute birdy, which reminds me of a blackbird that was nesting in our Hedera years before I took the shadow photo. I also added an I’m in the garden sign at the bottom of the right page. Just click the photo to have a closer look.

You can see what others did for this week at Marit’s Paper World or the Quirky Dutch Summer facebook group.

A local ATC swap

Last month I had a swap with my friend Marjan. I saw the cute bow on a watercolour background at her Flickr page and told her I wanted to swap it. She wanted my tangled ATC in return. Thanks for this great swap Marjan!

Quirky Dutch Summer week 1 and 2

Last month I discovered a new blog, Marit’s Paper World. This summer she shares 10 Quirky Dutch Summer posts to keep creativity flowing during the summer months.

I thought this would help me to fill my second altered book Rood, but the first week was a post about making your own book or alter a book. I was inspired by all the eye candy in the Quirky Dutch Summer facebook group, so I started a new altered book.

I used an old English book about karate.

I removed more than half of the pages. Of course I keep those removed pages for experiments. I’ll decorate the outside of my book when it’s filled from cover to cover.

QDS #2 is called Masking with Watercolor. Marcia Beckett was the guest blogger for this challenge, she showed us one of her favourite watercolour techniques to get shapes with crisp edges. This is my first try with contact paper on watercolour paper (bottom) and one of the removed pages from my book with gesso (top).

I used blue and yellow watercolour paint.

The result on the page with gesso. I could remove the contact paper very easy, but the gesso was not such a good idea. No crisp edge here.

The result on watercolour paper.

It was badly damaged when I removed the contact paper.

A second try in my watercolour journal with a better quality paper.

The wet watercolour paint looks very nice.

The result was much better, . . .

. . . but some of the paper was damaged again.

Time for a third try. I used freezer paper on watercolour paper.

I used purple and green watercolour paint.

I forgot to take a photo of the result, before using it. This is the first spread in my book. I painted the background with black acrylic paint. Then I cut the experiment and attached it with double sided sticky tape. I added the date and doodled with a black pen.

You can take a closer look at my spread here.