Newspaper ATC’s

I participated in an ATC swap where you had to use a piece of newspaper. For the background I used acrylic paint and stamps. I used a local newspaper to fold my cranes and coloured them with a felt tip pen.

And this is the pretty ATC I received in this swap. It’s made by Anne-Marie from New Zealand.

Birthday card for Maureen

A birthday card with borders for Maureen. The monogram came from the same pattern as TAST on the spine of my TAST 2012 fabric book. Of course the borders are patterns of Randje per week. I used a new to me floss for this card in Maureen’s favourite colours: Cosmo Multi Works, a 2 stranded floss on a spool.

Joyfull Embellishment 86 & 104 & 105

Months ago I joined the facebook group Joyful Embellishment, where Valerie Bothell shares a new seam from Monday till Friday. The TAST rerun was a great excuse to stitch 3 of them. Seam 86 is a cute seam with hearts in perle 5. It’s made of Chevron and fly stitches. Seam 104 is a nice Chevron variation. It’s a double row of Chevron stitches in 2 threads of stranded floss. The second photo shows how it looked when I finished the first row. Seam 105 is Chevron stitch tied with running stitches. The threads are perle 5 and 8.

I stitched these seams on 14 count Aida. It’s the first page of a fabric book with CQ seams, which I started in March 2013!

Quirky Dutch Summer week 10

QDS #10 is called Love Mandala and is a guest post by Tammy Garcia. Tammy made a video when she drew her mandala. First I watched it and then I made a trial drawing on paper. I’m glad I did, because I made a mistake in the lettering. Then I drew a second mandala in my red altered book. I changed the straight lines radiating from the centre into wavy lines. Of course I had to use another word too. There’s a big change in my live right now (no children at home for the next 5 months and one child in Cape Town for the same period), so CHANGE is my word for this spread. I painted this spread in acrylic paint. It wasn’t easy, next time I need a decent brush! To make it look better, I marked the drawing lines with a Sakura Micron pen. I like my first mandala!

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

Owl from Ritva

This cute owl arrived weeks ago, but I had no time to blog about it. Ritva made it for me for the fabric book page swap at Fibre Fever. She told me this owl was the symbol of Finnish MTV3, the commercial TV at the 60’s and 70’s. I found a photo of the original owl here.

Quirky Dutch Summer week 9

The theme for week 9 is Lists. Yesterdays shopping list was still in my pocket, so I could use it for my spread. First I painted the background with acrylic paint. Then I tried to find as many photos of the things on my shopping list in advertisement leaflets from my supermarket. After making the collage I wrote about the things I bought.

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

Quirky Dutch Summer week 7

The theme for week 7 is Photos - used in another way. I promised myself to do all themes for Quirky Dutch Summer from start to finish, but I just had to do this theme before starting on week 4-6. There’s a stack of photos in my stash from a vacation in Luxemburg many years ago. They are made with a disposable camera and not good quality. Perfect for crafting! I used a photo of a river, taken on a boat trip. I found this cross stitch pattern online, flipped it and printed it on the right size. Then I taped it to the photo with painters tape and made the holes for my stitches.

It’s not easy to see the boat pattern, so I drew a large pattern as my stitching guide.

The boat is almost finished here. I used Madeira rayon for my cross stitches.

Here it is, sailing to Zuidlaren! It made me think of an old Dutch children’s song about Berend Botje. He went sailing with his boat to Zuidlaren, but ended up in America!

The backside of my photo. I used tape to secure my threads, knots would be too bulky to attach it to my altered red book.

It was also too wide for my spread, so I had to crop it. Next I prepared the background of my spread, I painted it with red acrylic paint.

No progress photos anymore, I had too much fun to think about my camera! I used 2 parts of my photo to start this spread. The printed words are the first 2 lines of the children’s song Berend Botje. I collaged a border in Teesha’s style and started doodling. It wasn’t easy not using zentangles! Take a closer look at this spread on my Flickr page (click).

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

Matryoshka

. . . was Janny’s theme for the fabric book page swap at Fibre Fever. A great excuse to use the matryoshka fabric I bought at the Albert Cuyp many years ago.

I emphasized the dots at right the side of the green fabric with French knots in two threads of stranded floss. The scallops are chain stitches in DMC perle #5 color variations. On the red fabric I stitched detached chain stitches in perle #5 and decorated them with red sequins and beads. Both seams are stitched with the help of Sharon’s CQ templates.

The feather stitch at the left is done in Caron Wildflowers and decorated with beads. At the bottom I stitched a barely visible Cretan stitch in Tentakulum painters thread perle #12.

I attached the lace with cross stitches in Caron Wildflowers. The pattern of the crochet flower came from a book from the library, but I forgot to note the title.