Creative Gift Wrapping

How do you wrap a gift card? Gift cards can be a great choice to give to someone who loves to shop, but they sure don't look like much on Christmas morning. So here is what I did for a gal who has a great fondness for turtles. First I did this doodle.From my fabrics, I selected this terrific print but my hand painted blue fabric seemed "too" blue so I overdyed it with a bit of green textile paint to tone it down.After printing the turtle in a few sizes onto a sheet of TAP, they were then transferred to the new fabric.Bubbles and wavy line quilting worked great.here is the finished bag that the gift card was tucked into.

New addition

New, is #96 on the list of word prompts for The Creative Prompt Project.

This Little Princess, one of the most recent additions to my toy sewing machine collection is roughly 85 years old but looks just like NEW!, which prompted me to draw this.

I seem to be a little behind

It has been quite a while since I last posted a response to the weekly Creative Prompt Project.
I really need to try to get back on track. Here is my response to word prompt #93, Twinkle
Christmas lights are twinkling everywhere you look these days.

Drum roll please..........

......and the winner is, sbsudbury. Congratulations Sharon,........email me with your snail mail address and I'll get that card off to you right away.

Love these pencils........still not so crazy about TAP

Been playing with some new (to me) products as of late. I LOVE these Inktense pencils. Use them just like a regular pencil, but when you wet them, the colour blooms and becomes permanent once allowed to dry. If you desire a watercolour effect, allowing the pencil/colour to bleed......then water works great.........BUT if you don't want the colour to run and bleed out in your fabric you may want to try using something else to "wet" the penciled area. Here is a test I did. I first made several circles on a piece of fabric and coloured them using the Inktense pencilsNext I used various "mediums" to wet the areas and see how the pencil would be affected.
I have left these images large so click on them to get a better look. As you can see, there was lots of running with the use of water (and my brush was NOT saturated, I used as little as possible) The other items actually all worked quite well and the only one that significantly changes the hand of the fabric is the Golden Medium. I even washed the finished piece to see how well it would hold it's colour......result? Excellent!
Now......about TAP, Artist Transfer Paper. I thought that I would be able to dampen the TAP and then use those Inktense pencils because they "dissolve" in the water........but even though I worked as gentle as possible, it still rubbed the coating off and you just end up with a mess.........so, I have found that the TAP works very well when using it with your printer but even though the reviews say you can draw on this stuff, you really can NOT, unless you are using a very fluid medium like ink, paint, or markers. Pencils, crayons, pastels and paintsticks all just scrape the coating off .....I found it quite disappointing.

I did make some cards though. After discovering that I could not do what I had planned with the images printed on TAP, I decided to go ahead and transfer them to fabric and then colour them after. Here are the finished cards.Most of them are spoken for, but this one is up for grabs. If you'd like to find it in your mail box, please leave a comment in this post. I'll announce a winner Sunday.

Seaonal Doodle

I have not been doing much in the way of doodling lately....not real sure why.......but I had an idea that I wanted to try so I decided to do this seasonal doodle to play around with
I scanned the image and placed several onto a page, then printed it onto a sheet of TAP

See those pencils? Oooooooooooooo those are the Inktense pencils that I have been wanting to try.
Some people like to roam the malls.....not me, but I DO so love to browse through aisles and aisles of art supplies. Got these at one of my favouite shops Mercury Art Supply

So in an earlier post, I told you that I was disapointed to find that I could not use pencils on the Tap........the pencil just scraped off the coating........well I think I have found away around that. Check back next week if you'd like to see what I am up to.

Need a "Special" card?

Did you make cards when you were a child..........you know for Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa......they always said how much like enjoy having a card made by you. Why did we stop, sure the card shop has a great selection but sometimes you want something a little different, something Special.

I thought why not use the process of making fabric postcards to create a greeting card in the same manner. Those of you who have purchased the book Zentangle Fabric Arts Quilting Embroidery will recognize this design. I took my design and after drawing it onto fabric, I doodled and added colour using ordinary crayons, backed it with a piece of Timtex, did some free motion stitching...........all the same steps as I would for a postcard...plus a bit of beading to make it sparkle.

The final step was simply to stitch it to the front of a blank card (I got a pack of blanks cards with envelopes at the "Dollar" store)........I think this is perfect for those occasions where you are specifically asked to bring best wishes only