Creative Expressions Tuesday

Pretty Card

The card I am sharing with you today is unashamedly pretty . I have been working with fabric and stamps recently and so I decided to make this card using fabric as part of the design. The main design  and flowers are made of fabric and the embossed stripe is also fabric.

The Lily Corner was stamped onto a square of fabric with Wateringcan archival ink before fraying the edges . I find that when stamping flowers I often prefer to use a dark ink but not a black ink. I find that black is often too dark and overwhelms the flowers so I tend to use it only when there is black elsewhere in the design .

Before colouring the design I painted the back of the fabric with matte medium . This makes the fabric a little stiffer . I avoided painting the frayed edges so they continued to be soft. . I used various shades of Lustre Fabric Paint to colour the design but I thinned to paint with matte medium because I didn't want to cover the stamped image and these paints are very thick . Even using the paint thinned in this way the pigment is strong and the shimmer remains . The stamens were painted with unthinned paint and I made a thick blob which stayed in place as it dried . The background was painted with paint thinned as before but I added a little water to the fabric to help to blend out the colour . When the paint was dry I attached the fabric to a square of cream card to support it .

I found a piece of card that toned with the background colour of the painted design and cut a square 

larger than the fabric. I then use Meridian Edger die to cut the corners as shown. Finally I cut another 

square of the same card to fit under the square formed by the die cutting and stuck it under the die cut  square so that the corners completed the uncut square. I did this so that it would sit under the fabric and make a background for it .

This shows a strip of embossed fabric. To make the fabric hold the embossed design I painted it with matte medium which made it stiffer  before embossing it. I then rubbed grey blue gilding wax over the raised surface just like I would when using paper .

The flowers were also made from fabric which was painted with matte medium and then die cut using the Perfect Peony dies . I coloured the individual pieces with washes of paint from the colours I had used for the main design and dried them . I stuck three layers together using plenty of dimensional glue and then pressed the centre into a foam pad with the end of a paintbrush to create some dimension. When the glue was dry I added some flat backed pearls to the centers of the flowers ( I coloured the pearls with alcohol pens to tone with the design) .

The background paper is from the Craft Consortium paper pad and then the various elements that I created and some lace were layered on the card as shown . The main image was attached using foam pads to lift it over the lace  .

I hope I have inspired you to consider using fabric in your designs by showing you these different ideas . 

I have used the following Creative Expressions items to make this card :--- 

Stamps to die for --- Lily Corner.

Craft Dies by Sue Wilson --- Configurations,Meridian Edger ; Finishing Touches , Perfect Peony Complete Petals.

Embossing Folder by Sue Wilson--- Climbing Vines .

Cosmic Shimmer--- Lustre Fabric Paint , various colours .

Gilding wax --- Grey Blue .

Finishing Touches--- Satin Ribbon .

Craft Consortium--- English Garden Premium Collection.

If you would like to see what other members of the design team have been doing please look here 

creativeexpressionscraft.blogspot.co.uk