Machine embroidery happiness

I am looking into starting up a new creative group at my church and so I wanted to start with a little fundraising. I looked into printed T-towels and cotton shopping bags but our church isn't big enough to support the numbers required and it would have been a big outlay for a tiny profit. I got thinking and I was particularly inspired by a pattern for a shopping bag in an issue Mollie Makes.

I have been loving free machine embroidery and I re-watched a tutorial that appeared on Kirstie's Homemade Home about sewing through tracing paper and I came up with this design for a church bag to sell. One thing I like about this is I only have to make one to start with and I'm going to take orders if other people would like to buy one.

You can see the stitching a bit closer up here. I finished the design with a little fabric paint and I printed our church logo onto some special fabric that can be run through the printer and is then washable from Crafty Computer Paper.

It folds up so nicely too...

Playing at the crop

This weekend presented me with the rare opportunity to spend a whole day scrapbooking at my local crop. I went loaded up with all my paints, inks, mists, brushes, rollers, palettes, pens and an assortment of papers, stickers and embellishments. I'm very grateful that I can park just outside the hall! When I have a big bit of time like that I like to get a bit experimental.

I stayed fairly safe with my first page and included a fabric embellishment from Ikea.

I had a play with my Maya Mists for the next two pages. I sprayed some colours onto this page and didn't like too much and so I stencilled with gesso all over the top of the colours. I like the background now.

I used a couple of circle stamps from Claudine Hellmuth's Creative Layers collection and some circle stickers from Scenic Route.

More experimenting with mists on the "Sisters" page. I sprayed the mists onto my Teflon craft sheet and then used a brayer to roll over the mists and then lay the cardstock over the top.. I've watched other people do this online and it seemed to work better for them!

I wasn't very keen on the effect I created but then I added a heart mono print and a flower with a foam stamp and the background made more sense to me. I also included a brooch too ( an Ebay purchase).

Sitting by the pond

Yesterday I went to my local crop and spent a lovely day getting inky and painty - more of the results will follow soon. I also jotted down Shimelle's sketch of the week before I headed out the door and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

I had a go at stitching through the title. I'm not sure I should show this close up as I could do with a bit more practising.

I enhanced the inky splatter with some bakers twine swirls and some Prima bling too. I curled the edges of all my paper strips. I love how this adds texture to the page so easily.

Yummy applique

After the busyness of the summer and the sorting out during September my mind has been filling with ideas. In a strange way this has left me not knowing where to start. I thought I needed a push in the right direction and so I signed up for a class called "The Good Life" with Amy Tan over on Big Picture Classes. Amy is so inspiring and has made great crafting into a successful business. She has her own clothing line and now has her own scrapbooking line with American Crafts.

The first week of the class included a tutorial on how to make her fantastic reverse applique t-shirts. This is such a great process. I made two t-shirts in one evening. The cake t-shirt is my most successful as the blonde one loves it and wants me to make another for her.

The twinkle t-shirt worked well and I liked it, but the ginger one decided overnight that she doesn't like pink or blue anymore and so won't wear it. Never mind!

At least one of them is happy with their new t-shirts!

Ta-Da! Scrap365 blog hop

Hurray I can finally let everyone know my very exciting news! I am on the Design Team for the brand new UK based scrapbooking magazine Scrap365. Have you heard about Scrap365 yet? It's a new magazine from the people who publish Craft Stamper with a fabulous international design team. I am completely honoured to be part of such a talented team of designers and crafters. It's going to be great! Hello to everyone joining me on here on the trail of the Scrap365 blog hop - if you haven't joined in yet, have a hop and you could win a great prize. More on that later...

Let me introduce myself, my name is Emy Buxton and I live near Bristol in the U.K. I have worked as a freelance crafter since 1999 doing various jobs and have been scrapbooking since 2002. I used to write for a few magazines a while ago but I took a break to have three children. I now have less time to craft but lots of lovely photos to scrapbook.

Five things I love about scrapbooking...

1. I love COLOUR! My pages are usually packed full of colour - pattterned papers, paint, inks, mists.

2. I love stitching. I like to use hand and machine stitching on my pages. I am particularly excited about free-motion stitching at the moment. I have also started working on projects bringing scrapbooking and quilts together.

3. I love making and finding unusual embellishments. I make my own bits and bobs using Fimo, chipboard, felt, paper and ribbon. I also love scouring auction sites and flea markets for bits and pieces too. The border on the page below is made with drinking straws...

4. I love telling the stories behind the photos. I am striving to get better at journalling.

5.I love being creative. Scrapbooking brings together so many of my crafty loves. I'm always looking to learn new things too.

I hope that lets you know a bit about me and my scrapbooking. If you'd like to know more about Scrap365 then you can keep up to date on the magazine blog. You can also like them on Facebook and follow on Twitter (@scrap365mag.com). The magazine will be on the news-stands and available digitally on the 18th November.

Would you like to win a great prize? How about a year's subscription to Craft Stamper AND over £20 of stamps ! To enter the competition you need to leave a comment on here and every other design team blog PLUS the Scrap365 blog. Please leave a comment on here telling me what you love about scrapbooking.

Now on with the blog hop, click HERE to meet the oh-so-talented Anna Bjorkland. Check out her fabulous use of paint.

Inspiration - Doily street art

Through the wonderful world of friends on Facebook talking about interesting things, I've just found a website all about an art festival that has been happening in the Italian town of Grottaglie. It's called the Fame Festival. which is doubly interesting as a title as fame in Italian means hungry, so it adds a double meaning to the English version. It's a group of international artists who work in ceramics, printmaking and installations and who translate their work into street art around the town. It's not all to my taste - but the world would be a very boring place if we all liked the same thing.

This post here is about the work by a Polish artists called NeSpoon. She has created some beautiful ceramic doilies and also used doily stencils around the town.

A doily stencil - so lovely...

Creating ceramic doilies...

A ceramic inlay in a tree...

You can see more of NeSpoon's fabulous work here

Amazing Fimo

Yesterday I spent the day demonstrating Fimo at my local craft shop (the most wonderful Spinning Weal). It was a really good day and one of the staff members referred to it as "standing room only" in the afternoon. The fish brooch above was one of the pieces I took with me as I think it shows the amazing potential of polymer clay. I cannot claim to make anything as fantastic as this. This beautiful brooch was made by the most talented artist Sarah Shriver. I was lucky enough to go to some workshops taught by her a few years ago.

Can you believe these pieces are made from polymer clay! (I know this post is titled "Amazing Fimo", but I'm not sure which brand of clay Sarah uses!)

This is why I love playing with Fimo so much. My kids think it's great and love making models, just like I used to, but the creative potential is limitless.