Stencilfied journal challenge week 8

Week 8 in the Stencilfied journal challenge from StencilGirl was to stencil with glue!

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I decided to use my quickly glue pen and gilding flakes to make my page.

Once I had finished the background, I just had to add the cockerel to finish it off!

Stencilfied Journal challenge week 7

For challenge 7 of the Stencilfied Journal by StencilGirl we had to stencil a page rip it out and tear it up and then make another page with it.

Here is the first page I ripped out and tore up 

Here is the finished page

I think this is my favourite so far.

Fabric luggage tags decorated with Bower Fabric Pens

I was so impressed with the Bower Watercolour Pens I bought and now they have sent me some of their new fabric pens to try.  I just had to put them through their paces.

  After paper crafting my second craft love is to sew. I had been wanting to make some fabric luggage tags for ages. The Bower fabric pens were a wonderful way to decorate them how I wanted and to see how the pens performed at the same time.

  So to begin.

 1.  Cut 2 pieces of thick Calico fabric ( or any cotton fabric ) to the size you want your finished tag plus 1/2 inch seam allowance. Don't make your tags too small or they will be difficult to sew and turn later.

 By seam allowance  I mean add 1/2 inch to all 4 sides of your tag. Then when you stitch the tag together sew 1/2 inch in from the side all the way around. This is called a seam allowance.

  2.  I wanted to see how well the pens did when using them with rubber stamps and through a stencil.

  First the stamps.
               I carved myself a little aeroplane stamp, you can use any stamp you have, and then just used the fabric pen to scribble over the stamp until it was well covered in the ink, then I stamped it onto my calico fabric.

    I chose to use the light blue for my Aeroplanes.

      I also stamped onto the second piece of Calico for the back.
   
      I then needed to cut an aperture out of the middle of my front piece of fabric.

    To make the aperture I drew a rectangle onto the reverse of the stamped fabric where you want your aperture to be. I then drew a cross from corner to corner and cut along the lines and folded the triangles back along the lines as shown. If the tops of the Triangles poke out over the edge of your tag, just snip them off.

    Then I tried the pens with a stencil.

This worked well too. I chose the red pen and a star stencil.

    3. You need to set the Fabric pen ink by ironing your fabric. I recommend doing as they say and cover your fabric with a cloth to protect your iron. If you do get ink on the base of your iron, let it cool and then wipe it off. Do check that you get it all off your iron before you iron hubbies white work shirt though!!

   4. Now to sew our tag together. 

          First stitch around the aperture to hold your triangle flaps down.

          Then, with printed sides together, sew all the way around your tag. You don't need to leave a gap to turn your tag as shown in the photo, you can use the great big aperture to do that. I would of worked that out if I had thought about it!! I did realise after I had struggled for a while to turn my tag through the tiny gap I had left.

   5. So turn your tag the right way out and then give it a good press with your iron, not forgetting the cloth.

  

    6. I then sewed a button hole through both layers of the tag, I found that quicker than doing 2 separate ones on each layer of the tag before I stitched the tag together, as I had done on my star tag here.  If you don't want to do a button hole then just stitch your ribbon to your tag.

    7.  To finish my tag I cut a piece of card and added my details. I also cut a piece of thick plastic to cover my details and protect them from rain etc. I used a piece of plastic packaging you get on everything as this will hold the tag stiffer. Once I was happy with the fit I used a fabric glue or any strong glue and glued the plastic piece in place by applying the glue around the edges of the aperture and then putting something heavy on top until the glue is dry.

    8. Then add a nice piece of ribbon through your button holes and attach to your bag!  You might want to put a couple of stitches through the knot just to make sure you don't loose your beautiful new tag.

So now we have a finished the tag what did I think of the pens?

Well, to be honest I have not used many fabric pens before but I found the Bower Fabric Pens -

* Nice and easy to use and come in nice sturdy carry case too.

* They didn't bleed into the fabric and the colours came out nice and bright.

* They worked very well on the stamps.

* Didn't bleed through the stencil.

* Great price too

Only one down point -

* The nib did felt up as you used them. I don't know if this was the fabric I was using but it was a bit annoying. I could just remove the fluff and it was fine again. Although you did loose the point from the nib a bit.

I don't think the felting would stop me recommending then though. At £8.99 for 10 pens, 8 different colours and 2 blacks ( when this blog was written) on Amazon they are a great price and if you want to try fabric pens out they are a great set to go for. They would be great for children to use too.

Bower are a young British company who sell through Amazon. 

you can find their fabric pens here -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fabric-Pens-Permanent-Markers-Vari-Detail/dp/B078TGK4WL/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1532774992&sr=8-2-spons&keywords=bower+pens&psc=1

Bower Watercolour pens here -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Watercolour-Pens-Artists-Brush-Markers/dp/B0713SMN55/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1532774992&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=bower+pens&psc=1

Thank you Bower for sending them to me.

Attack puppy sign

My sister has the most beautiful little Labrador puppy at the moment, she is so full of fun and mischief and loves to show you how much she loves you by licking you half to death! So when I saw this saying in the Silhouette design store I had to do something with it.

The sign itself was a barging I found at the post Christmas sales. It’s was a wooden plaque with Happy Christmas on it. 

So I painted it over with white acrylic paint and then covered it with some Craft Consortium decoupage paper in a wood effect.

I then cut the saying out from vinyl on my Silhouette Cameo, along with a Labrador puppy and some doggie bones.

I added some garden twine so you could hang it up and it was done!

Stencilfied journal week 6

The challenge for week 6 of the Stencilfied journal challenge from StencilGirl is to stencil a page and then poke holes in it.

This was quite a fun one to do. Here is my page.

Not sure if I like it, I love the quote but......... ? Perhaps it will grow on me.

All the stencils used are from StencilGirl. 

I poked holes in the star bursts and have placed silver paper behind them, which doesn’t show up on the photo.

You can join in the challenge too, all the pages from all the people playing along can be found at 

#stencilfiedjournal and #StencilGirl

Stencilfied journal week 5

This week, is week 5 of the StencilGirl Stencilfied journal challenge. Each week we get a new challenge to create a journal page using StencilGirl stencils.

   This weeks challenge is - 

Here is the page I created

StencilGirl stencil are not that easy to come by here in the U.K. but as soon as I saw this one I knew I had to have it.

Decopatch Hare

I found this wonderful plastic Hare in the pound shop, he was originally painted bronze and looked really convincing from afar but with a little bit of crafting magic the looked even better!

I covered him with the Craft Consortium English Garden decoupage papers available from The Fruit Pixie -

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/craft-consortium-decoupage-papers-716-c.asp

The way you work with these papers is to tear them into pieces and then using a wet glue that dries clear, like the IndigoBlu Slap it on glue here-

http://www.thefruitpixie.co.uk/indigoblu-slap-it-on---gloss-26803-p.asp

Glue the torn pieces to your project, also covering the surface of the paper as you go.

To finish my hare off I used a brown pastel pencil to add some shadows and then rubbed in a pearl paint to seal in the pastel pencil and add a little shimmer. 

I then couldn’t help but add a die cut bow tie!

What do you think ?