Tweed and Velvet Christmas Cards

This last week I've been rummaging through my fabric box in desperation for some Christmas inspiration - I came across the red, grey and cream tweed off cuts and thought they went beautifully with some grey silk velvet and some wool worsted suit fabric from a sample book.

I struggled to keep the cards fairly flat so they would go through the post easily, it was hard and I could easily have carried on adding to them as I'm very much a lover of over egging the cake when it comes to embellishments!  However, I stuck with embossing the velvet and adding Pearl drops, and gluing some die cuts on.  Here are a few of them. 

And here are a few more that are going to be hand delivered so I was able to add more bits and bobs!  Not many made this year but perhaps next year I'll give myself a kick up the backside a bit earlier!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone and thank you for all your kind comments and support throughout the past year.

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW this week.

Textile Birthday Card and WOYWW

October is a busy month for birthday celebrations and this week it's my sister's birthday, so here is the card and gift bag I made for her.

I picked up some lovely tweed fabric squares from a charity shop a few weeks ago and decided they would go very well with the beautiful rusty orange coloured silk velvet.

I embossed the velvet with a leaf stamp, covered a couple of buttons with the same velvet, die cut some copper sheet and added some hand embroidery and beading.

I made the origami envelope but needed paper nearly A1 in width to get it to the correct size (6"x6") - it's open so the card just slips in, which is fine when it's not going through the post!

I'm linking up with Julia over at WOYWW this week.

Decay and Repair Project and ICAD Cards

For WOYWW today I have on my desk another six index cards for the ICAD challenge, and once again I'm working with the theme decay and repair.  I used tweed pieces and bits of antique lace, plus printed moth images.  During the often steep learning curve that is my art journey, I discovered that if you embroider a zigzag stitch around anything circular it looks like a sun drawn by a child!  Hence the rather large amount of zigzagging added to the bottom left card to try and detract from the 'sun' - it's an absolute disaster but I decided to keep it in - I am using these cards much as I would a sketchbook, for trying out ideas, so disasters really ought to stay as they are all part of the process!

For anyone interested I have a large embroidery that's pretty much finished now, and some moth photos that are all part of the 'decay and repair' theme on my previous blog post here

I have a real weakness for old teacups, and I thought this one went so well with the colours I 'd chosen for this weeks cards that I just had to photograph them together!