Give-away Time

I have a give-away today (more on that below) but first an apology. I have been a bad blogger and not answered comments lately. Slapped wrist. I think it is because the only blogging time available lately has been in the evenings, on the tablet and it’s not so easy to open a blog twice and jump about.

Comments

Your comments on the embellisher post were thought-provoking and I agree with Heather that the embellished pieces are generally more interesting when added to another piece of work – after all it is just a tool and all our tools should work towards making cohesive work. However, my experiments using just the embellisher have proved fruitful and I am now moving on to adding slips of stitch. Planning to push ahead with the knitting and embellishing now for the article – liniecat’s chopped-up bits sound fun. Tried that once and it wasn’t great but I shall revisit it.

I am not going to rush the DVD but will try to have fun with it, Ros. It will be out sometime before the autumn, I guess.

Heather, I think that flow-improver would work with acrylics in a similar way to extender but it might make the paint too runny for collagraphs.

Giveaway

I find that I have lots of Softsculpt that is surplus to requirements. It works really well as a print block – just heat it and press something hard into it while hot. When it cools down, it will keep a deep impression and can be used as a stamp or block in the usual way. Heat in oven, with heat tool or iron but be very careful not to overheat – and be especially careful when picking it up after heating.

However, I like it best as a base for stitching as it can be shaped very easily. For this ‘book’, I heated it with an iron and then placed it over two bottles to get the shape of an open book. It is easy to lay up fabrics and stitch them to the softsculpt using a strong needle - see below. Stab stitch through to attach fabrics and adornments.

I also use it as edging and spurs, impressing with a pattern, painting and then buttonholing the edge (see right).

This is not a good photo but the arrow points to the Softsculpt strip. The piece in this photo was pressed with the lid of a potpourri pot so look out for interesting things to use as pressers.

Dale Rollerson has kindly given me some of her booklets ‘Let’s Play with Romeo’ to give away. Her ideas for using dissolvable film could go really well with the Softsculpt.

Anyway, if you would like to try for the goodie,s just leave a comment on the blog. Say which you would prefer, book or Softsculpt.