Super Nova

It seems ages since I picked up a needle to do any cross stitch but the combination of a gorgeous new piece of  fabric and  a sunny afternoon seems to have reignited the stitching mojo.

The fabric is a custom dye from Sparklies . Kate does some fabulous custom dyes and she surpassed herself this time.

 This is a square yard of Belfast (32ct Linen from Zweigart. The idea was to capture an exploding star and I think it does exactly that. The colours are much brighter in reality, the picture really doesn't do it justice.

Whether Kate will like what I've done to her fabric remains to be seen!  This is progress after about 4 hours stitching.

Death of a book?

I have just spent a very nice weekend with a friend and we had great fun.
The intention was to create a piece of art from an old book...

As a confirmed bibliophile I couldn't possibly have sacrficed one of my own books so I hardened my heart and bought an old one from a chaity shop for about 65p. It wasn't great literature and had definitely seen better days so I tried not to feel too bad about it...

The intention was to create a display niche with the remains of the book as a frame.

The first stage was to paint the cover white and allow it to dry. We used gesso but any white paint would do.

  Next came the cutting. I'd already decided what I wanted to put in the aperature so it was a case of cutting out the right sized hole. Cutting through the cover was hard work and a stanley knife worked better than the craft knives.




Using the hole in the cover as a guide, the inside pages were cut to the same size.  to make a little niche. After a few cut layers I started to cut and tear to get a less uniform effect ( hard this for an OCD personality!). Once the niche was deep enough it was given a quick wash with the gesso to soften and blur the text a little.

Next came the decoration. This is white textured tissue paper, sprayed with green distress ink and stuck on with gel medium. it was intended to be a brown walnut colour but they look very similar in the bottle. Whoops.

The book is not intended to open so it was then necessary to secure it closed. I made some decorative hinges out of grunge paper and coloured the with a brown distress ink and gold embossing powder. They were then nailed to the book front and back to hold it closed.

All that remained then was to add the decoration.  The keys were stuck in with strong glue.

Whilst that was drying I made some roses out of more of the grunge paper and stuck them to the book cover. It isn't quite finished in that I want to add a little more to the cover once I decide what!