It can be difficult to find up-to-date information about scrapbooking ideas on the Internet. This is what a lot of people discover when they search for information online. However, this article that has been written by an expert and is filled with up-to-date information on scrapbooking ideas.
One in three American households has someone [...]
SubscribeI interviewed Chicago mosaic artist Valerie Fuqua to find out about how she puts the pieces together.Why mosaics? Mosaics allow me to take something broken and form a new whole. It's an incredibly therapeutic art form. I love combining the old with the new, creating a marriage of sorts and giving items a second life. Glass can range from chunky and fierce to delicate and wispy. I never tire of the rich textures and reflective qualities of my tesserae. What do you like about doing commissions?Commissions help me grow as an artist. Whether it's incorporating a broken piece of heirloom china into a mosaic or matching colors in upholstery, it's always an exciting challenge. Some of my commissions have involved building a mosaic around a treasured fa
In my layout titled "Drips of Nectar" in my baby gallery, I've also pieced a butterfly using some crafting foams. To create this piecing, just follow the steps below:1. Cut out your basic shape and then lightly draw your design pattern on the foam using pencil. Stitched the edges of the foam. 2. Punched some holes on the foam to decorate it and using some gel pens to add colours to it. 3. You can used some punched out small circles of foams to stuff into some of the holes to create more detailed look. 4. After decorating the whole piece, cut out pieces of foams for the body and head of the butterfly. Decorate the two pieces separately and then pieced them together using liquid glue or double sided tapes. I've shade the cheeks of the butterfly using some chalks. 5. I've also used some crafting wires to create its antenna. Therefore, using crafting foams in layouts aren't that bad after all these detailing and piecing work. For more instructions as to detailing of foams, you can
After posting my latest layout titled "Out Of Shell", some of my forum friends would liked to know more about the technique used. This is actually an extension on my topic "Felt Piecing in Layouts" in my tips and tricks section. Therefore, I've thought of posting it here so that all my blog readers would also get to know more about the technique. I will answer those questions by referring to my felt piecing work in the picture below: Shading felts:I've used some fabric markers to shade my felt in my flower felt piecing before sewing or attaching it to the layout. You can also used some permanent art markers as long as they are not water based. This will add depths to the overall look of the flower.Sewing felts: I've used embroidery threads (ie. DMC) for almost all my scrapbooking work. It comes in great variety of colours and it is softer and won't tear your paper easily. It is definitely great for sewing very fragile and soft materials such as felts.Detailing felts:In my layou
I've always wanted to try using felt in creating my layouts. I love the look of felt and the dimensions of it on a layout.Recently, I've used some self made felt piecing on my latest layout title "Out Of Shell" in my baby gallery. I've pieced various insects, flowers and also few chicks in my layout. I've 3-D pieced one of the chick by stuffing some polyester into it, to give more dimensions to the layout.I've used all kinds of materials to create the templates for my felt piecing here. I've used colouring book, drawings and even photographs.It's fun creating all these felt pieces. Try it!
Are you into quilting or fabric piecing too? Why not combine the two worlds together. I've done some quilting when I make my son's blanket two years ago. While I was browsing through the "HGTV" website on the internet, I saw these free templates where they are used to make a quilt about the twelve months of a year. They have various templates for different occasions of a year. I've used the templates and some additions to it and utilized some of my remaining scraps of fabrics to make this fabric piecing blocks and attached it to my family album cover. I've even make the figures in the blocks out of card stocks and some chalking on it. Don't you think combining the two worlds will give you surprises? You can also do quilting for the background of a layout. I guess it will be interesting. I will have to try it one day.
Try using colouring pages downloaded from the Internet or even colouring books that you bought for your kids to do paper-piecing. I've done quite a number of paper-piecing for my Disney layouts in my USA travel gallery such as below. Just use the picture in the colouring page and trace templates for paper-piecing (remember to trace it a bit bigger at the part you want to piece it) Then paste it to colour card stocks and just each piece out.After piecing them together, chalked it to give a little dimension to it. Sometimes, layouts that tells very little stories can be filled up using paper-piecing technique. I had so much fun doing these pages. It is especially difficult to find paper-piecing templates for Disney characters.
The chalking technique used on scrapbooking are very useful in various types of situation. Chalking on embellishments can give various effects. Chalking edges of embellishments can soften the looked of it and even make it more colourful. If you use dark colour chalking on the whole of the embellishment, you will even get a distressed looked. Chalking on paper-piecing can lift the 3-D looked of it instead of a flat two dimensional looked. I've done various layouts using chalking, for example my Disney layouts in my USA travel gallery or even my latest layout, I've chalked the frames and mats to give it a softer looked. The technique of chalking is very simple. Kindly use cotton buds, cotton balls, cosmetic foam pieces, cosmetic buds or even your fingers. Most of the time, I prefer using my fingers, as it is easy to control the amount of chalk and it can be spread more evenly. Try different colour chalks to give different effects.
