Beady Giveaway

I dabble in beading - it's fun and I like it - but I don't spend a lot of time on it. My sisters Terri and Cindy on the other hand - wow!!! They do some gorgeous work. I just grabbed this photo from Musings from The Mercantile, and I wish I had more to show. It's breathtaking and so detailed. Wonderful stuff!!

So when Cindy posted about this great giveaway, I decided to up her odds of winning by posting about it myself.

Good luck Cindy!

Changing Gears

After a full day of working outside - hauling mulch and topsoil to where they are supposed to be and reclaiming the driveway, I decided some "little work" was in order, and decided to do some beading instead of sewing.

I first repaired a bracelet a co-worker had asked me to fix for her. It was purchased from a commercial home-party company, and they had strung it on what felt like waxed cord, which had stretched and frayed. I swapped it out for tigertail and now it should be nice and sturdy for her.

The other project was a lanyard for my work ID - now that we have swipe card access instead of keys. I wanted some thing neutral in color for this first one -although I anticipate making more for different seasons and/or outfits - although the beads I chose ended up making the entire thing quite heavy. It's hard to see in this not-so-good photo, but the white rounds and squares are a shell-like material, and the diamonds are silver. In between all of them are silver lined glass beads in 3 sizes. The clip is recycled from a fabric lanyard I got at a convention somewhere over the past few years.

Now to get my ID punched to fit in the clip and I will be all set to go.

Picking More Pockets

As promised in my PickAPocket post, here's another option for making the front piece of your PickAPockets - tyvek.

I've written about using tyvek before - I like it as a way to incorporate stamping into my sewn work, as well as a different texture. Sure - you can use fabric inks and stamp on muslin, but I find that stamps with fine line detail do not reproduce well that way -the tyvek gives a harder smoother surface and finer image details.

For Mr. Gingerbread - I stamped the image with light and medium tan inks, then followed up with a dark brown. To pop the overall effect, I stitched strips of various brown fabrics to frame in the stamped area, then assembled the PickAPocket as usual.

When I am making these, I like to start by cutting my pieces of tyvek to size. I sometimes use just a tyvek front, sometimes I attach fabric borders - but by starting with a piece cut to final size I can then make the decision after I finish the artwork. (see my previous tyvek post for sources of tyvek).

When I have my inks out, I will usually stamp a whole bunch of images, even if I don't plan to use them all right then. I forgot to take a photo of the ink pads, but fast drying inks designed for use on non-porous surfaces work best for this. Water based inks won't dry and will smear on the "plastic" like surface of the tyvek, and you cannot heat dry or heat emboss on tyvek -it will melt.

My next fun is coloring the images. I have a lot of water based markers - but like I just mentioned, water based inks will puddle on the tyvek and not dry. However, if you blend them with acrylic paints, the properties of the paint take over, and they will dry, actually relatively quickly. Liquitex makes some cool "interference paints" that are translucent and take on the color of the pen inks, adding some iridescence and sparkle. These are kind of expensive, so get them where you can use a coupon or something. If you have a friend that you craft with -share with them. I find that I use the gold most often, although I have a variety of other colors.

When using these paints, less is more. I put a tiny bit of water in a film canister, use a very very fine paint brush, and take the paint out of the cap to avoid over-loading my brush. I don't want to water down the paint, so I wet the brush, wipe a bit of excess water off on the back of my hand, and then dip it into the paint.

To start coloring, brush on a bit of ink from your brush pen - you can thin it a bit with some water if it is too heavy a color...

Then over-paint the colored area with the acrylic paints...

Continue until your designs are completely painted to your satisfaction. Again, when I have paints out I usually will paint a whole number of fronts at once, even if I am not assembling them right away.

Here are a bunch of painted fronts - I was in a spring mood, so I decided to finish up the little guy with the bunch of flowers (top left in this picture). I don't know if you can see from this photo, but the lilacs (top right and bottom left) were a stamp that was bigger than the tyvek piece. I put a piece of scrap paper underneath and just let the stamp overlap -like it fades off the edge. It gave a neat effect. I will finish those up for Mother's Day.

Once the paints are dry, you can add additional embellishing by adding beads to your design. It is hard to see in this photo, but there is a small pink bead at the center of each flower.

When adding embellishments such as this, be sure not to take your stitches too close together, or they may pull out if the beads get caught on something. NOTE - if you are using large beads, or beads that will be in the area that will pass under the presser foot during final machine sewing, you may want to wait until after the piece is assembled to add your beadwork or it may cause difficulties in assembly.

You are now ready to finish your PickAPocket as usual. Just use a bit longer stitch length to prevent perforation of the tyvek, and remember that you will need to finger press and not iron the final pocket.