When I went to the hairdressers the other week I was a little early for my appointment, I left early in order to get parked, so I went into Poundstretchers. We don't have one of these where I live so I try to pop in for a browse when I am in Bathgate. They often have interesting bits and pieces and are as cheap as chips. I spotted this pack of skeleton leaves - £1 for 70 - I haven't counted them but I bet there are 70 in there. I couldn't resist, well who could for that price, and so I brought them home.
They were lying next to the embellisher yesteryday and I have to say when I was working away on the "trapped" challenge piece it crossed my mind as to whether I could embellish them. No, never in a month of Sundays I thought. I just couldn't get the idea out of my head and so I just had to try them. I used a piece of warm and natural wadding (batting), well I couldn't use my kunin felt now could I, because this was never going to work, was it? I also found a scrap of chiffon, I have to mail order these so I didn't want to use a new one, you know why? (it wasn't going to work). I lowered the needles a little so that they were closer to the fabric, you are less likely to break needles if you have them closer to the fabric I believe (learned that from Val Campbell Harding's article in the March 2007 issue of Workshop on the Web) and I started needlefelting. Wow! It worked! The leaf broke up a little as you would expect but it worked. No broken needles either even after running them over the middle stem which is quite thick.
Then I wondered about trying it without the chiffon. It worked! There it is attached to the backing. I am wondering what if ....... I painted it with an acrylic wash....... stamped it with a leaf design using that new distress ink pad I bought recently....... or .... or ... I have so many ideas going through my head now. Maybe something will come of it, maybe not but I am happy that I tried it. 
Here they are so that you can see the difference. Now I can try it on my precious kunin felt and perhaps try the heat gun on it to give the felt a "skeleton" look just like the leaves. Now there's an idea.
6 comments:
How cool is this. I I could sew I'd give it a go.
Pound Stretcher cute name we have a Dollarama great stuff for a dollar..
We can get the chiffon scarfs at the charity shops, so if can get a few I'll send them along...
They both look good but I really like it with the chiffon..
oops
that was suposed to say
If I could sew.
wonderful Carol, lots of
possibilities for some interesting work
Oh. so exciting! I have skeleton, I bought for a several years ago, and I really don´´t know what to do whit it. Some of them I have painted, and some is still white. Now I am waiting so for my embellisher I have order, and then so.........
Gunnel,
How exciting! You are going to love your new toy! I hope you post pictures of your embellished pieces on your blog so that we may enjoy seeing them.
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