A white atc made in the memory of someone very special.

Green (ish) ATAP. This is as close to green as I get, although there is a little splash of lime on the surface of this one, the camera chose not to pick it up.

Getting addicted to making these now, must think of something else before I bore everyone into not reading my blog.

White lace amulet pouch.

I spent every spare minute this week hand sewing these tiny lace scraps onto a base of lace and felt. Then I added beads.

ATAP. Artist trading amulet pouch. A while ago I challenged Daune to make an amulet pouch. Whilst I faffed about, Daune got on with it and has made a number of lovely little pouches.

This is my prototype. It is made from one piece of felt, with acrylic gel mediums, acrylic paint, foil and free machine embroidery. With a stuffed ribbon strap.

The next one will be similar but will have beads and stuff too. Unless I make the white fru-fru one first.

Bookmarks. I needed to make 12 things for the birthday rak at cloth paper studio. I figured that everyone uses bookmarks so they would come in handy. These are they! They are birthday cards which are also bookmarks and they are in the postal system winging their way to those with June birthdays.

The raks are a nice idea as they are sent freely and with no expectation of receiving anything in return.

I started with a base of pelmet vilene, bonded on hand-dyed abaca tissue (tissuetex). Added a strip of heavy lokta paper, machine stitched with metallic thread. Then I put on a strip of angel wire (Sizoflor?) across and embellished with copper and bronze bits. Decided that a tassel would be superfluous so didn't put one on.

Embellisher tree. Playing around with the embellisher and some silk waste, bit of scrim and a handful of cotton thread. This piece was three times the size but I mucked up part of it. I had two trees and put blossom (viscose neps) on the 2nd. Put too much on and obliterated the tree. You can see some of the blossom on the right of the postcard.

I was planning to stitch on this, but I think it will make a great sample of how not to get carried away!

Canvas work. The Embroiderers Guild (Lincolnshire branch) asked us to all make a canvas work sampler. We had to use at least 9 different stitches.

I have never done any canvas work and I knew that whatever I produced would look amateurish next to the stuff the others would be making. And I don't like hand stitching much. I decided to do 9 stitches, just one of each. I always planned to cover them with tissue and paint over them, originally I was going to use three rows of three stiches and make a wig-whammy thing, but Elis has done some fab work on building blocks and I just happened to have some mahogany blocks that I bought at a boot fair ages ago. I gessoed over a handful of the blocks and painted them with a thin coat of quinacridone gold.

I stitched my samples using cotton warping thread (from the handweavers studio), I needed something that wouldn't be squished by the tissue and this is very firm but not hairy. And it was handy. Cut out the pieces and glued them onto the blocks. Then I glued tissue paper over the top. I coloured over them with gold acrylic paint but it was a bit too bright, so I washed over with Parker Quink ink (blue) to tone it down a bit. Then stroked a bit of markal over the raised areas.

I made the box! I bought some beading the same size as the blocks and used my trusty hack-saw to cut the pieces to size. Sanded the edges and then glued it together with marvin medium. The bottom is a piece of grey book board. I did put one panel pin on each edge to make it look as though I could hammer straight. I think I might need a bench saw if I am going to make any more of these (I did cut a few extra before I got four the right size and with straight edges).

Oh, gessoed the box then painted it with blue acrylic with glazing medium added. Then dabbed a tiny bit of markal on the edges.