Friendship book page H & cover

Still not finished! The H page is done, which did ot photograph very well, but you get the idea.
For the cover I used some sumptuous raw silk beaded fabric. I think its bridal fabric. I love bridal fabrics, why dont they make them in different colours?  In order to move it away from the bridal look I drew on it with coloured fabric pens and coloured in some of the pearls. The closure I made from gold raw silk, its padded and I machined over the top and added some blue embroidery. That is not a button by the way, it is from a disassembled Christmas decoration lol.


And no it is not finished. I want to add some embellishments to the front, probably ribbons and another upcycled jewellery piece in the center. 
The weather has been fabulous today so I have been doing things outside instead of crafting indoors. Hopefully I shall get it completed tonight. I already have some ideas for wrapping it up in fabrics and 'stuff'


By the way the H page in particular and the closure was my very first attempt ever at embroidery.

Fabric Album 3 pages done

It is New Years Eve, and I cannot believe that my last posting was December 17th, prior to Christmas, ages and ages ago!
So I thought I'd better start showing what I have been doing all this time.
For a long time I have wanted to make one of those vintage tattered fabric albums or book. Only one way....get on with it.
This one is not yet complete, I have only finished 3 pages of 6. It is going to be a friendship book for someone I have known for many many years. She and her family visited in 2010 and I did not realise just how much I missed her company, I have'nt seen her since moving to France in 2004.


The idea is to make a page for each letter of her name, 5 pages plus the cover.
Today I am going to show you the first page.


T is for Turquoise, Time and Treasure

4 way blue fabric card

I will confess straight away that I found this theme/design/layout 'somewhere' on the net, loved it so much I wanted to try it. I have no idea where it was or by whom. So if you know who, let me know because I'd like to add a link in recognition of the inspiration.
Of course it is not exactly the same, but pretty close, the 'back' is all my own work however. It's Bobs nieces birthday next week so I made this for her. She is having her 1st baby next month,she is in her mid-thirties, so I will be making my first 'baby' card, or fabric art, depending what inspires me at the time. No-one knows what sex it is so I cannot even start to think of a colour theme for that one.

Back to this card though:  I guess in reality it has 8 sides. I had my first go at fabric printing on my laser jet. I did cheat a bit as I used some heavy duty canvas sticky tape. I just stuck it down onto the printer paper, then cut it off.
Not a stick of wallpaper on this one! Because there is both paper and fabric covering both sides of each 'page' I decided not to put card on it, it makes it feel lovely and soft, but it is not floppy. Same for the envelope. Yes I realise the envelope is totally a different colour, but it was the only blue tissue paper I had. To see how I got the splattery effect on the tissue paper see the previous post to this one.

Every page is completely covered in fabric, except for the 2nd, which is vellum. Feathers from my garden, inked in turquoise.

This is the sort of back of the card, it folds up so that the happy birthday sentiment is the front, if that makes sense?
The blue heart is fabric too, on paper, and is padded. The 'Made for you' page paper is some horrid blue paper which I tea dyed, as I did with all the tulle used in the card.

This is the front of the envelope. If you can image really hard lol, its a scene with distant hills, fencing, grass and a lake. Maybe not? Too abstract? I tried to create a birds nest in the 'tree'. The word Fran, is the Ladies name....Francesca.

The rest of the photos, are just the page details: