Crafting, Creating and Weight Loss

Oh My Gosh!

It’s been such a whirlwind here… and so long since an update.

I’ve been crafting, yes.  I have a TON of photos of what I’ve done. I even have lots of step-by-step tutorial photos for some great information… but WHERE DID THE TIME GO?

I must be wallowing in age huh? lol

I promise to give you a tiny peek at what I’ve added to my ‘crafty’ fun.

Bears.

I was thrown back into painting because my mom made a request for them. And I’m In LOVE with them!!!! I love painting. It’s so …  enjoyable, flexible, and fun!

These are going together as a long valance for the top of a window dressing. And another set of fence is going to run along the bottom edge of the window as well.  🙂 One of a Kind!

I’ve had to put my paintbrush down… What has zapped my life?

Well, just to give you a SMALL intro… I’ll give you VISUALS

and….

I keep saying that by some ‘sparkling miracle’ I’ve become a weight loss coach.  It was more or less… brought to me.

I’ve got some writings and recipes here: I’m trying out all the platforms.

http://realw8hawaii.wordpress.com/http://realw8hawaii.wordpress.com/

http://realw8hawaii.blogspot.com/

http://realw8.weebly.com/

I can help you. And I can help you, help others.

Just message me, comment here, friend me on FaceBook.

My personal FaceBook is

https://www.facebook.com/alicia.delosreyes.hankins

My page is

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alicia-Delos-Reyes-Hankins/180769312049424

Enjoy! … and more Crafty stuff to come!

AliciaInHawaii

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Learning to Design and Embroider- Creating Original Bougainvillea

I discovered hand embroidery projects by way of Inspirations Magazine and NeedleNThread.com, and after completing the first square of the quilt blocks, I thought it went well enough that I then wanted to create my own canvas, my own design, and chose my own colors. Nothing like jumping right into the fire!

The first thing I did was organize my embroidery thread onto bobbins. As I would the bobbins, endlessly, I put them into fishing tackle boxes. I find that the result is a fantastic palette, easy to access and easy to see.

I needed a subject. I pondered over this for a few days…always on the look out for something catchy, something unique, something exotic…then as I was staring out the window, my mind wandering over the many valleys and hills in my mind, I realized that for each of those days, I had been staring out the window…looking at a wild, but very happy and healthy, bougainvillea. I thought that the subject matter, wouldn’t attract many other people to want to stitch it, but, the other plants potted in front of it would be great for ribbon embroidery, and I realized that I would be stitching something original and unique for me, and perhaps someone else may be inspired from it to look out their window and stitch what they stare at.

I cut a 15×15 square of muslin and dug out my watercolors. I knew that I could do a few washes on the background to enhance the finished item, so I fixed a palette and painted some ‘splotchy’ background for my bougainvillea.

After painting the fabric, I had to ‘draw’ the pattern or picture that I wanted to stitch. Well, I really didn’t want to draw out all the details of this wild and crazy plant, so I basically made a few ‘shapes’ to transfer onto the material with pencil.

Once the fabric was dry and the pattern shapes penciled on, I had a great time going to my tackle boxes of embroidery floss to choose an original color palette. I pulled out some pinks, purples, greens…and several browns.

I went through several stitch ‘encyclopedias’ and collections to choose a few stitches to use while working up my bougainvillea. I favored turkey stitch, stem stitch, french knot, detached chain, detached fly, and couching.

It is a lot of fun to stitch this way! I made up everything as I went along.

As I finished up the background areas of the bougainvillea, I decided to add stumpwork to the foreground. (Resource: A-Z of Stumpwork) I padded and added silk embroidery ribbon for the main triangle facing the front center, (which still needs a hanging stem protruding from the area), and I added silk ribbon and perle cotton for the potted pink gingers and fern. I did paint the pots on another piece of fabric, stuffed them and appliqued them to the main fabric.

This is what it looks like so far:

Embroidery: Beginning An Original Design – Painting Fabric with Watercolors

Once I had the fabric samples marked off and the paper templates cut out, I could start painting the fabric. My whole focus with this was to simply getting to the paint and embroider part of the projects…instead of spending countless hours stuck in my journal and thinking about painting and embroidering…I’d actually be painting and embroidering!

I didn’t get a picture of the actual watercolor set up. Basically, you set your material on a workspace, set up your paints. (I used watercolor, but acrylics, fabric paints, or dyes work just as well.) Once all that is ready to go, you can paint with any techniques you prefer. I simply did what I felt like at the time and didn’t give it too much ‘thought’. I wanted the blocks to simply paint themselves instead of me over analyzing the process. (Which I can do a LOT of…)

I like to use watercolor wet in wet. I wet the fabric with a wash brush to give the watercolor a way to ‘run’ and blur into unusual unpredictable patterns and flow. I did some lifting of wet watercolor and some dry brushing as well. I also tried some graded washes. While painting, I used the templates to just cover over sections of the 4×6 fabric areas. That left a pattern of sorts either on the edges of the painted areas. I lifted the templates and moved them around and just played with the painted areas that were left to create some designs. When you paint your blocks, just have fun with it and see what turns up. I know that I may not use all the blocks, and even if I don’t ANY of the ones that I painted, Hey, At least I was Painting and not thinking about painting. ; )

I had the painted ‘bricks’ hanging on a small drying line, yes, stretched across my computer room-under construction-