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| Knotted Braid |
It is January and cold....well it should be cold, but we have been having a wonderfully warm winter. And, after a busy Christmas and New Year's period we all needed an easy, yet creative day.
Just for a change, our warmup embroidery was changed slightly - to a knotted braid. This is the way many have made friendship bracelets over the years. It can be used in embroidery as well and everyone was able to create a colourful braid sample.
Great start to the day!
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| Velvet embossed with rubber stamp |
After this, we moved on to embossing velvet. Velvet can simply be embossed with a hot iron, and a rubber stamp. Just spray the stamp and place the velvet, plush side down onto the stamp, and iron it (without steam) for about 30 seconds. Different types of velvet will produce differing images - the best type being rayon acetate velvet.
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| Pigment ink embossed velvet |
Of course, we took this further, as an embossed image is not permanent. We used pigment ink pads to ink the stamp and then embossed the velvet. The image is now permanent and you can add a contrasting colour to the velvet to enhance the image. We also had some information from the net to use paint, but this really damages your stamp.
We used rubber stamps, but clear acrylic polymer stamps will also work, as long as they are the high quality ones (generally made in the USA). The cheaper ones will melt, so don't use those!
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| Pigment ink stamp |
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| Pigment ink stamp |
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| Pigment ink stamp |
And, finally we had to try yet another technique.......
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| Acrylic Paint & soldering gun |
Using a stencil, we used acrylic paint on the velvet and then used a soldering gun on the painted sections of the velvet to add some additional texture.........lovely results!
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| Acrylic paint and soldering gun |
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| Velvet stencilled with acrylic paint |
Some of us just liked the look of the stencilled velvet with no further actions. Velvet seems to look great no matter what you do to it. It retains that rich luscious texture!
