Embellishing the Embellishments

I recently particpated in an embellishment swap at Studio Calico, which was hosted by Erin. I was paired up with my friend and fellow adorer of David Cook, Dawn. I thought it would be easy to do, but being paired up with a friend and someone so dang creative made me want to do everything perfectly. While nothing is perfect, I do like what I ended up with. I hope Dawn does, too. There were a few things I wanted to do. First, I wanted to use bright colors as they remind me of Dawn. She is always positive and cheerful. On top of that I love the colors she has in her office, so ta da the use of brights. Second, I wanted to do something involving flowers. She makes these amazing flowers. I deem her the ultimate flower queen and this is my homage to her in that respect. Finally, I wanted to use fabric, felt, fabric stiffener and punches. Why? Well, why not?

These were the last thing I came up with and the thing I liked the most. They are almost 3" across. I bought a super big circle punch specifically for this. Like I couldn't cut it by hand. Hey...I used fabric stiffener and needed to see if it could punch through fabric. It does as long as the fabric has had a lot of stiffener applied. The felt circles were hand cut. Punches do not like felt and stiffener on felt is gross.

I'm going to admit my mistake in making these as it resulted in kind of a cool effect. In order to find room to stiffen a bunch of fabric at one time I covered cookie sheets with tin foil. I then placed the fabric on the foil and painted it with the stiffener. Bad idea. Kind of. The stiffener plastered the tin foil and fabric together. Forever. I spent hours trying to peel the two apart with little luck. Finally, I just started cutting them into flower shapes and realized that I could then shape the petals giving the flower dimension. Holy stamens...I think I invented a technique. Yahoo...I liked them so much I made my friend, Liz, a belated birthday card with one. See photo below. Of course, it will reach her all smooshed due to being sent in the mail, but she can play with it all she wants. Happy birthday, Liz. Could I be any later? Ugh.

To finish up the bottom two photos are the remainder of what I sent. I just simply punched shapes and layered them with buttons and other findings. I made a few fabric covered buttons and have to do a shout out to Greta, who I stole the idea from. Thanks Twin! Another thing I did on some was to add Smooch around the edges. I had to buy this stuff, because of the name and the container. Yeah...I buy things for stupid reasons. I'm a pushover.

So that's that. Fun swap. I'd do it again. I have plenty of fabric stiffener left, too. Thanks for checking my embellishments out. Have a bright and cheerful weekend!