Gallery of past work

Wednesday 21 November 2012

Making Textile Christmas Cards


I've been making my own Christmas cards for several years now and people seem to enjoy receiving them. An example of last year's is shown left.

It was made using transfer dyes on polycotton. I ironed on background colours lightly and masked out snow flake shapes when I added the final colour. Then I over-printed the shapes again. On some - I get bored doing the same thing 100 times - I added some stitch but they weren't so successful, I don't think. This was one time stitch seemed unnecessary.

Not sure what to do this year. That's the problem - thinking up a new idea each year .... As you can see in the photo of my workroom (in creative? chaos), I've been playing around with discharging star shapes into blue Quink ink on silk dupion or cotton (cheaper but not so nice) and then using an Art Van Go printing stamp onto which I brushed thickened bleach with a bit of old car sponge. Hope my husband doesn't notice its disappearance!


I'm always tempted to turn everything into a landscape so I've added a strip of white sari silk to represent snow. I've then over-printed with Lumiere Halo Gold  paints and a star-shaped Indian wood block. I quite like the effect - just not sure if it's all that Christmasy.

Will try out the idea on my resident critic when I've added some stitch. I'm sure there will be new developments as I go along. He'll certainly have comments to make! Just hope they're positive as I seem to be rather lacking in new - and practical - ideas this year.

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