The Fabric of our Lives

Hello and welcome!  I'm finally allowed to share some very exciting news with you... a week ago, after my Guest Design slot, the Fussy and Fancy team got in touch and invited me to join their Design Team full time - I was completely over the moon!  Oh, and I said, "yes, please"...

So here, just a week later, I'm offering up my first Design Team piece as part of their new challenge for this fortnight, The Fabric of our Lives.  The challenge is to use fabric as part of your project, but with a title like that, I'm afraid my brain goes into word-world and comes up with all sorts of extra layers of meaning.  So, as well as actual fabric of our lives, I've got some metaphorical 'fabric of our lives' in the mix.  All will become clearer - but first, the card:

So what goes to make up this card?  And the larger question: what does make up the fabric of our lives?  The quote that popped into my head was: A house is made of bricks and beams; a home is made of hopes and dreams.

So there are the concrete materials which make up the places where we live, and the abstract things which make up our internal lives.  And that's how the little houses became part of the game.

First things first, the background: this I used the Multi Medium resist technique on, painting some of the medium onto actual bubble wrap and 'stamping' it onto the white cardstock.  Once dry, I stamped some Tim Holtz Ultimate Grunge dots in Cobalt Archival, and then inked it up with Broken China, Peeled Paint, Faded Jeans and some Vintage Photo round the edges.

A spritz of water on some kitchen roll, a quick wipe, and your bubbles shine through again, having resisted the ink.

The fabric I used really has been part of the fabric of our lives. Sharp-eyed followers may recognise it as having formed both the table runners and sashes for the chair decorations at my brother's recent (handmade) wedding.

We've got a lot of this stuff still hanging around at the moment, more than I could ever use however long I carry on crafting!  But it seemed highly appropriate to use some for this card - so that partly dictated the colour scheme.

It's backed onto some thick chipboard, painted with white acrylic, attacked with the TH Paper Distresser, edged with Vintage Photo, and then stamped with the Kaisercraft woodgrain stamp in Weathered Wood DI, so that there's another 'building' material in there (my favourite one - if I could have a wooden house, I'd be very happy!).

And the top layer of this element is some lovely, wide burlap ribbon from the Funkie Junkie Boutique.  I hope it doesn't say something about the fabric of my life that I found it necessary to distress and fray the edges of all my material(s)... hope I'm not unravelling!

If I am, I've now got the perfect thing to hold everything in place - I spent my recent winnings from a challenge on a Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher ... look, baby staples!  And so easy to use.



The little houses are cut using the TH Artful Dwelling die, and show another version of resist... This one uses the TH Kraft Resist paper, inked with similar colours as the background (but you get different shades since it's on Kraft), and then stamped with some of the abstract things which make up the fabric of our lives - Dreams, Wishes and Love.



The words all come on one TH stamp, but I used masking tape to separate them so that I could have one word at a time.  They're stamped using clear embossing ink, and then a bright white embossing powder.

The Kraft Resist paper has a resist 'built in', so that again you can wipe away the ink to reveal the shiny kraft colour beneath.  I think it's a great effect - I've used it a couple of times recently...





Once it was all stuck and dried, I used some sandpaper to roughen it up a bit.  I'm a big fan of the 'lived-in' look, and I love the texture and weathering you get with something as simple as an emery board.

The houses are stuck down with padded tape to lift them away from the surface of the card even more.  Something else that helps with that is the rustic burlap twine I've 'woven' around them, and tied in a simple bow.

I know it's not usually done to use the title of the challenge as your sentiment, but it just seemed utterly appropriate, given how the piece had grown out of it so directly.  





I stamped directly onto a piece of the fabric using Coffee Archival and my little £1 alphabet set (best buy ever?), and then backed it onto another bit of chipboard, treated the same way as the main backing piece.

And it's held in place by some more tiny staples.  (Sewing machines and I aren't on speaking terms, so sadly I can't manage the stitching I so admire in many of the projects I've visited, but I'm good with the staples.)


So there you have it... If you'd like to join in the challenge, hop over to Fussy and Fancy, and you'll find lots of amazing inspiration provided by my fellow team members (big proud smile!).  For now, thank you so much for visiting Words and Pictures today.  It's so great to hear your comments, and I will always try to return the visit if I know you've been.  Hope to see you again soon, here or elsewhere in Craftyblogland.

I've always loved a challenge.
Lana Turner

Life is challenging, but I'm always up for a challenge.
Venus Williams

I'm also entering this for the following:
Simon Says Stamp's challenge this week is Put A Stamp On It
Tuesday Alchemy are having an Anything Goes challenge
Anything But Square over at Allsorts... I've got a rectangle with lots of other shapes as the focus on it
ABC Challenges have reached W for Wishes - mine are the wishes and dreams that guide your life
Since I don't really expect my Friendship tag to qualify properly for the draw, I'm popping this into the Sunday Share over at Frilly and Funkie, having bought the burlap ribbon from the Funkie Junkie Boutique