A Mother's Love for The Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog

Hi everyone and welcome. It's time for another challenge over at the The Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog. Sara Emily is your host for this one and she's called it 'A Mother's Love'.

"A mother's love can mean so many different things to different people. With this challenge I invite you to take some time to reflect on what it means for you and create a vintage or shabby chic project for your mother or a special woman in your life to let them know how much you love them. Be sure your project has the word "love" somewhere on it where it will be noticed."As ever, the Design Team will choose their top four picks, with the winner being invited to join us in a Guest DT spot at The Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog and the next three will receive Top 3 Badges to display on their blogs. Everyone who enters and follows the rules will be entered into the draw to have the chance to win a $25 spending spree at The Funkie Junkie Boutique.

This challenge has been a particularly difficult one for me as we lost my Mum unexpectedly at the beginning of the year. Two things spring to mind immediately when thinking of her; firstly she had a real passion for her garden, particularly the flowers, and was forever thinking of the next additions that could be made. Secondly she was an amazing seamstress, making many of our childhood clothes by hand and embroidering beautiful pieces for the wall and home which we treasure still. So I wanted to incorporate both of those things in my project for this challenge and came up with an embroidered Tiny Book seen below.

This Tiny Book uses some of the new designs from Wendy Vecchi in a different way than you've maybe seen them. I've put together a tutorial below to show you how it came together.

The Tutorial

To start I cut a piece of cotton calico fabric about one and a half times the size of Wendy Vecchi's 'All Scratched Up' Background Stamp and painted it with Dina Wakley Media 'Sand' Acrylic Paint diluted with some water. When dry it makes the fabric stiff which is perfect for stamping on. I then stamped the All Scratched Up background onto the fabric using Violet permanent ink.

Looking at the background you can see lots of different patterns - I chose to add stitches into the open spaces within each 'square' shape using a cream coloured cotton thread. Again a bonus of the fabric being stiffened by the paint is that you don't need to use an embroidery hoop or frame in order to stitch through it.

I cut a Tiny Book from matboard using Eileen Hull's newly released die and used the stitched fabric to cover it using self-adhesive sheets and tape as shown below - as you can see Wendy's background is a perfect fit! The reason for using dry adhesive rather than wet glue is to prevent it 'bleeding through' the fabric and affecting the finished look of the book.

Next up I coloured a piece of seam binding with Dina Wakley Media 'Heather' Acrylic Paint mixed with a little water. When dry it stiffens making it great for holding the crinkles when you scrunch it and hold the shape of tied bows.

Wrapping the seam binding around the spine of the book, tying it in a double bow on the outside of the cover. Once done I made a text block from tea stained copier paper and bound it into the book cover.

Turning back to the leftover painted fabric I stamped the smaller of the open flowers from Wendy Vecchi's MAKE ART 'Thank You' set using her Poppy Archival Ink.

The open design is perfect for embroidery - I used satin stitch across the petals with embroidery thread (floss) and then dropped Wendy Vecchi's 'Orange Blossom' Liquid Pearls into the centre to represent the stamens. It's worth doing this and ensuring the liquid is set firm before you stitch around the centre to prevent any 'bleed' into the embroidery thread.

With the flower done I decided to create some petals, again using a stamp from the 'Thank You' set on the painted fabric. This time I used Dina Wakley Media 'Lime' Acrylic Paint to do this.

In order to fit the 'leaves' around the flower on the book cover I decided to cut some of them apart before stitching them with a similarly coloured embroidery thread.

Stitching complete my attention turned to completing the front of the book. I added a piece of tea stained lace trim from my stash first and then added the leaves across three corners. Linda stocks some wonderful flower stamens which can be used to create your handmade flowers or in this case to bundle behind the stitched flower. You'll see for this part I used wet glue to hold them firmly in place and did the same with the flower, leaves and lace - you could use a hot glue gun or silicone glue to achieve this too.

To complete the challenge and the book I needed to include the word LOVE and add some trinkets to the spine. For this purpose I picked the appropriate Story Stick from my stash, die cut a small matboard key using Eileen's die and also chose a wonderful heart charm from Linda's store. These were altered with touches of Dina Wakley Media 'Black' and 'Sterling' Acrylic Paint along with Gunmetal Mixative Alcohol Ink in order to coordinate their look. These were attached to the bow with silver jump rings.

Here are some close ups of the finished book so you can see more of those details;

That's my take on the theme 'A Mother's Love'. My hugely talented team mates have also come up with their own projects for this challenge so make sure you hop on over and check out their gorgeous projects HERE. And remember to link up your own shabby chic or vintage projects to be in with a chance of winning one of the fabulous prizes that's up for grabs.

Thanks for visiting,
Jenny xxx

Products used to create this art box are available from The Funkie Junkie Boutique and are listed/linked below.

Sizzix Scoreboards Die by Eileen Hull - Tiny Book
Studio 490 Wendy Vecchi Background Stamp - All Scratched Up
Wendy Vecchi MAKE ART Stamp/Die/Stencil Set - Thank You
Dina Wakley Media Acrylic Paints and Gessos
Ranger Wendy Vecchi Liquid Pearls - Orange Blossom
Ranger Archival Inks
Ranger Tim Holtz Alcohol Ink Metallic Mixative - Gunmetal
Antique Silver Heart Charm
Artificial Flower Pearlized Stamen - One Bundle
Silver Tone Jump Ring Set
Seam Binding