Stitched Flowers Envelope with Eileen Hull Designs

Hi everyone and welcome. This month Eileen's teams are sharing the love of stencils - meaning her new Sizzix stencil set of course!

Following on from last month's watercolour flower experiments I wondered if I could use the stencil set with watercolour pencils on a mixed media background (ie. fabric, washi tape, tissue, paper and more). The answer is - YES!!! This means that you can create individual envelope pages to go inside notebooks and journals using up lots of leftover scraps. It will also work on previously completed pages that need a focal point - like a stitched watercolour flower!

Start with your envelope sealed shut and then cut open at the top and bottom to allow for better access - you will glue the top and bottom back together again when the stitching is complete. Stick a few coordinating strips of fabric, paper, tissue, washi tape etc across the centre of your envelope and blend brown ink around the edges if you want to.

Use the flower, leaf and flower centre stencils from the Watercolour Flowers & Lattice Stencil Set to map out the placement of your finished blooms - you can add the smaller flowers as well as the larger ones. At this point I drew in some simple stems by hand to complete the layout.

Absorbent Ground is an acrylic liquid surfacing medium that dries to a porous, paper-like surface that allows you to work with watercolours in the same way you would on watercolour paper. I applied a couple of layers of Absorbent Ground through the stencils with a small brush and found it worked really well even over fabric.

With your flower stems covered you can begin to add some colour with watercolour pencils. I found it easier to use a wet brush over the dry pigment to get it to blend together - more water, more blending.

The same method can then be used to colour the leaves and stems. Remember to clean your brush between each element to prevent a transfer of colour from one to another.

Once completely dry you can begin to embroider your flowers and leaves, keeping it simple with straight-line stitching using three strands of embroidery thread (floss) in coordinating colours. This is where you'll find having access to the design from the top and bottom of the envelope really helpful if you plan to keep the back of the envelope free of stitching.

To finish add some touches of 'bling' with self-adhesive gems and buttons sewn into place. Then re-seal your envelope at the top and bottom, fold in the middle (if you haven't already) and your page is ready to be added to a notebook or journal.

Here are some close ups of the finished flowers;

I hope you've enjoyed seeing this tutorial for using Eileen's new stencils for some mixed media watercolour fun. Make sure to check out all the fantastic projects and ideas from the rest of the teams - links to their posts can be found on Eileen's blog.

For now thanks for visiting,

Jenny xxx