More ArtRage play

From ArtRage Butte...

I have had great fun with ArtRage 2.5. The background for this one was created following the instruction in this ArtRage forum discussion. The wording was done by creating a stencil from a png file created in Paintshop Pro and the butterfly stencil was created in a similar way. The stencils were airbrushed with metallic paint. Love that option to change the look of the paint.

Lots of Pics

Here are the promised pictures plus the next project I created.


This is the butterflies picture. I got it as a kit from a dollar-store type place for $2 and this showed in the quality of the aida, which was rectangular rather than square. However the finished picture doesn't look wrong because of it. There is a slight visible kink in the border though.


This is the buzzy bee card, all put together and ready to share.


And this is the next project, the daisy, with wrinkles and all in the gingham. The finished daisy will probably be a patch on a bag or similar.



Here is the mouse I've knitted while being home sick. It is done in 3 sections and has crochet edging on the ears and the tail is crochet too. He's a fairly simple design and I think I'll give him away, although I don't know who yet.

Busy cross-stitcher

While Crafty Things has been taking a break from crafting, I've been busy cross-stitching. I have finally completed the butterflies, yay! Two more projects have followed. The first, a buzzy bee card, has all the stitching done and I just have to turn it into the card. The second is a daisy that is being done on gingham fabric with waste canvas. For those of you who don't know, waste canvas is a type of fabric that gets tacked onto other fabric and is a guide to help you place your stitches. Once you have completed the stitching the waste canvas gets pulled out thread by thread and you are left with your stitched design on a fabric you couldn't normally use for cross-stitch. Waste canvas is ideal for putting stitchings onto clothes, baby bibs etc. The daisy currently has 3 and a half petals out of 6. Hopefully it will be done soon. I don't know what it will be put on yet but it's looking like being a bag of some sort.
Pictures will come soon, promise!

Knitting Stuff

Just a quick post to say that I've started knitting my brown bag and have finished a mobile phone sock. The sock has a little flap at the top and a clip to clip onto a bag handle, belt loop etc. It's blue and very fluffy and bobbly! Work has also begun on a phone sock for crafty things, which is being made from a beautiful blue alpaca wool.

I've also been working on those cross-stitch butterflies; almost three of them done now!

Butterfly progress

Not much crafting happened over the weekend. I did a bit of stitching on the butterflies. Now I've almost finished one butterfly, and have finished a flower and a few leaves. It should look nice when it's finished. The threads used in the kit are slightly different to the normal ones used for cross-stitch and they give a soft sort of finish.

Creating with Artrage

From Art Rage Butt...

These images were macro photographs I took of a butterfly. I used a brilliant program called Artrage to paint over the photos with glitter to give a textured finish. Artrage allows you to load a tracing image and when you paint over it the program will select the colours from the tracing image. Next I think I want to try creating a collage effect by changing the tracing image part way through.

Artrage only costs $19.95 US dollars and is available from Ambient Design

Another little project I have been working on is a felted bag. I borrowed a book from the library on felting knitted objects and tried it out on a sample. Love the feel of the wool once it is felted. I like how it is all a little bit of a surprise once the bit of knitting appears back out of the washing machine. Will have to do some internet searching to find out more about this fun activity.