Getting Felty

As promised last week, I am here with a few tricks and tips on using our new felt range.   I made this card for our current embossing challenge

And on it, I embossed the felt panel at the bottom.  You may think that embossing in felt wouldn't hold, but there is a handy little trick that makes it hold good and firm and it might be a little surprising.  You just need to go to an old fashioned store and pick up a can of spray starch!   Soak the  felt in the spray before putting in your embossing folder (it will squirt out - so I add a piece of kitchen roll at the end of the plates to catch the excess).

Run the plates right through with your wet felt in the embossing folder and then bring it back to the centre and leave it in the machine for 20 minutes to start to dry.  When it comes out it will still be a little damp so leave it to air dry naturally.  You can them trim it to size and secure to your project with strong tape.   Neat trick huh ;-)

I've also been making some little gifts with my felt using a new to store die from MFT which is perfect for making little lavender bags to hang in wardrobes.   The Stitchable Heart Stax Dies from MFT have little holes all the way around which makes stitching them together super easy (would be great to do with your kids)

I made two different ones - one where I just layered up the dies and one where I did a little stamping and stitched over the stamped design.  

Here I stamped one of the floral designs for Neat and Tangled's Hand Stitched (but any stamp you fancy would work) in white ink lightly so it doesn't show after stitching.

Now it's just a case of following the lines with whatever stitches you fancy - I used 3 strands of embroidery thread.  I used a french knot for the centre of each flower and then used back stitch for the other lines.  For the leaves I did a daisy stitch and more back stitch.  A simple edge stitch with 6 strands of thread stitched the two hearts together and I then filled the edges with cotton wool and the centre with dried lavender for scent (you could add a few drops of you favourite essential oil to the cotton wool too)   The pink version just used back stitch to layer up the heart die cuts before stuffing in the same way and adding ribbon to hang them both.

Now I love to embroider, but actual "sewing" is not my strong point (hence the dies with holes spoke to me!) but I received a lovely email from a customer who was very excited by our felt as she uses other brands a lot and finds ours much softer.  Susan Elwell is a VERY good seamstress and she sent me a picture of what she made which is just adorable so I said I would share it all with you all too.

Susan used dies to cut the shapes for these gorgeous needle holder and scissor sewing kits - aren't they fabulous?   If you make anything fun with our felt - do let us know so we can share it with everyone too.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• This week we will have new summer papers and co-ordinating stencils and embellishments from Echo Park
• We will have the new release from Reverse Confetti towards the end of the week
• We will also have the new Mama Elephant on the 15th.

Slightly quieter this week as we gear up for the big releases towards the end of the month.