A quick round up of needle felt characters I made last winter, as I’ve taken them off my portfolio page.
These are all sold, but I’ll be making more this winter.
(Sorry I don’t take commissions for needle felting and I’m unable to reserve any items.)
…will have to wait.
“Today” thought the mole “would have been a good day to stay underground.”
…and is reassured that warmer days will soon be here. He may even take his scarf off. The crocuses and snowdrops are flowering and I can’t wait to get outside to tidy up and plant. This week I’ll be sowing tomato seeds. That’s always my first gardening job of the year and heralds the almost-arrival of Spring. And I’m looking forward to photographing my woolly characters without getting wet knees. 🙂
Print out and make this cute bear for free!
Click HERE to download the PDF
For personal use only. Copyright property of Julie Wilson.
For more cut out and make activities visit my shop http://www.bearsgetcrafty.com.
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I love prints as an art form, but apart from some basic lino printing and screen printing I haven’t done any myself. Print making seems a bit of a daunting thing to try, requiring expensive equipment and space. I’ve always particularly wanted to try dry point etching, so I got really excited when I saw an artist on Twitter talking about PRINTING AN ETCHING WITH A PASTA MACHINE! Gosh.
Naturally I rushed out to buy one. Luckily my local cookshop had a modest one on sale and I got some sheets of flexible clear plastic from a nearby model shop.
This is what I did:
The plastic sheets I bought were A4, so I cut them up so that they were small enough to feed through the pasta machine. They don’t need to be clear, but it’s handy if you want to trace over a drawing. I scratched my design with a pointed implement I found in an old box of tools. I’ve no idea what it’s really for. Any pointed tool you can comfortably hold should work.
I used block printing ink as it was available. It worked fine. I’m going to try printing with acrylic paint with a drying retardant mixed in. I found the best way to ink the design was to rub the ink into the scratches with a cloth, then rubbing of the excess with a dry cloth.
I printed onto cartridge paper, as I had some. Soak it in water for a few minutes first and pat dry. You’ll need to experiment with how wet the paper needs to be. Put the paper onto another piece of paper and some felt and place the inked plate face down on your paper. Fold the other side over. Be careful to hold the plate and paper together as you feed it into your pasta roller.
Wind the handle! You’ll need to guide the bottom end so that it doesn’t catch on the bottom of the machine as it emerges.
This is what I made:
There are several demonstrations of this by artists on YouTube. Worth a visit.
I’m looking forward to experimenting and printing lots more 🙂
There are a bunch of new greetings cards in my shop this month, including these dinosaur and space cards, which come with any age badge you like (I sold a 95 years badge last week). You can check out all my new cards designs at BearsGetCrafty: there’s one for lovers of GIN (with the choice of a super badge or magnet), something naughty, something nice, and bears, of course. 😉
Mr Fox Sewing Kit Prototype
As usual, I also have lots of ideas and work in progress. 🙂 Greetings cards with stickers and sewing kits will be arriving soon! I’m also thinking about cards with moving parts and pop-ups.
Over at BearsGetDigital there is lots of new art to download, digital drawings and watercolour paintings to use in card making, on websites….whatever you fancy. 🙂
I have several new illustrations, for poems by Dom Conlon, on www.inkology.co.uk. 
Enjoy his darkly funny stories while you’re there too.
In between all of that, there have been a few fun things appearing on my work desk:
To see more of what I draw and make you can check out my Instagram account BearsGetCrafty or follow me on Twitter. 
Printing on fabric with your inkjet printer! I saw a tutorial for this on Pinterest. I was slightly dubious and concerned I would end up with a printer full of tangled inky threads, but I tried it anyway…
The fabric I used was cotton and fairly thin. It worked beautifully and I covered some notebooks. I’ll be experimenting with coarser fabrics as well.
I used images from my sketchbook which I scanned and arranged in photoshop, but you could draw your artwork at A4 and then simply scan and print.
Now I’m thinking about all the other things I can use this technique for…watch this space.
Download and make a pug in a box. Then give it to someone. 🙂
Click here for the free PDF to download.
If you need help with how to make your Pug in a Box, visit my Hug in a Box page and follow the method there.
Please share, make pugs, give them to people, take photos and show me.
Copyright is the property of Julie Wilson. Download for personal use only.
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Thanks x
How to make a screen print on fabric with very cheap materials.
I’d been wanting to print tote bags to sell on my shop for a while. I looked at commercial printing but it was expensive and required having large quantities made, home screen printing with photograph emulsion sounded complicated and I rejected lino printing because I just hate cutting it. Luckily, I found several tutorials on the internet for different methods of screen printing. I experimented a little, and used various of the ideas I’d seen. This is how I did it.
You Will Need:
First you need your design. I drew my unicycling bear very roughly on paper then scanned it, completed the design in photoshop and printed it out the size I wanted it on the bags. You can just draw the design to the size you want or find an image on the web.
Next I took my piece of voile and stapled it to my picture frame. It needs to be as taut as possible. Keep the staples to the back of the frame as it needs to sit perfectly flat on your fabric while you are printing.
I put my printed out design under my frame and traced it onto the voile with a ballpoint pen.
(I left some of the detail out as I was happy to add it later, but it’s up to you how much you want to trace. Paper under screen so you can see the drawing.)
The next stage is to start painting on your screen with a blocking agent. I used a 50/50 mixture of PVA glue and water. Simply put glue and water into a jam jar and shake thoroughly! I also added a drop of acrylic ink to mine so that it was easier to see where I had painted.
The idea is to block out all the areas you wish to remain white. Prop up your frame so that it’s not touching anything underneath and start painting on the glue mix with a fine brush. Once you have painted round the outline and added the detail use a larger brush to block in the big white areas. Allow the glue to dry and then repeat with a second coat.
Allow to dry thoroughly.
Printing!
I made a test print before I started printing on bags. If you find you have made a mistake you can gently rinse off the ink under the cold tap, allow to dry, add more glue and dry before printing again.
To print you will need to put something underneath your fabric. I have a vinyl tablecloth and I put a piece of mountboard inside the bags. A plastic bag should work fine, but whatever you use make sure it is flat and smooth. It’s also a good idea to iron your fabric before you print on it.
Place you frame on the fabric where you want to print. Make sure the voile is in contact with the fabric. You can see in the photo that I weighed the top my frame down with a large stone. Dollop a large blob of the screen printing ink at the top of your image and drag in across the image towards you with an old credit card. If you haven’t put enough ink on, don’t worry, just add some more and keep going. (I also tried applying ink with a brush but it didn’t work as well as this method.)
Once you have covered your image with ink you can carefully lift your frame off. Put your fabric aside until the print has dried thoroughly. If you want to print another, carry straight on, or carefully rinse the ink off of your frame to use again.
The ink I used needs to be fixed with heat. Cover the image with a tea towel and iron as hot as you can on both sides. (Check manufacturer’s instructions for 
the ink you use.)
This sounds complicated but it was really fun to do!
My Unicycling Bear tote bags are available to buy on my Etsy shop.
