 We are here for my creative year for December and our two words for the year are, words for the year, holy cow, words are seen for the month is education and our challenge word is joyous and this being a holiday month, Christmas month if you celebrate it, Hanukkah if you celebrate that, Kwanzaa whatever you celebrate it's a month of holidays and spending time together as family and with those that you love and boy isn't that joyous it's a thing to be joyous about. This month I want to celebrate some family and traditions that are no longer with me one being my dad's mom my grandmother Jenny she was and the women in her family from way back were needlework artists they made handmade lace and this is my grandmother's collection of rosary making supplies that were found in her V longings when she passed away so we're going to be looking at some of those some old beads I got from a friend a long time pearls and I have some silk ribbon silk silk embroidery ribbon here and this little piece of see what that is that's a piece of a potato bag so we're going to use all these to do something that I've seen online it probably has a name I don't know what it is but I've seen different artists online do it where they just use something that's an open grid like this to weave different materials through the grid and create a piece of art now there are artists do this on a very large scale and make large wall hangings that's not what I'm shooting for let's see if this ribbon will fit through here yeah well I just want to make a little embellishment something I can turn later into a paper clip or put on a journal cover or something like that so I'm going to take different colors of my silk embroidery ribbon here this is just a piece of scrap ribbon that was on the table so I'm starting with that it's kind of on the wide side but that's okay and this might be from you know sometimes when you buy a blouse they have those straps inside that you're supposed to use to hang it up and I never do I always cut the ribbon off that's probably what this is and it's not about getting it flat in there it's about having it wrinkly and textured so I'm going to zoom in on what I'm doing but I'm not necessarily going to you're not going to see the bins but you will see what I'm doing and let's speed forward through the process and I'll be right back fully login yet let's hope and if you hear voices in the background they are my friend Cindy Utter, Peg Robinson and Vicky Brown I wanted to re-film this part of our video where my camera died and I was out of frame so I took my little I'm going to make another one so I took the little piece of potato bag this little piece of netting and you could use any kind of open weave plastic netting from potato bag onion bag sometimes you get the little baby bell cheeses in the bags I save all of them for use in mixed media and then we're going to just weave the ribbon in and out of the spaces sort of at random alternating spaces and rows I want to leave some loops on either side because I want like tails I'm going to cut the loop but I want a little piece of ribbon there um okay so keep weaving in and out all the way down your little piece of mesh and however big you decide you to do your piece there's no right way or wrong way you could use silk ribbon for this you could use embroidery floss for this you could use little strips of fabric for this there's no the possibilities are endless you could use a little piece of wire okay let's see so I'm going to keep going keep weaving my camera sort of I'm going to keep weaving loops leaving a loop see we've got all these loops you can leave the loops as they are or you could cut them either way I don't think it make any difference and then we're going to take some scissors now these are some of my sewing or needlework scissors they're sharper and less glue covered than these and they'll cut the ribbon a little easier so we're going to just cut I'm going to cut the loops again you don't have to you could leave the loops as loops if that's float your boat whatever works for you and I may end up trimming that little piece but for right now we're going to leave it I'm going to lay it down on top of my piece of polar fleece I'm going to take that same needle and some sewing thread thread the needle I'm going to double it up and tie a knot okay starting at the back I'm going to come up through the back to the top corner I'm not going to pull it all the way through before I go back through to the back and I'm going to catch this little loop right here where the knot is and I'm going to pull so be patient because with all these little pieces of ribbon hanging out it's going to get tangly so just take your time there's a little loop of thread at the back all right so once you have that then I want you to just come back up through the front back up through the front and just do running stitches so go in come out they don't have to be the same size they don't have to be eat neat and even you just want to tack your little piece of woven mesh down to the the fabric that you're using for a base in this case polar fleece and you're going to be sometimes going through the ribbon sometimes going through the mesh um whatever it is I can still hear them chat in the background how about you guys hang on all right don't tell them but I put them in the closet close the door all right so we're going to keep doing that all the way around until we come back to the beginning place you'll notice how I'm holding the ribbon threads under my thumb that ends and I'm doing it this way that just keeps things from getting tangled a little bit less so just kind of keep things use your fingers to keep things tucked out of the way you could if you um have trouble holding things out of the way use a binder clip or something you could also sew this on machine I mean you don't have to sew this by hand you could glue it down too you don't have to do any sewing I like this sort of tradition of getting out the needle and thread sometimes so I'm just going to we're back at the beginning so I'm going to go back down and if that's the way all that you wanted to do then you would just tie that off I missed a loop I think like with the other one I want to dig around in my grandmother's rosary bead box which is here somewhere here we go I do think there was another safety pin in here somewhere if there isn't I got plenty of them around the art room yep so here's another safety pin in it actually has an angel on it which I don't know if I want to leave that on there but I do want to use the pin I've got some more of these little plastic rosary beads so I'm going to use some blue ones this time um I do think I'm going to take this oh this is actually a what do you call it knitting pin I don't know if I can get these beads off nope they're not coming off so we're going to grab a different safety pin let's see oh that's cute my grandmother was very religious in case you didn't get the idea like by the fact that she made rosaries how cute is that though I might want to stick that on there so and we have a word sticking out here right on top that's so appropriate and this is my jar of fabric words that I think I showed already in a clip I'll have to edit this together so it makes some kind of sense but how cute would that be if we pinned this on or sewed this down I could cut the pin part off and sew it down which would be even better I'm very tempted am I going to be able to get that off maybe let's get out some wire cutters and see I have some old wire cutters these I have some new ones I just got but I don't want to use them for this because this might not work it might ruin the wire cutters but we're going to try it we're going to just do this oh yep that came off came right off yep perfect okay so we are going to stitch this down I haven't tied my thread off yet again as as I said already again I haven't had my thread off yet so we're just using that same thread so wait if that happens to you don't freak out just leave it there for the moment and I'll show you how to fix it let's get this stitched on make sure I'm in camera in frame so these could be embellishments they could be little memory pieces you could make a banner sort of deal out of it that you hang out hang around in your creative space with little messages of blessings and creativity whatever floats your boat now because this piece of jewelry this Mary and baby Jesus is metal behind it I'm going to put some e6000 if I can get it open so we're going to put a little drop of e6000 back here and that'll take a little bit to dry but when it does dry it'll stick it on there pretty well and we're going to keep stitching around and as we go around I'm going to probably stop at some point at which I think I'm going to do here and it grabs some of these beads I didn't remember at all that my grandmother made rosaries or anything I knew she was a sewer I seem stress and she and my great grandmother did a lot of hand work tatting and that sort of thing crochet and knitting but I didn't know anything about the rosary making supplies until she passed away and we found this box of stuff and those are the kind of things that when somebody is gone I like to keep and use and remember them with rather than a lots of other stuff personally one more bead I want to put on here but let's get this tacked on first and we're still going to fix the loop in the back no I didn't forget go back here we have that loop remember which we've tacked down a little bit so let's see if we can you can tie it in a knot if it's long enough or you can like weave it into some other stitches which I'm going to try to do here we go just tack it down so it's not so loose on the back my grandmother would be horrified by the way that the back is so messy and honestly probably that the front is messy and I'll think she'd get that either I am going to tie this off just because I want to figure out where I want to put that word I'm not sure yet I think I want the word at the bottom I do think it needs a trim these are again printed on fabric which I think I do say in the next clip and I've got to edit this so it makes some sense so I'm gonna I'm gonna put this right here at the bottom again you could glue it on I'm going to stitch it loosely just with one stitch on each side up through the back down through the front like that now it's a little tough to get the needle through the word even though because it's even though it's printed on fabric because the paper backing is still on there and I'm not going to take the paper backing off I could but I'm not going to the word is a bit more opaque with the paper backing on the fabric it's printed on is a bit thin and this fabric I'm using for the back of this is kind of dark there we go we'll tie that off there you have it now we have two of them shaky camera sorry now we have two of them and hopefully you saw a little bit more of actually how to make these then you did the first time so whatever you have I want you to go forward and I want you to play an experiment we're going to move on to the next clip okay there's nothing like working on a project and being pleased with the results and nearly done and realizing the camera turned off and what it did catch you were out of frame so that's a thing holy cow anyway this is what we have so far so we have some the woven ribbon in the potato bag then it's stitched down to this little piece of polar fleece which I received in Happy Mail I used some plastic beads for my grandmother's rosary making supplies there was a safety pin in there that already had some beads hanging on it and I added a couple of medallions and some more beads and sewed that on and I have another little idea because you know as if that's not enough hang on it took me a minute to find where I put them away these are words from one of my digital downloads in my etsy shop that I printed on fabric rather than printing them on paper or sticker paper you can also print them on fabric there is a video on how to do this I'll try to find it and link it in the description below but basically you just iron a piece of plain cotton fabric or muslin to a freezer paper and then cut it to eight and a half by 11 inch sheets put it into your printer so that it prints on the fabric side and when it comes out spray it with some magnet fixative spray and then cut them out and then you're good to go I want to put this up here we have to give it a trim it's too big and I want to stitch it or glue it on I'm not sure exactly and I just spied some parts in my tray that maybe we might want to use okay all righty making handmade embellishments is something I love to do and I do frequently I want to encourage you all to do the same and to use those parts and bits and pieces up that you have in your stash thing is do we want to put these on here I don't know that I do reading glasses time let's see if we can do this without having the camera turn off shall we and I pulled out embroidery floss thinking I would use it but I'm just using regular sewing thread um I uh and a good size needle to stitch everything on basic hand sewing stitches nothing fancy I did weave all the ribbon into our little piece of potato bag first and then stitched that whole piece down then I used some basic stitches to sew the beads on and sew the safety pin on after I put the charms on you can see the stitches for the safety pin see basic basic I'm going to put push these little pieces of ribbon up so that after we get the word on they still are sticking up about getting this word stitched on here it's not going to have any um stress on it the word you know you're not going to have any weight on it so you don't need to worry about stitching it five million times let's not like a buttonhole or anything just one little stack and of course you could glue it we're mixed media artists there's no right way or wrong way I am just joyously celebrating some hand stitching I learned from my grandmother I will say she'd be a little horrified at how messy the back is and that the pieces she wouldn't understand it because she was all about very neat hand stitching I know you all know what I mean you probably have grandmothers that were the same way the word believe seems to really fit this piece and I kind of do want to put these on here somewhere let's see if we can tack them on too these I might need to put a little glue underneath making sure the little extra bits are sticking out sort of randomly I'm going to try to zoom in on the editing process so you all can see what I'm doing because as I'm filming this I'm sure I'm too far away I'm sorry I didn't get the rest of it on camera but these things happen I have three batteries who would have known I would have picked the one that was dead one more let's see if I have just enough thread to keep this other side intact though maybe I think so let's see if I can tie it on that I am going to grab a little bit of glue if I can get the lid open there we go and I'm going to just peel the fabric back a bit and stick some back here behind both plastic pieces just to sort of tack them there in place it'll dry it'll be mostly hidden and it that will work now while it's drying I will use a clip to hold it down while it's drying during the drying process and this is really cute and this would be cute on a tag you could do something like this and then cover a tag with it and make it something that you hang up in your art room you could of course put it on a large piece of cardstock or a large wood base and turn it into a paper clip it could be something that decorates in our journal cover there's a lot of things you can do with these sort of little handmade embellishments I really like the idea of practicing your stitching your embroidery on these small projects you don't need to do a big one and I also like the idea this month of you all going out and just trying something new and if you don't know how to do it for instance the stitching came about because I'm currently fascinated by shibori embroidery and the transforming of fabric by shibori and while I don't think I'll get too into it it is very fascinating and it is always a great thing to educate yourself in something new to learn about a new craft technique or style and see where it takes you it may take you somewhere really interesting and developing little pieces or parts that you can use in your art and that take you to an interesting place in your work you never know I had a teacher recently of mine who is an oil painter and she's studying cold wax I don't paint an oil I don't generally work with cold wax but it did take me down a path of finding a cold wax cold wax that works with acrylic and using it in my art and using it in an interesting way and I'm still working on the book called it's called cold wax and it's for oil painters and then there's another one acrylic painting for encaustic effects I will link both in the description below so I would love to see and hear what you guys are doing celebrate your art and your work and yourselves joyously and have a great holiday season if you have any particular brooks techniques or art styles right now that are just you're like me and they're fascinating the crap out of you I would love to hear about them leave something in the comments below or better yet if you're part of my creative year leave it over there let's start a conversation so for me doing these mixed media style stitchery pieces I'll be doing some with seed beads too in the future for the next year so look for those if you want to see what I'm doing on a regular basis and follow me on my social media join my creative year or my other group a life of art and self-expression support the free content here on YouTube or over there in the art Facebook groups by shopping in my Etsy shop or shopping on my Amazon affiliate site there's a lot of ways you can do it click on the link tree listed links in the description below and you'll find all that stuff I'm going to be doing more of this I have a lot of beads I have a lot of parts this is just the tip of the iceberg and I will be doing more of these little stitchery mixed media pieces because I am just totally hooked now and totally fascinated I thought I might be before I got started with this to be all to be very honest in all honesty and I wasn't wrong so anyway that's it for today don't forget to like share and subscribe and the most important thing go out and have a great day do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and by the way it is December when you're seeing this so happy holidays and I hope you have a great one that's it for right now I'll see you later bye guys