And A Partridge In A Pear Tree ….

A recent Christmas card arrived with a lovely fat partridge in the boughs of a pear tree – inspiration to do a quick piece with velvets. Cotton velvet as the base and lovely dyed silk velvets for the bird and leaves. If I’d had more time I could’ve really gone to town on the partridge but sometimes it’s good just to do something quickly for fun without worrying about finishing off properly. I’ve used this technique before, below is another sample, but I really need to think of a suitable design and work it up into a proper, thought-out piece. The idea is to build up the cotton velvet, stamping with bleach first, adding some foil details and then layering on chiffon before using the heat gun to get the peeled back surface. The silk velvet shapes are added on top – leaves and berries work really well.

I remembered that I hadn’t photographed my November book of the month completely finished with the leaf additions. Below is the cover, followed by some of the double-paged spreads.